Cobourg Council states they are pro-sleep at the County-run warming room
Photo by Dan Jones, Northumberland 89.7 FM, LJI
By Cecilia Nasmith
According to Cobourg's Chief Administrative Officer Tracey Vaughan, it was a single ill-chosen sentence in a joint Cobourg-Northumberland County press release about the Warming Room that made Mayor Lucas Cleveland call the emergency council meeting for Friday at 4 p.m.
The press release was meant to showcase the collaboration between the two levels of government in providing this vital service, but Vaughan pointed out the troublesome sentence.
“While visitors are no longer required to remain awake, staff do conduct regular wellness checks that can be disruptive to continuous sleep.”
The upshot of the 83-minute meeting was a motion that might change the picture, stating the town's support in allowing individuals to sleep in the Warming Room, “providing that the County of Northumberland is in compliance with all applicable laws.”
“Further that, should the county choose, they can begin the process of requesting a change-of-use permit to bring the warming room into compliance with the building code and fire code, if the intention is to provide safe overnight accommodation that allows for sleeping.”
This will be discussed in greater detail at next week's December meeting of Northumberland County council. As for the Friday meeting, Mayor Lucas Cleveland inveighed against the criticism the town has taken for not permitting sleeping in the Warming Room – when, as he said at a meeting of a county council committee last week, sleeping is forbidden by the Ontario Fire Code and that the town's Emergency Care Establishment bylaw is merely a vehicle to ensure that it's enforced.
Both Vaughan and Cleveland stressed at length that the town – as Cleveland put it – is pro-sleep.
The troublesome sentence in the press release spurred Vaughan's retort that Warming Room clients have never been required to stay awake. What happens is that the security staff do frequent “wellness checks” to ensure that, should a fire or emergency develop, that person can be safely and quickly evacuated.
This is par for the building's not being cleared under the fire code for sleeping whereas – by contrast – the county shelter at 310 Division St. can, under the fire code, allow its inhabitants to sleep through the night without wellness checks.
As the level of government mandated and funded to provide this service, the county lost the Warming Room on the ground floor when council voted to make 310 Division St. a higher-barrier shelter last summer.
Under the terms of the ECE bylaw, only two shelters can be licensed within the town at any time, which led the county on a search for alternate locations that involved potential sites in such communities as Colborne, Grafton and Fenella.
Cleveland let it be known at county council that the town might consider an exception to the bylaw to allow a Warming Room in Cobourg, provided it was on county property. In a vote between county properties at 555 Courthouse Rd. and 600 William St., county council opted for Committee Room A at the Courthouse Road location.
No mention was made at Friday's meeting of allowing a Warming Room on a non-county owned property, or how the county might make one of its properties compliant with all codes that might permit sleeping.
Mayor Cleveland said he looks forward to discussing the matter further at the county council meeting on Dec. 17.
