Several volunteers with clipboards took to the streets of downtown North Battleford last Thursday in the afternoon and evening.
The reason was to conduct a Downtown Safety Audit. Crosby Hanna and Associates, in conjunction with the City of North Battleford, facilitated two audit sessions that day. One was a daytime audit from 3 p.m. to 5 pm. The other was an evening audit from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
The audit was conducted as part of the process in creating a Downtown Master Plan, with which Crosby Hanna and Associates have been involved for some time.
The goal of the safety audit was to gather local knowledge to identify peoples’ perceptions about the downtown. The idea is to get feedback from people about how they feel when they are walking in that area – including both was good and bad experiences.
The audit was led by Elisabeth Miller out of Saskatoon, who was hired as a contractor for the Downtown Master Plan by the city.
During the session last Thursday, volunteers marked a map to indicate particular areas in which they felt safe or unsafe. Then, with clipboards in hand, the volunteers started their tour of the downtown area starting with the Central Park/library area.
While there, the participants were encouraged to look for specific aspects of the park area that made them feel safe or unsafe. They then moved on to other parts of downtown.
According to Ryan Mackrell, planner with the City of North Battleford, the group did a walkabout of the entire downtown area, walking down 100th Street, through back alleys, around the Lighthouse area, and throughout the core.
The volunteers were split into two groups, who complied information about what they saw and experienced as they walked around.
“As you do the audit you have a booklet in front of you that asks you certain questions about how you feel, what you think the lighting is like in this space, is the area dirty, things like that,” said Mackrell.
The sessions were well attended, with 21 volunteers for the afternoon and then another 21 in the evening session.
Turnout was higher than expected and it was a diverse group, which was important when it came to getting feedback as to how people felt in an area.
“I might feel safe in an area, where you might not, just depending on your background,” Mackrell said.
This particular Downtown Safety Audit was different in purpose from the Community Safety Audit that was conducted around Battlefords Union Hospital area earlier that year. While the focus of that audit was crime prevention, the results of this one go into the overall planning for the entire downtown area.
Crosby Hanna and Associates is still in the process of developing the Downtown Master Plan for the City. Recommendations will come out of the safety audit results, and Mackrell suggested those could include tree trimming in certain areas, the holding of community events, and so forth.
All the data will be compiled and included in the final master plan report that will be put together over the coming months.
Mackrell said a draft report should be finished sometime this winter, at which point it will be presented to the full council, with implementation of the report’s findings to begin next year.
