As local leaders from across the province descend on Vancouver this week for the start of the Union of BC Municipalities annual session, one of the communities due to get a lot of face-time with top government officials is the City of Merritt.

Merritt Mayor Mike Goetz says his city’s delegation has secured 11 separate ministerial meetings to deal with a wide range of pressing issues for his city.

He says this will include the repeated closure of the local emergency room due to staffing issues, as well as the rebuild after the flood from nearly 2-years ago.

Goetz says one of the meetings he’s particularly looking forward to this week is with Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth.

“Our fire department and our police are completely over-run every single day with this 2.5-decrim,” said Goetz.  “Our guys are running to 3 to 5 overdoses every single day. We have to start talking about [how] this is taking coverage out of our community and is taking a lot of money out of our pockets.”

Goetz says decriminalization, which was launched at the end of January across BC, has also generated an influx of non-local drug users.

“We’re getting people from Alberta that are coming here because they can now carry legally,” claims Goetz.  “They can’t do it in Alberta, [so] they’re coming here.”

The issue of decriminalization is expected to be one of the key topics of discussion at the UBCM sessions in Vancouver this week, particularly after the BC government convinced Ottawa to make it illegal — once again — to possess illegal drugs within 15-meters of where young people gather outdoors, including playgrounds, spray pools, wading pools, and skate parks.

“We’re going to hear directly from the Ministry [of Mental Health and Addictions] on Monday, regarding how these new changes,” UBCM President Jen Ford told Radio NL on Friday.  “When this [decriminalization] first happened, local governments were really concerned about the use of illicit drugs in public spaces.”

That policy change is in-effect as of today.

Kamloops is being represented at the UBCM sessions by 7 different councillors and the Mayor.