St. Catharines to hike fines against residents ignoring grass-weed, garbage bylaws

Almost every street seems to have this problem – that one neighbour who just can’t be bothered to mow the lawn, spreading weeds up and down the street.

Or perhaps it’s the neighbour who has three rusted-out, broken-down vehicles cluttering the driveway, inadvertently dropping property values because they look like the local junkyard.

St. Catharines is looking to crack down by toughing up their waste and grass/weed bylaws at Monday’s (May 30) council meeting and repeat offenders are sure to feel the sting.

In a report prepared by Paul Chudoba, Manager By-law Enforcement and Licensing, the city may be opting towards a tiered system of fines with each additional infraction seeing higher and higher fines.

Scofflaws who think they can shrug and ignore the fines will find out differently as unpaid penalties will be added to their property tax bills.

“A modernized progressive penalty system is recommended (tier 1, tier 2, tier 3), to address problematic properties,” said the report.

“As non-parking administrative penalties are added to the property tax roll if not paid, the municipality not only has leverage to ensure penalty payment, but a tiered system also holds repeat offenders more accountable based on increasing penalty amounts.”

(Outstanding parking tickets and moving violations are handled while a licence is being renewed at the Ministry of Transportation.)

The report suggests a more aggressive approach against offenders will speed up the process or lower neighbour complaints.

“A tiered penalty system mitigates issues with property owners who rely on a process of waiting for a citizen complaint to be filed, waiting for an Order to be issued by a By-law Officer, and then the City performing the work after a period of non-compliance.”

The study looked at a five year span of complaints from 2017 to 2021 and noted that on average there are 634 long grass and weeds complaints and 740 waste on property complaints received by the By-law Enforcement Division annually, for a total of 1,374 complaints every year.

They also compared their present non-tiered penalty system to other Niagara municipalities and discovered that Welland has already implemented it so fines can range from $250 right up to $750.

If Council rubberstamps the report on Monday, it will still go to a Public Meeting on June 13 for public input.