City Hall front doors to remain locked as part of safety and management plans

At Tuesday's Council session, Councillor Barry Cunningham relayed
 some concerns overthe City's locked door policy at City Hall

Tuesday evening's City Council session provided Councillor Barry Cunningham an opportunity to raise a concern from a number of residents, who were looking for more background on the City Hall decision to bar the public from the main entrance way to the Municipal building on Third Avenue West.

The Front doors to City Hall will
remain locked as part of enhanced
safety measures at the
Third Avenue municipal building

As we outlined on the blog in early December, the Council doors were permanently closed to the public last November, that in the wake of a threat that the City advised had been issued to city staff members.

A situation which resulted in a sign appearing on the main door of the City Hall building providing a short advisory that noted:

"Due to written threats uttered against City Staff, additional security measures are now in place. Please go to the side entrance for service. Access to Administration offices by appointment only'"

Since that notification went up, the City has not provided any further details for the public related to the original incident that led to the locked doors, nor have they indicated if the RCMP had been called in to investigate the threat and what result, if any, may have come from their work on the file.

As well, other than Mr. Cunningham's raising of the topic of Tuesday evening, City Council members had not previously made any comment,  or raised the topic of the change in policy towards access of municipal offices in any of the Public council sessions since the new regulations went into effect.

In response to Mr. Cunningham's inquiry of Tuesday as to whether the front door policy was now a permanent fixture, City Manager Robert Long advised that the doors would remain locked on a permanent basis.

With the City manager citing safety issues and the need to manage the amount of people that come into City Hall through one location.

He added that they will continue to direct people top use the side door, which he noted is wheel chair accessible.

You can take in Mr. Long's review of the locked doors issue to Council from the Video Archive starting at the 40 minute mark.




For more items related to Tuesday's Council session see our City Council Timeline feature here, more notes related to the Tuesday session can be found on our February 13th Council archive page.

We also have an expanded collection of notes on City Council Discussion topics, which you can review here.


Cross posted from the North Coast Review