EVERETT — The Everett Community Streets Initiative task force held its final meeting Thursday, finishing up a draft report that will go to the city council later this year.
Amid the final tweaks and the general self-congratulatory atmosphere for a job well done, there was an acknowledgement that the hard part was yet to come.
“I think there’s a moment in time in our community when he have an opportunity to look at solutions on a much greater scale than we ever have before,” Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson said.
Stephanson convened the task force to develop strategies to deal with the city’s chronic problems with homelessness, poverty, mental illness, street nuisances and crime. The result is a list of strategies outlining more than 60 specific actions the task force is recommending the city and local social services organizations pursue in the coming years.
They won’t come cheap, Stephanson acknowledged, and the city won’t be able to go it alone.
“At some point we’re going to have to ask our citizens in the county if they’re willing to vote with their pocketbooks for housing and other services,” Stephanson said.
Finding out how to enact specific proposals will fall to an implementation team lead by Deputy City Attorney David Hall, who will be selecting members for that group in the next several months.
Sophia Beltrán, program manager for Lutheran Community Services Northwest, said she was surprised and pleased that the task force, a diverse group representing not just government but also social services, businesses and churches, was able to work together so well.
Hall said he would work to maintain that diversity in the implementation team.
“We’re going to have to have a balanced group and for the implementation team, we’ll be reaching out to various groups,” Hall said. “This won’t be done in vacuum.”
Stephanson’s administration is already moving forward in areas where it has direct control, creating an alcohol impact zone and strengthening the city’s panhandling restrictions.
Everett Police Chief Dan Templeman said he is training his officers in community policing tactics in line with the goal of directing people in need toward services that can help. This way, people with mental illnesses won’t wind up in jail.
One future step — recommended in the report — is to embed a social worker within the police department especially for situations involving mental health problems or other non-criminal behavior.
That need has never been more apparent. Task force co-chair Sylvia Anderson, who is the CEO of the Everett Gospel Mission, related a contact she had with a woman in some apparent distress near the mission during the past week’s cold snap.
She told the woman she needed to get to the women’s shelter, and to tell them that “Sylvia said they’d let you in.”
That woman didn’t make it, and was dead from a drug overdose by the next morning.
“It’s life and death,” Anderson said. “It’s not just being nice to people, it’s saving lives.”
Chris Winters: 425-374-4165; cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald.
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