Councillor Matt Estabrooks
After an eight-minute slide presentation from Councillor Matt Estabrooks on Monday, Tantramar Council directed municipal staff to draft a new bylaw regulating tall grass and other vegetation on residential properties.
Estabrooks made it clear the bylaw should not apply to “farmer’s fields or woodland and fields without housing on the outskirts of our communities.”
He said he was bringing the matter forward after hearing from residents concerned about fire safety issues, pest control and protecting their property values.
Residents’ concerns
Coun. Estabrooks presented this slide showing residents’ concerns about tall grass and weeds
Estabrooks pointed out that Moncton, Riverview and Shediac all have bylaws regulating tall grasses and vegetation on residential lawns to a maximum height of 20 centimetres (eight inches).
He also referred to Dieppe’s bylaw regulating vegetative growth.
It was revised recently removing all reference to the height of plants to comply with court decisions suggesting that aesthetic criteria for lawn maintenance are arbitrary and contrary to Canada’s Charter of Rights.
In a note on its website, Dieppe also says that turning lawns into natural spaces is more environmentally friendly and desirable as long as the plants are not harmful, toxic or dangerous, do not pose a fire hazard or “block traffic, visibility, signs and street lighting.”
“I’m not necessarily convinced that a length measurement of grasses on residential lawns is a necessary component of this bylaw,” Estabrooks told council.
“I feel discretion is critical in this area of the bylaw,” he said, adding that he was sure town staff would determine how to quantify when or if a lawn could be considered “unkept.”
He said a tall grasses bylaw should include language allowing Council to suspend it temporarily for initiatives such as “No Mow May” and to allow bylaw officers to exempt natural gardens that are important for the local eco-system.
“The intention is to mitigate properties which are completely unkept and therefore present safety concerns,” he said.
Past history
Both Mayor Andrew Black and Councillor Allison Butcher praised the Estabrooks slide show and both voted to direct staff to draft a tall grasses bylaw even though they acknowledged they had opposed one in Sackville in 2018.
To read coverage of why the idea was rejected then, click here.
Hopefully the Town of Tantramar will try in the future to set a bit of a ‘good’ example and clean up the mess of growth that has been allowed to accumulate in so much of the ditching system in front of peoples homes outside the actual core of Sackville and Dorchester. A once a year light mowing beside the roadways is simply not enough.
Maintenance ditching up here in Upper Sackville/Mount View area used to be a priority by our Public Works Department but that has drastically fallen by the wayside over the past 20 years or so.
It is so easy for a town management to make more laws to guarantee that the public ‘behaves’, but who is making sure that the municipality is held to the same standard?
There are properties with well maintained lawns up here but it is difficult to even see the lawn because of the growth that has been left for many years on the town owned property. One just has to take a short drive to see what I am referring to.
If the Town of Tantramar utilizes what the City of Moncton and the Town of Shediac currently have for a by-law, then a non-compliant property owner will face a MINIMUM fine of $140 per day, or a MAXIMUM fine of $2,400 per day. If the law breaker is unable to comply for a one month period (30 days) then the minimum fine would be $4,200 and the maximum fine for that 30 day period would be $72,000. Yup unbelievably, the property owner can be fined up to $72 thousand dollars a month if they don’t comply with this by-law.
Bike sheds, once again. Focus on what is important. It isn’t lawns.
https://whatsthepont.blog/2011/11/06/bikeshedding-prospering-in-your-committees-parkinsons-law-of-triviality/
Really, not a lot of other words for this initiative but: hooey.
We already have a dangerous and unsightly premises by-law — they should amend that as needed and enforce it. Happy to see the vacant property on Salem near College cleaned up but it took months to make it happen. We don’t need a second expansive by-law when an existing one will do.
Geoff Martin is correct. The existing Unsightly Premises bylaw would simply need a text amendment in order to include grass / vegetation, and to identify and clarify the instances where it would apply. There is no need to ‘reinvent the wheel’ every time a new idea comes along.
We do not need bylaws which overlap in their purpose. The idea instead should be to streamline the process, rather than to increase the number of specific bylaws and regulations.
In addition, it is really very interesting to note how quickly this issue has been addressed, after a Councilor received feedback from a few citizens he did some quick research and put together a proposal for a new bylaw, apparently without input from staff or other councilors or the general public, and Council immediately unanimously approved it’s being sent to staff to draft an actual new bylaw.
Meanwhile, after 6 years of hearing repeated ‘promises’ that a replacement for the repealed Heritage Bylaw was ‘nearly ready’, and of numerous reminders and requests and pleadings having been made to Council from various members of the community, there has still been no action taken yet to replace that Heritage Bylaw which was so unceremoniously dumped back in 2018.
The fact that Council apparently places a higher priority on the length of someone’s lawn, rather than on protection for what is left of our local heritage, is appalling – to say the least. This needs to change !!
I live at 104 Bridge St and the property next to me at 102 Bridge has been vacant for over 3 years. That property has not been mowed in all that time. I have been worried about the danger of fire from the long grass as well as unwelcomed rodents. Grass and Weeds were over 3 feet tall this year. In the past, I contacted our by-law officer and also the Fire Chief who told me there was nothing they could do. As well as the fire danger, there are rodents and certainly an unsightly premises. I took it upon myself to look at the Property tax book at the Town Office and I see that according to that information, the tax bill is still being forwarded to the original owners at the present address of 102 Bridge, who, as I mentioned above, have not resided there for over three years. Unable to find who I might further contact, I took it upon myself to have the property mowed and the old grass and weeds hauled away (and I might add at my expense of $350.00.) At least I had the pleasure of looking at a neater property. Again the grass and weeds are coming back and I feel it is way past time (years) that the Town take ownership, one way or the other and see the conditions at 102 Bridge Street as well as many other properties and really enforce unsightly premises.
Squirrels are rodents. I feel this proposed bylaw might be unintentionally anti-squirrel.
Ok boomer..
Another legislative solution to a non-problem.
Go away, nanny-state afficionados!