A friend of mine wrote to the town regarding garbage on the beach. Here are his questions and replies he got from the by-law officer:

q) "Sorry to bother you again, but I was wondering if the town has a littering bylaw?
If so, would you please send a copy of the bylaw to me?
If there is a bylaw, why is it not being enforced to reduce the litter at the beach every morning?"

a) "One of the biggest problems at the beach is there are no garbage cans on the North end because of the Piping Plovers and until the MNR releases the Beach are hands are tided. I hope this answers your questions."

q) "Thank you for your reply.
There is an awful lot of garbage left at the main entrance area of the beach daily.
Some of it makes it into the bins but a lot is left lying around...including burnt charcoals.
I assume we have a no littering bylaw. If so, what is the point of having a bylaw if it is not enforced or enforcable?
I am actually looking for the text of the bylaw itself.
Please send a copy of the littering bylaw to me ( I don't know the bylaw number)
Also, please send me the text of bylaw 77-95 referenced in bylaw 75-2002"

a) "I have attached a copy of both by-laws that you have requested. The garbage at the main end of the beach falls under the county and is chargeable under the highway traffic act which would not be the by-law department as far as Lakeshore Blvd it is really difficult to monitor because people will gather their garbage and tuck it under there vehicle or place it in front of their vehicle and then drive away. We do try our best to enforce all by-laws."

q)"Thank you for sending me the requested documents.
What can the public do to assist in the enforcement of by-laws?
For example, if I take pictures of vehicles doing what you describe, can charges be laid?
Who is responsible for enforcing anti-littering on the main sections of the beach (not the road), the OPP?, a county by-law officer?
Can you also provide me with a link to, or info that I can use to find, the relevant section of the Highway Traffic Act as it relates to the main area of the beach (not lakeshore blvd itself)?"

a) None -- two weeks have passed and he has still not received a resonse.

kltpzyxm

Real high class clientele in this joint. Mebbe we should all wears dinner jackets and smoke them imported cigars just to, you know, fit in ...

"as far as Lakeshore Blvd .. it is really difficult to monitor because people will gather their garbage and tuck it under their vehicle or place it in front of their vehicle and then drive away."

and as they drive away, I pause to wonder, "what sort of job do you have back there where you came from? and what sort of havoc do you mindlessly wreck on this planet whilest you do it?"

Remind me again why we spend so much every year to invite them all back? Oh, wait, yeah, never mind, I remember: it's the money.

Just who is it that makes all of the money when our area is flooded with sunlovers and fun seekers? Do our tax coffers swell every great long weekend? Do our local businesses become so flush that they want to give all of us yokels a price break? Does our blue flag poop dollars on all of us? I don't rent my place out but I surely would not want these pigs that show up at Sauble living in anything that I owned. They are ignorant on the road, turn the beach into a garbage heap and constantly trespass on private property and treat it as their own. One car parked in my lane and I had my neighbours dog piss on his tires. I later parked him in and he had to come and ask me to move my own car from my own lane. I made him wait for about an hour. He was barking that he was going to have my car towed. I informed him that his pockets were not even close to deep enough and to take a big breath as it might be his last. I guess I owe the Chamber an apology because he said he was never coming back to this f@#%*ing beach again. Sorry, eh!!!!!!!! Yeah, right!!!!!!!!

wolfkodiak - i would have had the vehicle towed away and when the owner came looking for it i would have told him to go f*** himself and charged him with trespassing.

mmockler - i was thinking before i finished reading your post that i have suggested before that the problem here is lack of vision. i was glad to see we are on the same wavelength. are these bylaw officers only parking ticketers? what about all the other bylaws in our township? why are they not being enforced? how do we stop the madness until we have a vision? does council even realize that we are floundering in a sea of discontent?

i did post some questions for you regarding the budget figures you presented in another blog and was wondering if you were going to reply to those?

kltpzyxm

The activity of bylaw enforcement is subject to monitoring by the employer, namely the Town. Therefore the logs or occurrence sheets should be actively monitored and trends reported by the CAO. The warnings issued do not generate fines and should be treated as lost income if they are significant in number.

That said Council is not able to direct officers in how they enforce but may look at performance in a general way. For example Councillor Wunderlich proposed at the last COW that parking tickets not be issued on Sunday by some sort of decree. This shows a lack of understanding that political influence cannot be applied to law enforcement. If any such bias for issuing warnings exists in the bylaw enforcement personnel then the problem can be outlined in the CAO's reports and rectified by Council. There is little point in speculating if the data are available. If the data are not available and current then Council could have a problem. First step is ask for the data. I have my own suspicions but I would rather see time and location data. Putting a GPS tracking system in some municipal vehicles may be a timely idea. It is already being done in many municipalities.

Given the 1/3rd majority stalemate of tourism, cottager, development residents, I can't see where any 'Mission Statement" could do aught but fall into the same pattern of partisan bullying that typifies most of our debates unless we recognized that every stakeholder has a equally valid claim and then seek only those solutions which accommodate these three each-in-themselves valid viewpoints. We can't continue to govern by Trial by Endurance and besides, by doing so, we miss the opportunity to be new, to be different, to be innovative, modern and progressive.

But that's the trouble with the Tragedy of the Commons; unless all participants recognize and accept on faith the validity of the Nash Equalibrium, there will be one among them that spoils the pot seeking only their own (paultry) personal profit, not realizing that while they may get fabulously rich, working to the common good makes the community as a whole fantastically wealthy. That takes a certain discipline among the citizenry that I fear may have been bred out of us long ago.

Am I crazy? Dare I dream of such an economic union of ideals? Consider the spectacular economic miracle of post-war Japan, literally from ashes to world super-power inside of a decade. Why? Under the Old Rules the Japanese economic model stated "Do what is best for everyone, and then, if possible, make money." The plan was astoundingly successful. So what happened? Circa 1970 we start to see the Japanese economy slide until, here now today, it is no better than our own. The cause? The aging managers of the WWII era began to retire, and the new breed of managers, well, they had be taught by 'enlightened' economics foisted on them by the Marshall Plan, and fueled by globalization (ie banks). The rule turned around to 'harmonize' with our own "Make money first, and then, if possible, do some good"

And the rest, as they say, is history.

But that's HIS-story. What's OUR story?