Municipal District of Taber administration has been directed to sit down with RCMP to revisit the process of enforcement of its unauthorized use of municipal property bylaw.
Rumblings have occurred among some citizenry that enforcement of the bylaw has been lax, which resulted partially from the perceived red tape surrounding the bylaw.
Council passed the bylaw on Jan. 12 of 2010 that enables a designated officer to order offending citizens to comply with an order to remedy the unauthorized use of the municipal land in a designated amount of time.
Failure to do so can result in violation tickets or tags that can range anywhere from $200 to $500 for first to third and subsequent offences, as some of the more drastic measures available to the M.D. of Taber.
“A lot of stuff goes on out there. If we don’t make a penalty stick, that is why it keeps escalating. A lot of these issues are happening after hours and on the weekend, the RCMP go out there and their hands are tied because apparently they first need permission to do something about it.” said Coun.  Greg Sekura at the M.D.’s meeting on July 13.
“When we put this in here we wanted to be at arm’s length with this bylaw, so why does this have to come back to council to give direction to law enforcement authorities to carry out the action? I think they should have some sort of latitude to make that decision. When you get stopped on the highway for speeding, they don’t ask for permission to write a speeding ticket.”
Many incidences of unauthorized use of municipal property of late has been landowners reshaping nearby municipal land to deal with flood and water concerns from the huge spring storms in June.
Reeve Hank Van Beers was hesitant about becoming too strong armed with issuing tickets, with what southern Albertans saw this spring with record amounts of moisture, as homeowners attempted to minimize flooding and the resulting damage by making unauthorized use of municipal property adjoining to their land.
“I don’t think it’s just about writing tickets, but to be visible in the community and help with voluntary compliance,” said Van Beers.
“The situation this spring, a lot of them were quite unreasonable with their approach I know. But then if you hit them over the head with a bylaw, some were just trying to survive from excess water. Altering ditches, never ever have we seen water like we did this spring.”
Honourable intentions aside, Sekura questioned the usefulness of a bylaw that is never enforced.
“We have spent a lot of time and effort writing up bylaws of what we don’t want to see going on out there, but then everyone backs off. I’ve seen people go in and do the exact thing twice and if we would have fined them for the damage the first time, they wouldn’t have done it again,” said Sekura.
“It’s the wild west out there. There has to be some repercussions. There might be a happy medium, but if we do nothing, it’s going to escalate.”