CRACKDOWN A GOOD FIRST STEP; NOW WHAT?

I remember some years back when city officials announced the "creation" of
a place called Surrey City Centre. It was part of a public relations move
intended to help Surrey overcome its undeserved bad reputation and was
designed to avoid using the name "Whalley" when bragging about all the
wonderful things that were going to come our way with the development of
the Lower Mainland's newest city centre.

The local uproar was huge - residents were swift to condemn the city's move
as an attempt to rewrite history, or at least to ignore a significant part
of the past. Whalley wasn't such a bad place, they insisted, and the city
was wrong to kowtow to a Vancouver-based perception about all that was
wrong with it.

Community pride was at the root of that uproar and I remember thinking how
wonderful it was to have the people who lived and worked there sticking up
for the place. But that pride has diminished in recent weeks as brutal home
invasions have rocked the neighbourhood and the media spotlight has once
again been focused on that part of Surrey. So much for the name change.
It's still Whalley and once again, Whalley is in the news.

Mayor Doug McCallum has pledged to tackle this challenge block by block and
has a task force focused on the problem neighbourhoods. This is a good
first step, although I have to admit at being a bit bemused by the tough
approach being taken at this stage in the game. After all, McCallum isn't a
newcomer to City Hall, and it is under his watch that the situation in
Whalley deteriorated to the point it's at now. Good thing he ran on a law
and order platform in November's election.

Some media outlets have already dubbed Whalley the "new Downtown Eastside."
It's up to McCallum and the rest of council to ensure that remains a media
myth. And that means that they are in this for the long haul.

Cleaning up Whalley - or any other similar neighbourhood in a growing city
- - is a long-term project. Enforcement and crackdowns are clearly needed in
this battle, but they are only part of the solution. We can move the drug
dealers and addicts out of the area. We can clamp down on absentee
landlords and we can lobby long and hard for a justice system that keeps
repeat offenders off the streets.

But to get to the root of the problems that have surfaced in Whalley, we
need to deal with the myriad social issues that come with being a city. Are
the bad guys here just because the rent is cheap or because they can
conduct their business with little interference? Did they come here from
other cities or are they homegrown? Where will they go when we move them
along? And what will it take to make sure they don't come back?

These are questions that will have to be answered if we are going to clean
up Whalley for good.

The immediate response to an immediate problem is a good first step. But
it's nowhere near the end of the road.