SUNDRE – The municipality is poised to adopt a community standards bylaw that will in essence amalgamate under one banner numerous existing regulations.
“This is a new bylaw,” said Linda Nelson, chief administrative officer, in a preamble to council during a December meeting.
“However, for the most part, it is really just combining a number of bylaws that are already in existence,” said Nelson.
That process will also mean repealing all of the existing bylaws that have been included under the new, encompassing document, which were the noise, curfew and snow removal bylaws.
“Really we’re pulling the bylaws into one bylaw and calling it the Community Standards Bylaw,” she said.
Of note to council regarding requests for relaxations of events that create noise but are not specifically prohibited or restricted by any legislation of Canada, the provincial government, or the bylaw, Nelson said any applications seeking waivers beyond midnight must come to council for approval.
Otherwise, the chief administrative officer as per the bylaw, has authority to choose whether to approve a permit or impose any terms or conditions upon issuing a permit with the following guiding principles in mind: the economic benefit to the community; the expected duration that the noise will persist; the nature of the activity that will cause the noise; and the amount of disturbance that will be caused to the surrounding area.
Nelson also drew the curfew section to council’s attention.
“We elected to simplify that section,” she said.
“So it reads: no child under the age of 14 shall be in public place within the corporate limits of the Town of Sundre after the hours 12:01 a.m. and before 5 a.m. without proper adult guardianship or a legitimate excuse,” she said, adding that was all council sought to include in that section of the Community Standards Bylaw.
The bylaw’s section pertaining to curfew otherwise provides no mention of recourse for action in the event a youth is found unsupervised between those times.
Coun. Jaime Marr said the proposed community standards bylaw was similar to others from other municipalities she’d looked into.
“As a parent to two teenagers and a young child, the curfew one was an interesting one for me,” said Marr.
Although in favour of the bylaw, Coun. Owen Petersen sought to postpone its approval to send the document back to the bylaw review committee to further flesh out the curfew section.
“I do really like this bylaw – I’ve read a lot of bylaws from neighbouring communities, which seem to be really, in my opinion, overreaching,” said Petersen.
“This is a really well put together bylaw; I like it. I would like to spend some more time on that curfew. I noticed there are no penalties . . . there’s no teeth. In my opinion, we either have no curfew, or we have a curfew with some recourse for officers to deal with it,” he said.
Council proceeded to carry, with Marr opposed, a motion referring the Community Standards Bylaw back to the review committee to further review the curfew.
