Homeowners urge city councillors to support easier pathway closures

As City of Saskatoon staff spend the summer drafting a new policy to make neighbourhood walkways easier to close, some homeowners hope they're nearing the end of years of frustration.

Brad Bourhis says he's among those hoping to be rid of a walkway near his home in Lawson Heights.

“The issues extend from graffiti to vandalism, egging, mischief, smashed bottles, needles — you name it,” he said.

The walkways were a feature of older neighbourhoods meant to make it easier for pedestrians and cyclists to get around. Modern design principles for sight lines and lighting have made them extinct in newer areas. Bourhis said cameras he's installed have captured footage of the walkway being used as an escape route.

“You can see them checking vehicles on our street, taking the contents, then running down the pathways,” he said.

His kids have grown up not being allowed to play in the part of the yard adjacent to the path, and the day-to-day worries about who might be walking by, or what might have been discarded, leave him feeling “violated,” he said.

Don Nesbitt said he's feeling ripped off. The 80-year-old spoke to Postmedia about the walkway near his Silverwood Heights home on the day he paid his property taxes.

“Thirty-nine hundred dollars in taxes. And zero safety,” he said of the situation near his house.

Nesbitt has lived in the community since 1981. He said problems started after Marion Graham Collegiate was built.

“They can hide when they're smoking and vaping and taking drugs and drinking alcohol. It's just become a garbage site,” he said of the pathway.

Along with the graffiti and garbage, he's had stones thrown at his windows — and at one point, he even found a tripwire strung along the pathway, he said. “Someone could have walked into that at night and taken a real tumble.”

In an emailed statement, a public school division spokeswoman wrote that the division “believes in teaching students to understand what citizenship means and their responsibility as members of a community.” She noted the school has added outdoor supervision during the day and changed some landscaping on the property to increase visibility.

Nesbitt said he's noticed an improvement in the last few months, and credited school staff with “doing more than the city or police ever have” to encourage teens to hang out elsewhere. Even so, he's still pushing for the walkway to be shut down, he said.

Both Nesbitt and Bourhis said they've been ground down by the city's current walkways closure policy, which requires $2,000 non-refundable deposits from every adjacent homeowner, all of whom must agree to purchase the land occupied by the path. The policy also requires a proposed closure to clear a community meeting, meaning input from people potentially living blocks from a walkway can easily scupper a bid to have it closed.

A motion passed by city council at the end of May calls for the city administration to have a draft back by September for a policy more weighted to the concerns of adjacent property owners.

Ward 2 Coun. Hilary Gough was among five councillors to vote against the call for a new policy. She said she is concerned that an effort to address a concentrated number of problem pathways could open the door to a rush of frivolous requests for closures.

“What I'm looking for is to find out the right balance between respecting the neighbours to this infrastructure, and the importance of this infrastructure to the active transportation network,” she said.

Gough is behind a motion, also passed, calling for the administration to report back on what it would look like to have the city maintain the walkways to a higher standard, including cleaning up private fences or other damage to private property.

Gough said she won't necessarily oppose a policy enabling easier closures when the time comes, but she hopes having the city “take ownership” of the walkways more fully could reduce complaints and stave off more calls for closures.