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The Pleasant Hill Community Association wasn’t at a police board of commissioners meeting Thursday evening at city hall to discuss safety in the neighbourhood, due to a “miscommunication” by the board in offering an invitation to speak.
The board’s public meeting agenda had listed a presentation by the community association, to address what the group calls an “epidemic” of crime in the west Saskatoon neighbourhood – including being the area where most of the city’s 10 murders have been committed.
Association president Jennifer Altenberg told 650 CKOM she didn’t learn about the meeting until Thursday morning, through another community association president who asked her if she was going to present. The agenda for the meeting had been posted on Aug. 14.
She said the last-minute invite felt like another oversight in a continuing pattern of Pleasant Hill being overlooked by city council and the police.
Mayor Charlie Clark addressed the miscommunication at the meeting, saying a message intended for the association didn’t reach the proper people.
“In trying to put the invitation out to different community associations, I think the invitation for Pleasant Hill must have gone to the wrong email,” he said.
Altenberg told 650 CKOM she decided intentionally not to attend the meeting after receiving the late invitation from Clark, because she’s “had enough” of Pleasant Hill being consistently overlooked.
She said in her Thursday conversation with the mayor, she called on him to “stand up for the residents of Pleasant Hill.”
Beyond that, she directed the public to read the association’s open letter submitted earlier in August to city council. The letter cited concerns about rising crime and boarded up homes in the area.
Clark told reporters after the board meeting Thursday that it shouldn’t just be up to community members to come to city hall to voice their concerns.
“It’s also important for there to be opportunities for members of the commission, myself and the chief to go and meet with residents in their communities … to get a chance to see what’s happening first hand,” Clark said.
He noted there’s a lot of stress in the Pleasant Hill neighbourhood over a feeling the area isn’t safe, given a rash of violent attacks in 2019 alone.
There’s a sense of desperation in the community’s messages, he said.
“We don’t want people to be living in that kind of circumstance. We need to be working with them to identify how we can make sure that every neighbourhood is a safe neighbourhood,” Clark said.
The mayor cited challenges around a lack of activity for children and teenagers in the evenings, and the action the city is taking to reduce the number of boarded up homes in the area.
Community associations from Mount Royal, Caswell Hill and Montgomery Place provided their own presentations to the police board.
With files from 650 CKOM’s Brady Lang.
