City Hall's Community and Corporate Affairs Department manages a number
of essential services: emergency and fire safety and response, crime
prevention and education, bylaw enforcement, and governance support.
At
the March 30th 2010 Council meeting, the department presented its 2009
annual report. The report is available in the meeting agenda package (pdf file). I found the following pieces of information especially
interesting.
- The City Hall receptionist is a very busy
person, handling between 200 and 250 calls a day while also helping
people face to face. Among other administrative tasks, this person is
also in charge of coordinating neighbourhood bottle drives, preparing
113 packages in support of various charities in 2009.
- Community
safety volunteer programs, such as speed watch and citizens on patrol,
are now coordinated through City Hall and not through the RCMP
detachment. There are a lot of different opportunities to volunteer to
help make Kamloops a safer place.
- City parking enforcement is
much more proactive / aggressive (choose your word). From 2008 to 2009,
the number of parking tickets issued in Kamloops went from 17,528 to
23,097 and parking ticket revenue went from $232,163 to $324,961.
-
Bylaw enforcement, generally speaking, was also more proactive in 2009,
with a 14% increase in workload.
- Within the context of an
overall impressive service, the Kamloops Fire Department fell short of
its target of containing 75% of structure fires to the room of origin
(2009 actual was 55%). This performance measure seems like it is often
not in the fire department's control.
- RCMP detachment files
went from a total of 41,270 in 2007 to 35,343 in 2009. In contrast,
calls to the RCMP switchboard increased from 49,694 to 67,797 in the
same period.
- Kamloops crime rate has gone from 168.4 per
thousand population in 2005 to 126 per thousand population in 2009.
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