The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
A city councillor is appealing to residents' sense of neighbourly respect to keep yards and streets clear of dog feces. Coun. Bill Hanson said the issue has generated a handful of complaints over the last two months, and it's totally unnecessary. 'If you're cleaning up your yard (of) dog feces, put it in a bag and in a box. We will put it in the garbage truck and haul it away,' he said at last week's council meeting. 'Don't haul it over to the half lot next to your neighbour's house and throw it in his yard. It makes him mad.' Coun. Hanson also referenced dog feces being found in back lanes and on Flinty's Boardwalk. There is a bylaw against leaving animal feces on public or someone else's property, but 'until we actually catch people, it's hard to actually say who's doing this,' he said. Chief Administrative Officer Mark Kolt said witnesses can report people who violate the bylaw by calling the animal control officer. 'The problem is that in most cases, people who do complain will say something like this: 'I just witnessed this, I'd like you to do something about it, but keep my name out of it,'' he said. 'So if they do that, you can't go to court because the witness has just told you he or she doesn't want to be a witness.' What usually happens in those situations, Kolt said, is that the animal control officer will contact the accused and suggest they refrain from such behaviour. 'Sometimes that has an effect for a shorter or a longer period of time, depending on the person,' he said. 'Occasionally our animal control officer gets told to go to some unpleasant place, but mostly when someone gets called there's some improvement for some period of time.' Residents who throw out animal feces should double-bag the waste and place it inside a box.
