Kamloops City Councillors are being asked to authorize spending up to $30,000 to develop an updated business case for a sobering and assessment centre in the city.

The plan coming before Kamloops Council this Tuesday has administration recommending a study to see whether a sobering center for Kamloops would be a good fit.

Councillor Nancy Bepple is among those suggesting its an idea worth visiting, but says if it becomes a reality, a Kamloops Sobering Center would need buy-in from Interior Health.

“Sobering Centres are healthcare, so its saying that somebody who is inebriated or under the influence of drugs, the best place for them isn’t in city cells,” Bepple said. “City cells are not a place for people in that state. It is not whether they are homeless or not homeless, its the state that they’re in that needs to be considered.”

Sobering Centers are currently active in 5 other communities in B.C., and provide police an alternative to locking someone up overnight or having the medical system take care of them.

Instead, those put into the centers are allowed to dry out, and are given information and guidance on seeking longer-term treatment.

“A fellow died in city cells in 2019, the RCMP and the guards were not found responsible, it was said that they gave an adequate level of care,” Bepple said. “It does illustrate the vulnerability pf people who are severely intoxicated or under the influence of drugs.”

The city sent a similar business case to the Ministry of Health in March 2016, but nothing came of the request.

At the 2022 Union of BC Municipalities convention, then-mental health and addictions minister Sheila Malcolmson asked that the city submit a business case to her ministry. Three months later, Malcolmson was replaced as minister by Jennifer Whiteside.