Two students added to Westdale bylaw patrol
Four Mohawk college students will now be part of co-op program; comes in wake of massive homecoming street party
The city is poised to add two more Mohawk College students to its contingent of bylaw officers policing weedy and garbage-strewn lawns in the neighbourhoods around McMaster University.
Councillors at the city’s planning committee Tuesday also agreed to make the co-op student pilot program permanent.
But two representatives of the McMaster Students Union said the bylaw-enforcement strategy hasn’t changed behaviour in the student-heavy Westdale and Ainslie Wood neighbourhoods.
Stephanie Bertolo and Ryan Deshpande also said the pilot unfairly tagged students with bylaw infractions instead of landlords and promoted ill feelings between the two post-secondary institutions.
“This has not been a successful program,” Bertolo told councillors.
Coun. Aidan Johnson, who pushed for the expanded permanent program of four co-op bylaw patrollers in Ward 1, contended the pilot has been successful in improving hygiene and yards.
Johnson said the pilot wasn’t meant to penalize students, but address the “toxic problem of absentee landlordism.”
“The students are complaining with justice that landlords are unfairly downloading the cost of bylaw enforcement to students.”
The co-op pilot has resulted in 736 orders to comply for garbage, snow and yard-related issues, said Kelly Barnett, bylaw enforcement co-ordinator.
“We have a 75 per cent compliance rate, which is huge.”
For the 25 per cent who aren’t compliant, there’s a $271 first-time fee for service that’s applied to the owner’s property taxes, with about $160 charged for each subsequent violation, she said.
Barnett said the scope of the students’ duties is just a fraction of the duties of regular officers, who enforce hundreds of city bylaws.
The students are paid $19 an hour, which is about half the rate of a junior-level officer.
That’s problematic, said Coun. Matthew Green, who also wondered whether the city could be seen as trampling human rights by focusing bylaw enforcement on students.
Barnett noted the co-op patrollers don’t necessarily know whether students are living in the residences they approach.
Over the weekend, a massive McMaster homecoming party packed students like sardines onto Dalewood Avenue with some revellers urinating on buildings and littering the neighbourhood with beer cans.
Deshpande told councillors that bash was “irrelevant” to the bylaw pilot program, noting enforcement of such parties is the responsibility of police.
He did say the student union is open to discussing the possibility of municipal permits to close streets for homecoming bashes, as is the practice for festivals like Supercrawl.
Staff expect to report back in December with facts and figures about the co-op program.
Green argued student shenanigans were the city’s fault for allowing the expansion of unsuitable density and illegal landlords to operate around McMaster.
“That is not the fault of the students.
“Poor policy is the problem. Poor planning is the problem.”
Deshpande said the student union’s biggest concern is breakins by non-students into student residences.
“That’s something that we’re quite worried about,” he said.
“That’s a problem that’s not being addressed.”