The Squamish-Lillooet Regional District is looking at a new way to enforce its bylaws.
Specifically, it wants to hire someone to enforce bylaws, making sure residents and visitors to electoral areas comply with the regional district’s rules.
“We’re just hiring a part-time bylaw enforcement officer,” said Area D director Tony Rainbow.
The regional district is also bringing a ticketing bylaw aimed at resolving disputes.
“I hope that that ticketing thing is up and running in weeks rather than months,” he said, adding. “We’ve never had a bylaw enforcement officer…. We haven’t had a ticketing process either.”
Before anything is finalized, the SLRD has to run its plans by the province for approval. The process has taken longer than hoped, Rainbow said.
The SLRD board’s move is aimed at giving the region another way to deal with issues such as illegal dumping and noise complaints, as opposed to having to contact the police to exclusively enforce these matters.
“Technically, the RCMP can enforce our bylaws,” he said.
A regional district report to the board from last April indicated that with a ticketing system and bylaw in place, both the police and regional district staff can be authorized to write tickets. One advantage is this expands who can write tickets, which can help for infractions such noise or issues arising from special events that occur outside of normal work hours. At the same time, it will ideally divert some minor offences from the provincial courts.
The move is also aimed at reducing the load on existing planning and emergency management staff at the regional district.
The ticketing bylaw, itself, should give the SLRD power to issue fines of up to $500 for infractions, the maximum as set out by the province. A ticket must also be issued within six months of the alleged infraction.
The bylaw enforcement officer position is to be quarter-time for now. At present, Pemberton has a part-time person, so the plan is to expand this position.
Rainbow said that the board is not likely to hire a full-time person, as it would mean the person would spend too much driving to cover a large area.
He said it could be more realistic to look at sharing another person with a community like Squamish to cover regional areas in the south as well, although he emphasizes this is only an idea at this point.
“I don’t know whether that’s going to be possible or not,” he said.
Recently, the SLRD has had to deal with various infractions in its unincorporated areas. Rainbow has heard from residents in areas such as the Upper Squamish about large-scale dumping of construction materials on properties.
He has also heard complaints about the presence of illegal suites in homes.
Another issue has been noise, sometimes from homes but also from parties or unauthorized shooting ranges in the wilderness.
“Some people have been doing some things that they really shouldn’t have been doing,” Rainbow said.
