OLDS — Garages sales are allowed in Olds again.
Deputy director of emergency operations Jennifer Lutz and community services director Doug Wagstaff made that announcement during town council’s May 25 meeting.
On June 1, the town began “relaxing” a bylaw instituted in late April that temporarily banned garage and yard sales in Olds due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
“We’re not repealing the (April) bylaw,” Wagstaff warned.
“It’s still in place if necessary, to be enacted again throughout this COVID-19 pandemic crisis.”
Lutz said town officials decided to relax the bylaw after that date after the provincial government allowed municipalities to do so, with several health-related recommendations.
“Right now the province is saying that currently if you have a garage sale, you have to follow the same standards as a business; so it’s a traffic direction pattern, providing sanitation stations and cleaning surface touch points,” Lutz said.
Coun. Mitch Thomson suggested there’ll be a lot of pent-up demand for those sales.
“There’ve been a lot of people doing a lot of work around their homes cleaning up and such,” he said.
“I imagine there’s a lot of garage sale material waiting to be gotten rid of.”
