Flin Flon city council has reserved final decision on a noise bylaw for the trailer court after a resident called the proposal an unnecessary and unenforceable waste of time.
Valerie Wasylciw, a trailer court resident, appeared before council Tuesday to lobby against a bylaw that would forbid incessant manmade noise within the mobile-home neighbourhood.
“You as council are in the process of passing a bylaw once again because a few individuals, that being a very small minority of the people that live in the trailer court, have complained about noise once again,” she told council.
Wasylciw reminded council that when they were considering a separate noise bylaw last January, 40 trailer court residents signed a petition affirming that they had no concerns.
The idea behind the latest bylaw proposal is that complainants would keep a record of the noise for 10 to 14 days and share this document, along with a description of how the noise is affecting them, with council.
Wasylciw had questions about the practicality of that plan. “This would be one person’s word against another person’s, and who is going to verify that the noise was actually taking place?” she said.
Wasylciw suggested council include a survey with the next round of trailer court invoices to obtain feedback on whether residents are actually worried about noise.
Calling the proposed bylaw “a total waste of council time,” Wasylciw added that “council should be dealing with more important matters for the City of Flin Flon as a whole.”
But while Wasycliw suggested noise complaints boiled down to a conflict between two neighbours, Coun. Colleen McKee said she “didn’t see it as a personal thing for one person or another, to pit one neighbour against another.”
Added McKee: “To me, this was something that was brought up because there was ongoing issues. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about them.”
Mayor George Fontaine said council would not vote Tuesday on the final reading of the bylaw because they wanted Coun. Skip Martin, who had introduced the motion two weeks earlier but was absent, to be present.
Fontaine assured Wasylciw that her comments would be taken “very seriously.”
Council passed first reading of the new trailer court bylaw Sept. 2 with Coun. Karen MacKinnon the
lone voice of opposition.
MacKinnon wanted the bylaw to cover all of Flin Flon, not just the trailer court, but Coun. Bill Hanson thought the bylaw would be “a good way to test the waters” for a potential community-wide rule.
The difference between the proposed trailer court bylaw and the city’s current noise bylaw is that the former would target recurring noise, not individual situations.
