Mayor, Council look to create a culture of pride of property appearance in Prince Rupert

The state of appearance of the downtown area and what the City is doing about it made for a good portion of the discussion at the end of the Monday Prince Rupert City Council session, with Councillor Barry Cunningham making note of the feedback he has received from members of the community who were out in the recent sunny weather and made comment on the city's appearance.

Towards a wider response to the issue, he asked for an update from Mayor Lee Brain on the progress of the city's efforts towards a downtown clean up, something which has been on the active engagement list for the city since the start of the year.

The Mayor took advantage of the invitation to take those tuning into the Zoom Session through the process of how the city sends notice and enforces its measures related to unsightly premises.

"Back in January we announced that we were going to be moving forward with a major enforcement campaign and ultimately what that looks like is a lot of staff time and energy to have to follow through on each property that is not abiding by the property maintenance bylaw, there's a whole process that needs to go and be involved" -- Mayor Lee Brain

The city's approach does seem to give owners of properties in question with ample opportunity to comply with the bylaws. 

With an initial correspondence serving seemingly as a gentle nudge to clean up the property, if after a certain amount of time if there is no compliance that can be followed by a more stern 30 day missive to take action.

If no action is taken after that period, the city sends out a third notice, providing a two week warning that if no clean up is taken on by the property owner, the city will take action and bill the owner accordingly.

"The clean up can range in a number of ways, it can be on health and safety issues with the property for example. If there is something deemed that's a safety hazard for the community, the city can remove something that needs to be removed, or clean up whatever needs to be cleaned up. 

So currently the corporate administrator has been working with businesses in the downtown and has been looking at some of the more high profile areas of the community. And those areas have been getting these letters and we're trying to you know encourage business owners to do the right thing and if they don't then we're going start moving forward in a big way to start cleaning up these properties.

Over time we will move through different properties in the downtown and then eventually we will move into the residential areas, until we start to clean up the whole community, or at least create a culture of people wanting to clean up the properties. -- Mayor Lee Brain

The Mayor also offered up some thoughts on how the current appearance of the community came to be, with the downturn of the economy of the post pulp mill years and a loss of pride in the community his main focus.

"Obviously after a period of economic decline, when a community falls you know apart basically after they lose a mill and lose the  population and lose their pride. You know when a community is left to sit for a while without that type of pride, people over time get complacent and then they don't take care of their properties" -- Mayor Lee Brain on the issues that led to the decline in appearance of the city

Making note as to how the community is now in a period of renewal, Mr. Brain outlined the recent initiative towards the downtown area to encourage property remediation through tax incentives, noting how the city is focusing on their approach to the issue.

"I think we've given a carrot and now we have a stick as well here and you know we're letting the community know that we're not letting this be complacent anymore. It's time for people to take pride, if you own a building in the downtown in particular, it's your responsibility to keep your property up to the property maintenance bylaw standards And now we will be ensuring that those properties will be maintained and that this community has a beautiful downtown core that we can all be proud of" -- Mayor Lee Brain

They Mayors snapshot of the situation generated a fair bit of discussion around towards the end of the Monday session.

The start of the commentary began with Councillor Wade Niesh, who observed that the city requires the help of the community to have action take place, calling for residents to send an e mail or make a call to bylaw to report something.  

The Mayor followed up by noting how complaints of Facebook aren't enough and doesn't help the city enforce anything, observing as to how the city's information gathering process is confidential and how the city encourages feedback from the residents of the city to help initiate any enforcement. 

He also noted that the city has already seen some results to 200 or so letters mailed out as part of the program with some property owners in the downtown area already taking action towards their properties. 

The City Manager Robert Long joined in the discussion at that point, noting how the city requires a written and signed complaint and how phone calls are not enough.

"We need a written complaint, not a telephone call ... we can't accept phone calls as complaints, they have to be written and signed by the individuals who are making the complaints and then we can act"

Councillor Mirau offered up a suggestion as to how residents could also make use of the Prince Rupert App, which offers an opportunity to share information.

"You download the app on your phone, you can take a photo of whatever the infraction in question is and you can send it directly to the city. It's got a simple little submission form it protects your anonymity for the complainant and then you can take a photo and send it in directly" -- Councillor Blair Mirau on the use of the Prince Rupert App for Bylaw issues

Councillor Nick Adey also spoke to the topic of the community clean up efforts as well as the actions the city can take.

"Yeah, building  owners have to be responsible, but somebody else is the one that's dropping the bag in the empty lot and I think there's a role for education here, in terms of just kind of poking away at that awareness piece. That you know there are ways to deal with garbage and there are ways not to.

And when it's misused, I know I was just out at Wantage Road and someway there, there is an area where a bunch of people, I'm not sure if its still there after this weekend,  they've just decided that the landfill is too far, or putting it in a garbage can is not good enough and so that's where it ends up and that's an education piece to me.

"Yes we need enforcement, Yes we need to revamp sanitation services, which we are doing with the recycling program. But there's that other element that I think we really need to be on top of in terms of community messaging around that." -- Councillor Nick Adey

The councillor's reference to changes in the sanitation program are a nod towards the new collection plans set for the summer. 

That through the introduction of a new approach to collection with curbside recycling and regular garbage pick up to take place with City Supplied garbage cans.

Some past notes on the ongoing themes of cleaning up the downtown can be found in our notes from a February 5th blog item.

You can review the full conversation on the state of the downtown from the video archive starting at the 31 minute mark.

For more notes on Monday's Prince Rupert City Council session see our Timeline feature here.

A wider overview of past Council discussion themes is available here.