Those concerned about the safety of White Rock's waterfront during evening and early morning hours should be seeing greater security resources in play as of this week – including during White Rock Sea Festival and Semiahmoo Days this weekend (Aug. 2 to 4).
At Monday's meeting, White Rock council voted unanimously to hire two-member private security guard teams to patrol the waterfront starting today (Aug. 1) for a two-month trial period ending Sept. 31.
The guards will patrol the Marine Drive area from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. seven days a week, according to the successful motion, from Coun. Elaine Cheung.
City chief administrative officer Guillermo Ferrero said the security guards, hired on an hourly basis (for which council has approved provisional spending of an estimated $18,000 for the trial project) should be deployed by tonight, provided guards are immediately available.
During discussion, Coun. Ernie Klassen underlined that the extra security presence is not intended to replace the proposal to establish a security camera system at key areas at the waterfront, for which costs are still being investigated for subsequent action.
"This is just an initial temporary move," he said.
Ferrero also stressed that security guards will not have the authority to intervene to stop criminal actions, and can only report incidents to the RCMP, but Cheung and other councillors said they still believed that the presence of guards will act as a deterrent.
"We need to know that times have changed – we have a lot more people on the waterfront," Cheung said.
"I've heard multiple stories where female workers, they get off-shift at midnight, they get scared. We have a parking lot (of) four floors, some disturbances there, so if our purpose is, basically, to have physical presence and deter criminal activities, it would make a lot more sense to hire security guards rather than have bylaw officers down there to write tickets and educate (people)."
"We're at the beginning of August, we still have a good two months to go – let's try it out," she added.
Coun. Bill Lawrence, who seconded Cheung's motion, said having the guards patrol until 3 a.m. "would be the prudent thing, just because of the fact that a lot of the stuff that does happen is in the wee hours of the morning."
The private patrols will join RCMP officers already patrolling the waterfront from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m., Wednesday through Saturday.
In response to a question from Coun. Christopher Trevelyan on how helpful such patrols would be from a police point of view, White Rock RCMP detachment commander Staff Sgt. Rob Dixon said: "I guess it depends."
"It's always helpful to have those extra eyes down there," he said. "But the same problem is going to occur for the security guards that occurs for us – and that's that you can't be everywhere at the same time."
The decision followed a corporate report from planning and development services director Anne Berry – a followup to a successful motion from Cheung at the last council meeting – providing more information on the relative costs of having city bylaw officers or private security guards patrolling the waterfront during the summer months.
Berry's report showed council that hiring security guards at approximately $23 to $25 per hour was more cost-effective than retaining additional bylaw staff for the patrols, given shift requirements and hourly wages for the latter stipulated by the collective agreement with the city, plus an additional 30 per cent in benefits.
Based on a six-month (April to October) period of eight-hour shifts, estimated costs for additional bylaw staff would amount to $157,300, Berry said, while the costs for the same coverage by a private security firm would total some $85,000 for the same period and staffing level.
But Mayor Megan Knight said council may still want to consider adding bylaw staff to patrol the waterfront in the long term.
"If we're seriously looking at protection for our residents, we might get more out of bylaw officers down the road, because at least they can ticket; they have more powers than just a security guard. ... A security guard can't enforce our bylaws. So maybe this council, when we come to budget time, we should look at the numbers for bylaw officers."
