A downtown community safety officer pilot

Downtown safety in Orillia is talked about in two registers that are almost never reconciled. The first is business owners and residents reporting property damage, theft, and feeling unsafe walking certain blocks at certain hours. The second is the visible reality of people in the downtown core who are unhoused, in mental-health crisis, or actively using substances. Both conversations are real. Conflating them produces bad policy.

The Couchiching OPP Detachment Board has already raised, in its early-2026 minutes, the idea of an 'Extended Services Office (ESO)' downtown — a permanent or semi-permanent OPP presence focused on community engagement. That is not the same thing as a community safety officer (CSO), but the underlying impulse is the same: the existing service mix is not delivering for downtown, and a more visible, locally-anchored response is needed.

The pilot I would propose is a two-officer CSO team funded for an eighteen-month period, paired with a public evaluation framework agreed up front: response volume, business-owner-reported confidence, social-service connection rate, and — most importantly — outcomes for people experiencing homelessness or distress (specifically: did they receive an offer of services, and did they accept). If the evaluation does not show improvement on the people-in-distress metric specifically, the pilot does not get renewed regardless of other indicators.

I am being deliberate about the evaluation design because the failure mode of programs like this one is using property-crime statistics to justify a service that primarily affects the visibility of vulnerable people. If the only outcome the program produces is moving distressed residents from the downtown to other parts of the city, that is not a success. The framework has to be honest about that.

I want to acknowledge what I am not proposing. I am not proposing armed private security. I am not proposing a parallel police service. I am not proposing the City take on responsibilities that belong to the Province (mental health) or the County (social services). I am proposing a narrow, time-limited municipal pilot in the gap where the existing services do not reach, with a published exit criterion built in. If the OPP Detachment Board moves forward with an ESO in parallel, the CSO pilot should be designed to complement, not duplicate, that service.