Charlottetown aims to streamline response time to dangerous, unsightly properties

The City of Charlottetown is hoping to streamline its process for managing unsightly, dangerous or hazardous properties.

The proposed amendments to the city's Dangerous, Hazardous and Unsightly Premises Bylaw passedunanimously through first reading at a council meeting, Monday.

Jason Coady, chair of protective and emergency services, said the proposed bylaw changes would cut down on administrative costs and allow the city to respond to unsightly properties faster.

"Everybody wins in this really," Coady said. "It cuts down on administrative costs and it makes the process that much quicker so the residents will see action quicker when we're dealing with unsightly premises."

Less time spent on repeated complaints

Coady said the biggest change aims to help the city manage properties that repeatedly get complaints.

Coady said it seemed like council was dealing with the same properties time and time again for complaints about uncut grass, debris in yards and overgrowth that could lead to animals on the property.

"It seems like we keep dealing with the same properties and it didn't make sense to keep taking those same properties back to council month after month, year after year," Coady said.

Under the current bylaw, council has to vote to send city staff onto a property to clean it up and charge the owner for the cost. That process has to happen for every complaint filed, Coady explained, even if it's for the same property.

If the bylaw changes pass, council's vote to intervene at a property would remain active for two years, Coady said, meaning city staff could respond right away if another complaint was filed against the same property.

Police to act as investigators

Coady said the bylaw changes also aim to allow police officers to act as inspectors for unsightly proprieties, which would allow police to issue clean up notices.

He said this will also allow the city to act faster by expanding the number of people who can respond to complaints.

"It expands the scope and the resource for the city to be able to utilize whoever we need to utilize to rectify the problem that we're dealing with," Coady said.

The proposed changes still have to pass a second reading at the next council meeting.

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