Community organizations and housing advocates are speaking out after the City of Regina’s budget debate came to a close Friday evening.
Rally Around Homelessness posted a statement on social media in response to the finalized budget which did not include operational funding to help solve Regina’s housing crisis.
“We witnessed deliberate procedural maneuvering on the part of councillor [Lori] Bresciani and supported by councillors [Bob] Hawkins, [Terina] Nelson, [John] Findura, [Landon] Mohl, [Jason] Mancinelli and Mayor [Sandra] Masters to prevent the plan to end homelessness from making it to a rigorous debate,” the advocacy group said.
Coun. Bresciani said her motion Friday did not stifle debate.
“At any time, and this happens often, when you bring a motion and it’s defeated, you move onto the next one,” she told reporters after deliberations. “When it came forward, it was to set the stage for ‘what do we really want out of this?’”
Coun. Andrew Stevens believed Bresciani’s motion curtailed debate. He supported spending on recreational amenities and lowering the mill rate but wanted more discussion about finding money to supporting housing initiatives.
“The initial motion around the budget and the mill rate not been positioned the way it was, we could have talked about both,” he said. “That would have been better.”
Mayor Masters did not respond to Steven’s claim.
“I’m not saying anything,” she said when given the opportunity.
Ward 6 coun. Dan Leblanc called the debate “disappointing.”
“I told my wife, ‘if we don’t seriously address homelessness this time around after what happened [Thursday], we’re not going to seriously address it,’” he said. “There is a deflated feeling.”
Masters said Friday’s deliberations were lengthy, with over 5.5 hours of discussion over the city’s operating budget.
“Council has been hearing about this for some time now,” she said. “You saw it play itself out today.”
On Thursday, council heard from nearly 70 listed delegations for nearly nine sitting hours about various issues surrounding the 2023 operating budget.
The majority of them voiced their support for the city to include funding to support the unhoused population. Many had in the past or had family currently experiencing homelessness.
“The delegation was all of the information we need about what it’s like to be front-line houseless person,” said Leblanc. “If that doesn’t shift hearts and minds, nothing will.”
Debate that did occur Friday featured conflict and expressed anger by many councillors.
Masters believed this was the outcome of a lawsuit by Leblanc and Stevens against city manager Niki Anderson.
“There is a natural outcome when you create an adversarial approach to any topic,” she said. “There’s a commitment from the majority of my fellow council members to keep doing the work that we do. You saw a mish-mash of votes going one way or another.
“To say folks aren’t frustrated with the way things have been handled over the last couple of months would be untrue.”
Rally Around Homelessness concluded their statement by asking the public to mobilize.
“We have no specific asks at this time because the entire priority of the people has been wholly lost on council,” the organization said. “This system is so, so very broken.”
According to Leblanc, progress on the issue of homelessness in Regina will remain stalled under the current city council.
“It makes it profoundly unlikely within the next budget cycle with this make-up of councillors, we’ll seriously address the issue,” he said.
