City clamps down on `landscape neglect'
Council closes loophole in bylaw
A Sandwich-area man who has complained repeatedly about the brush growing wild in his neighbour's yard, hanging over their fence and seeping into his property, is hoping for some relief from the new teeth just added to the city's dirty yard bylaw.
“This is every year, every year, every, every year,” Roland Lecours said Monday as he described his frustration from calling bylaw enforcement only to be told the city's bylaws — which require hedges, trees and shrubs be maintained in healthy condition on private property, and that weeds and dead vegetation be cleaned up — don't regulate overgrowth of “landscaping.”
And apparently, the brush growing uncontrolled in his neighbour's yard is classified as landscaping.
“I said, `This is not right,'” Lecours said of the apparent loophole, which council closed on Monday at the urging of the councillor for Lecours' west-end neighbourhood, Fabio Costante.
Costante said the changes to the bylaw will allow the city to take action “when there's an obvious case of landscape neglect.”
It's a situation he regularly fields complaints on, particularly from neighbours of student rental properties.
The bushes, hedges and trees that may have been planted years before when the house was a single family home, have since grown out of control with zero maintenance.
“I represent an area of the city where a lot of the property owners don't live in the city and in some cases neglect their properties,” Costante said during Monday's meeting.
He said bylaw enforcement officers have had a tough time forcing some landlords to keep their properties up. The landlords argue the overgrowth is landscaping or naturalization, “when it's obviously neglect.”
The bylaw will now require that hedges, shrubs, trees and other plantings be kept neat, tidy and not overgrown.
They must not obstruct views for cars and pedestrians, detract from the neighbourhood, or conceal or interfere with the use of public infrastructure such as sidewalks and alleys.
“I think this allows our bylaw officers to better enforce,” said Costante. “It doesn't take away and it doesn't overreach, but it just allows them to do their jobs a little better.”
Other councillors pointed to the recent trend of people “naturalizing” their yards. Ward 10 Coun. Jim Morrison remarked he'd seen some front yards where manicured grass had been replaced with milkweeds to attract butterflies as well as other more natural plant material. Some have even turned their yards into miniature wetlands, he said.
“Is this (addition to the bylaw) going to allow for naturalized front lawns?” he asked administration.
City solicitor Shelby Askin Hager assured council that it won't prevent people from naturalizing their lawns.
“What we're trying to do is create an opportunity to enforce a little more the unsightly, heavily overgrown things that are not as much naturalized as neglect,” she said.
“Yes, you will still be able to do that, but it has to be under control and appropriately kept.”
After the meeting, Costante explained that the changes eliminate the excuse that a homeowner's overgrown vegetation — seeping onto other properties and creating a neighbourhood eyesore — is simply landscaping. The bylaw enforcement officer will now be able to make the call when the overgrowth gets out of hand.
“If someone is doing landscaping and wants to naturalize their property, that's fine,” Costante said. “The issue comes when the property is neglected.”