In an effort to curb social issues on the Tranquille Corridor, the North Shore Business Improvement Association is hoping to bring it its own version of the downtown CAP team.

“The CAP team, they do a great job, but downtown’s focus is more on tourist and tourist traffic. We need somebody who is engaging at the street level,” Heighton said.

“So what we are doing is trying to figure out how to put a more appropriate street level engagement team together that can work on behalf of CSOs, and on behalf of RCMP, and on behalf of our business community to connect people to services and to ensure that we have a safe, secure community.”

Heighton says he is not sure what this team could cost just yet, noting the NSBIA board is looking into that before taking the proposal to city staff, sometime in mid-to-late summer.

“When we pulled out of the CAP team program in 2019, one of the things that we did say was that it is not about tourism on the North Shore, it is about community safety,” he added.

“So we really needed to rethink the model, but we think we’re coming close to the right type of model. Then we start to talk about where do we recruit from to bring people into this program through the summer which would augment learning for example, or put them in line with their career aspirations.”

As for the type of people they are looking for?

“I think what we are looking at right now is somebody to able to understand what they are walking into, that they’re able to do an assessment on site and then determine how is the best way to respond,” he said.

“In some cases that is reaching out to a social agency, in some cases, that may be calling in a CSO or a community policing officer. In some cases, that may be escalating it to the RCMP.”

Even as the City of Kamloops has announced plans to set up new satellite officers for Community Services Officers – one downtown and other in the Tranquille corridor – Heighton says there appears to be interest in looking into this proposal.

“As the BIA, we’ll be looking at what kind of funding sources are available what kind of skills knowledge and position descriptions will need to be written,” he said.

“[After it goes to the city] it’ll probably come back to us for another stage of review and then I’m suspecting sometime after the next election we’ll bring something forward to council to ratify and discuss.”