Ward 3 Councillor Matthew Shoemaker lashed out at city staffers and the Downtown Association Monday night after City Council failed to act on his suggestion to close Queen Street to road traffic on summer weekend evenings.
Shoemaker and Ward 1 Coun. Sandra Hollingsworth had asked almost five years ago whether Queen Street could be closed from East Street to Gore on Friday and possibly Saturday nights from Victoria Day to Labour Day, "both to encourage active use of the downtown space and to increase events downtown."
After many months of delays related to COVID-19 and other issues, the Downtown Association responded with a lengthy list of questions it had about the idea.
"The motion that Coun. Hollingsworth and I brought [almost five years ago] didn't ask that the issue be handed off entirely to the Downtown Association and let them make a decision," Shoemaker said at Monday night's City Council meeting. "The streets are ours. We can close them as we see fit."
"It asked that we get input from the Downtown Association and come to council with a report on feasibility of this."
"What instead was done was, the decision was passed off to the Downtown Association to make for us. And what they came back with, instead of finding a way to make it work, was a laundry list of reasons it might not work."
"That's not the way I operate," Shoemaker said.
"I'm always looking to see how we can make it work, what obstacles we have to overcome. But what they came up with was simply a list of obstacles and no way that we could overcome them."
"That was disappointing from the standpoint of the Downtown Association. The fact that [city] staff essentially passed off the decision to the Downtown Association to make was also disappointing."
"I wish it could have been a more thorough look at how we could make it happen, as opposed to why it can't happen," Shoemaker said.
Malcolm White, the city's chief administrative officer, said it would be difficult to make a concrete decision about downtown street closures until pandemic issues are resolved.
Ward 1 Coun. Paul Christian said that as work begins on a downtown plaza, it would be good to have a plan for street closures that could be ready to implement when the time is right.
"I don't think that we need to sit quietly right now," Christian said. "I think a resolution being brought forward would be a good idea, so we can at least conceptualize what we want when the time is appropriate."
Shoemaker said he intended to submit a resolution at an upcoming council meeting to have the issue revisited.
"It's half-drafted already," he said.