NORTH BATTLEFORD — Concerns were raised at Tuesday's council meeting in North Battleford about activities at the parking lot at the North Battleford Comprehensive High School.
Mayor David Gillan noted that in the back parking lot located behind Caleb Village the "amount of stunting that's going on in there, speeding and littering is getting, I guess, out of hand."
Gillan noted he has two kids himself attending the high school and had seen for himself the other day "a young person coming out at 3:30 (p.m.) creating such a smoke from burning his tires in the middle of a busy parking lot. I thought my goodness, this is so dangerous."
Gillan also pointed to city employees on the adjacent property having to pick litter up.
"I saw it. They just throw it right out of the windows of their vehicles, right out onto the parking lot. It's just unacceptable, and that's blowing all over the community and onto the adjacent property, and I saw our city employee only a few metres from their parking lot picking up garbage, just the other morning when I was dropping off my kids. I thought, that's creating work for us, too. It's nonsense. I mean, there has to be some respect for the school, the property."
An extensive discussion ensured about what could be done about the issue. The mayor wondered who would be responsible for the parking lot — the city or the high school.
City Manager Randy Patrick said the city could issue tickets if they caught someone speeding, but also noted the school could take action against students on their property and do their own disciplinary process. Patrick suggested giving the school a call to see how they could co-operate.
On a related note, Councillor Kelli Hawtin raised the issue of cars stunting throughout the community "at all hours."
"I think that maybe we need some additional enforcement of stuff like that. I mean if you can hear a car speeding all over the community for two hours, people wonder 'don't the CSOs hear' or 'don't the RCMP hear' ... maybe it's the same individuals."
"As the night gets quieter these cars get louder," Gillan added.
Patrick said he would talk with the CSOs about what they could do about enforcing muffler noise. If they do happen to see people they could be dealt with.
However, there were no easy answers. Councillor Len Taylor noted they could catch people for muffler issues and the courts would throw the tickets out.
"I've said this before. When we issue a ticket on something we should have reports back regularly on how the court is responding to our ticketing," said Taylor. "If our bylaws aren't keeping up with the way the judges are interpreting it, that's a problem for us."
