February 11th next date of note towards action on any Angus Apartment clean up

The state of the Angus Apartments was a topic for Council Monday

The state of the Angus Apartments damaged during a December fire was a topic of concern for Councillor Barry Cunningham on Monday night, with the Councillor asking City staff as to what the timeline towards action on the structure was.

"Where are we with the Angus apartment? The debris is still sitting out front and it's not boarded up and things like that, I know we've sent them letters and that, but there's people in that neighbourhood that are concerned about and have asked questions about it. So I just thought I would bring it up and they could hear what exactly is going on" -- Councillor Barry Cunningham

Towards a reply, City Manager Rob Buchan deferred to Corporate Administrator Rosa Miller for an explanation,  who provided some of the timeline of the city's efforts.

"So we have sent letters, we have I believe its mid this week where we are waiting for the landlord, we have to wait the appropriate amount of time in order to be able to take legal action and not have it challenged" 

Operations Director Richard Pucci picked up the review from that point providing a look at the path ahead for the City.

"So, the date of our drop dead date is February 11th, so after February 11th staff will be taking action to have it remediated and cleaned up and then we will be coming to Council to discuss putting on taxes and next steps with the property. 

We have also given him an order to give us a remedial action plan for the property in general, what's his plan?  Is it reconstruction? Is it taking it down? And he has not complied with that either. He has til the end of the month to give us that. 

But February 11th is our date for having it secured and having the debris removed or else we will be taking action" 

Mayor Brain added that there has to be a process that the city has to go through legally to take such actions.

"So, it's not just a matter of just snapping our fingers and being able to go onto people's property and start cleaning things up and doing whatever we feel.  It's people's private property and they're given the opportunity to do the right thing. 

But there is a process in place for us to do actions like this if there isn't compliance ... 

Sometimes it's a little bit of patience for us to get to where it needs to get to, but staff is well aware of many issues in the community like that, and have implemented many processes like this to get to a place where we start cleaning up the community in a variety of ways " -- Mayor Lee Brain 

We took note of some of the previous challenges towards past enforcement on the Angus apartment with an article posted last week.

The full discussion to the topic can reviewed from the City's Video Archive starting at the 45 minute mark.

Further notes from Monday's Council Session can be explored here.

A wider overview of past Council discussion themes is available from our archive page.