Fines Coming For Noisy Properties

Council has given the City the go-ahead to tackle nuisance properties. It has approved the first stage of a bylaw to recover the costs of responding to nuisance calls.  The new bylaw would function similarly to the remedical action bylaw, which deals with unsightly properties; this bylaw would deal with things like noisy parties.

The formal definition of “nuisance” is “… any activity which substantially and unreasonably interferes with a person’s use and enjoyment of a highway, park or other public area or of land a person owns or occupies, or which causes injury to the health, comfort or convenience of an occupier of land, and without limiting the generality of the foregoing, includes an activity such as a noisy party, a group of people making noise, loud music, car racing, revving engines, yelling, shouting, screaming, fighting, littering, trespassing, illuminations, vibration, odour, accumulation of water or other liquids on a property, irritations, annoyances, unsanitary conditions on property, or other objectionable situations that in law are a nuisance.”

Councillor Brian Skakun brought forward the idea in June of 2016 upon learning that the RCMP attendied the Connaught Motor Inn 750 times over the course of 18 months.  “Residents are tired of subsidizing bad behaviour,” says Skakun.

Other Councillors cited the need for landlords, particularly absentee landlords, to have a better handle on who is living in their rentals, with Councillor Murry Krause adding “some landlords don’t care who’s living there, as long as they get their money.”