Mayor Simon Yu pitched using a small percentage of development fees towards the beautification of vacant or empty spaces within the city at the Tuesday, Feb. 18 meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Safety.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the committee had a lengthy discussion on the city’s approach, responsibilities and liabilities when it comes to vacant buildings and lots.
Director of administrative services Eric Depenau said that under BC’s Community Charter, municipalities or their representatives have the authority to enter a property to determine whether it is complying with regulations, prohibitions or other requirements that the municipality has jurisdiction over.
The municipality must give at least 24 hours’ written notice before doing so, except in emergency circumstances.
Prince George’s Property Maintenance Bylaw states that owners of vacant buildings must make sure their properties are secured from unauthorized entry.
If the city finds that rule is not being followed, the owner is given notice to fix it within 24 hours if written notice if given directly to their address or 72 hours if notice is posted to the vacant building itself.
Should action not be taken at that point, the city or its representatives can take action to secure it and the add the costs to the property owner’s taxes.
The bylaw also applies this procedure to deal with issues like refuse piling up on a property, littering, plant overgrowth, derelict vehicles, unmaintained driveways, sidewalks and boulevards, pest infestations, stagnant water, attracting wildlife, demolition debris, property maintenance, decaying retaining walls and decaying accessory buildings.
Since 2018, Depenau said, the city has billed residents around $139,000 to deal with all offences under this bylaw.
For hazardous conditions, declared nuisances or harms done to drainage infrastructure or dikes, council can order remedial action to be taken, including removing or demolishing the problem in question, bringing to issue up to standards set in the appropriate bylaw or to fill it in, cover it or alter it.
An example of this Depenau cited was the Willow Inn at 1656 Victoria St., which had its business license pulled by council in 2014 and was damaged by fire in October 2018. In 2019, council ordered the building to be demolished if the owner did not do so himself.
There are also provisions for dealing with nuisances, defined in the city’s bylaw on the subject as activities which interfere with a person’s use an enjoyment of a highway, park, other piece of public or private land including making loud noises, littering, odours, accumulation of water and unsanitary conditions.
Depenau said that typically, the threat of enforcement of the bylaw is enough to get people to deal with the nuisance before the city deals with the problem and bills the person responsible.
The city has billed people for nuisances on two occasions for a total of around $12,000 since the cost recovery provisions were implemented in 2018.
Shawn Smith, the city’s manager of risk and procurement, told the committee that when determining whether Prince George is liable for problems relating to vacant buildings or nuisances, the first question asked is whether the city has a responsibility towards the circumstances under legislation, bylaws, policies or procedures.
The second question is whether the city has a procedure in place to deal with the issue. If not, there’s some flexibility in how the city can respond.
Then the city needs to consider whether its set policies or procedures are reasonable and legal and then whether it followed them in dealing with the issue. Typically, Smith said, municipalities are indemnified by the court system for following policy decisions though not always.
Liabilities are different when enforcing something set in stone, like the BC Building Code, and something discretionary, like determining whether a nuisance meets the threshold for enforcement.
In the latter case, the city must not create any further risks when responding to the nuisance and must work to make sure bylaws and regulations are being enforce equitably.
As an example, Smith said, when ridesharing company Uber started operating in Ottawa, the City of Ottawa did not enforce their taxi bylaw against the company but required taxi drivers to continue following its rules. An Ontario Superior Court judge ruled that the city was negligent in doing so last year.
Committee member John Zukowski, who owns Pacific Body Jewellery & Piercing downtown, spoke about the potential fire risk from neglected properties, especially those in downtown.
He said there are several downtown construction sites that haven’t had anyone on them in years, but nothing seems to be done about it.
“We need to turn around and look at cleaning up our downtown and part of that includes enforcing whatever bylaws we need to enforce to turn around and get developers or whoever owns the property to either start doing something or fold it up and sell it,” Zukowski said.
He referenced the fire at the former City Second Hand store at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Dominion Street in January, which was being used for furniture storage, wondering if a commercial premise being used for warehousing required enforcement under the city’s bylaws.
Zukowski said another downtown property, 181 Quebec St., is being used for bulk tire storage. The building was previously used by the Prince George Native Friendship Centre to store belongings and provide washroom access to people experiencing homelessness.
When The Citizen went by the building on Wednesday, Feb. 19, the front doors and windows were boarded up with a metal gate blocking access to the doors. The rear entrance was blocked by a chain link fence topped by barbed wire. Tires were not visible from either the front or back of the building, though it was not possible to see inside.
“That is a clear and present danger to the public from mass warehousing of combustible material in the downtown core,” Zukowski said. “These are the questions that I’m getting from other business owners, how come these people are allowed to do this? I do this and I I’ve got (bylaw services) jumping all over me.”
Not dealing with issues like this, Zukowski argued, could lead to the city being liable to settle damages from fire incidents which just ends up spending taxpayers’ money. He said the public wants to see progress on files like these.
The mayor said that cities he’s visited on Canada’s east coast set aside one per cent of development permit fees to be put towards the beautification of empty lots and vacant buildings. He suggested a similar program could benefit Prince George.
“I do believe that the situation we have downtown, we cannot just use the bylaws alone,” Yu said. “When a situation gets out of hand, of course we need to but at the same time, we need to find some positive things to put in there to give a feeling of vibrancy, that something good is happening.”
In some cases, Yu said a facade is erected on empty lots to help show what it would look like once developed.
Coun. Susan Scott, a non-voting member of the committee, said the city can’t look past problem properties outside of downtown, citing a building housing international students from the College of New Caledonia that burnt down.
Colleen Van Mook, the outgoing director of Downtown Prince George, said sometimes her organization gives bylaw services information on potential issues but there’s not a lot of communication back from the department on whether the information is being acted on.
She said it might be easier to offer a carrot rather than the stick — having bylaw officers refer someone whose property keeps getting damaged to Downtown PG so they can apply for a safety or beautification grant.
Downtown PG has a program where it offers businesses help with cleaning up graffiti on their properties since dealing with graffiti is the responsibility of the property owner. They’ve created bylaws advertising the program and have asked bylaw officers to hand them out.
The mayor put forward a successful motion asking staff to prepare a report on how to improve the city’s beautification efforts and bring it back for a discussion at the committee with representatives from the Community Arts Council and Downtown PG.
Zukowski floated the idea of requiring property owners to have alarm systems on vacant premises and provide proof that the system is being monitored. A motion proposing staff develop a report on the subject was also passed.
