A collaborative and integrated crime prevention strategy has been given the green light from Essex County Council.
Windsor city council voted to put in $200,000 toward the Community Safety and Well-Being Regional Plan — a plan that has been legislated by the province to be in place by January 2021. Essex County Council has now voted to match that $200,000.
County CAO Rob Maisonville says this is about taking a regional approach on issues that affect every area of Windsor-Essex.
"We are regional in nature in a lot of the services that we are provided, whether it is public health or school boards, or as the city as the consolidated municipal service manager, social services, social housing, child care, they provide those services for the county," he says.
But Maisonville points out that every municipality will remain individual.
"We are not losing the fact that each municipality is its own, but the synergies that we can have as a collective, makes more sense and the city has got some resources that we can all utilize in terms of staffing and help share those costs," he says.
Maisonville says many crimes affect the area as a whole.
"Some of those crime related issues or social issues, discrimination or drug addictions, they are all going to be somewhat similar because we are a region but there may be nuances in any one municipality," he says.
Part of the plan would include establishing a multi-sector advisory committee comprised of police, Local Health Integration Network, education, health and mental health care, social services, and youth services.
With files from Zander Broeckel