Fences around Regina City Hall to come down Thursday

The fences are set to come down at Regina’s City Hall.

The barriers were put up around the building on Victoria Avenue after a homeless encampment was removed from the grounds in late July.

In an emailed statement Wednesday, city manager Niki Anderson said the work is to begin Thursday at 8 a.m.

“The green spaces on the City Hall Courtyard are safe and clean,” Anderson said. “The fences have allowed the grass to recover, and have significantly reduced the future cost of landscape repair.

“Moving forward, the City will enforce its Parks & Open Space Bylaw in the Courtyard. The parks bylaw prohibits the establishment of a camp. As with any bylaw, the City’s goal is voluntary compliance.”

In late August, Mayor Sandra Masters estimated the cost of the cleanup at $60,000.

“The site hasn’t been cleaned yet and it was quite polluted,” Masters told reporters on Aug. 30.

The mayor added the work wasn’t at the top of the city’s list of priorities at that time.

“It’s a matter of whether we get to it this year in terms of bulldozing and peeling up what’s there or we do it next spring,” she said.

A request was made Wednesday to the city for the final cost of the work, but a response wasn’t received by the time of publication.

The tent city sprung up in front of and beside City Hall in mid-June in hopes of raising awareness about homelessness in the city. At its height, there were 83 tents on the grounds of City Hall.

The city offered some support to residents, putting up a portable public washroom, making public washrooms inside City Hall available and frequently removing garbage from the Courtyard.

However, things escalated in late July. A special city council meeting was scheduled for July 27 to discuss the encampment, but the meeting was cancelled due to what was termed “lack of quorum.”

Later that day, Fire Chief Layne Jackson told the camp’s residents to pack up their tents and leave within 24 hours, citing a number of fires that had broken out in the camp.

“To be clear, this action is absolutely required as the appropriate response to imminent risk to the safety of those in the encampment,” Jackson told reporters at a media conference.

The following day, Regina police officers started a systematic move across the courtyard that forced people off the grounds. Eleven people were arrested during the police operation.

As residents and advocates left the grounds, workers started erecting fences that blocked off the grass. The only opening was a walkway to get into the building from Victoria Avenue.

In recent days, Knox-Metropolitan United Church – next door to City Hall on Victoria Avenue – also put up a fence to limit access to its grounds due to fires on its property.