Wainfleet council should focus on its residents

RE: WAINFLEET EYES MOVE TO MORE PROACTIVE ENFORCEMENT, JULY 29 Be careful what you ask for. A couple of years ago residents from the small community off Quarry Road, Maplewood Drive and Woodland Drive asked the then Township of Wainfleet council for help with the influx of summer visitors to the quarry and the Lake Erie public beach front, who were taking over their properties and parking illegally.

As a result of their request, and with the apparent approval of council, the bylaw officer proceeded to advise many residents that it was they who were parking illegally, that part of the properties they had “owned” and taken care of for decades were not their own, but the township’s. Then the fire department chipped in and accused these long-standing, taxpaying Wainfleet residents that they were preventing proper access in the case of potential emergencies. The visitors? They continue to arrive in droves, many continue to park illegally, contribute not a cent to the township, leave garbage, including human feces around the quarry, and show little or no respect for Wainfleet or its residents.

If this is the way township staff, employed by the Wainfleet taxpayers, view those whose interests they are supposed to protect, then Wainfleet council needs to do far more before it even contemplates approving any “proactive enforcement.”

Wasn’t this new council elected, first and foremost, to protect the interests of those who elected them? Andrew Watts Wainfleet