Council received the Fourth Quarter Animal Control and Bylaw Report from Bylaw Enforcement Officer Lever at their meeting on Jan. 27.
Lever noted call volume was “pretty steady” throughout the fourth quarter, with calls for service increasing from 199 in 2023 to 232 in this quarter of 2024.
“A lot of those are streets and traffic violations,” he said. “We had 148 streets and traffic violations in this quarter. That’s quite a lot, I’m not sure what’s really driving the jump in that.”
He noted that most of these violations are parking related.
“What happens is in winter people see a bit of snow on the ground and they forget how to park,” Lever said. “We have lots of signs, but they can’t see the lines and that’s kind of their go to is that they couldn’t see the line on the ground.
Then when I point out that we have a sign that’s about six feet above that, that kind of fixes that argument for them.”
He added that 104 of those were bylaw driven services, so not driven from complaints, they came from violations Lever personally observed. These resulted in 80 municipal tickets for parking violations.
In total there were 83 municipal tickets issued this quarter, totalling $5,150 in fines.
Lever handed out 400 notices over three days to people in relation to moving their trailers and RVs off the streets for snow removal.
The Bylaw Office also issued around 50 tickets to people who did not remove their trailers and RVs, so that made up a large percentage of the tickets in this quarter.
There were three dog attacks recorded in the quarter and one complaint of an aggressive dog off leash. There were two tickets issued relating to the Animal Control Act and one ticket issued for an at large animal.
A total of 802 dog licences were purchased in 2024, down from 878 in 2023, so that will be a target Lever will be looking at for increasing.