Town maintains zero-tolerance policy on water window encroachment

Town councillors have held firm on the municipality’s commitment to keep its water window access open to the public, though they acknowledged the need to work with at least one owner who has property backing onto Black Creek.

At Monday’s committee-in-committee meeting, politicians mostly upheld two recommendations from the land committee to deny applications for encroachment agreements along River Trail.

They did, however, include an amendment requesting staff work with one of the property owners to find a solution that allows him to keep his pool and minimize any impacts to a patio he has around the pool.

“These are waterfront windows and like every other waterfront window we should be clearing them for use by the public,” said Mayor Wayne Redekop.

The municipality has made it a priority to maintain these water windows, unopened road allowances that provide public access to waterfronts. The two in question at Monday’s meeting were for the Quinn Road and Willow Grove road allowances along River Trail. Owners from both properties were at the meeting to plead their respective cases.

In the case of the Willow Grove water window, Dawn Roberts described an odd property line that angles in towards an area where a ditch reached the creek. As a result they had unknowingly built a shed on town-owned property.

In the second case, Uli Konrad has a pool with a patio area and fence. He said a discrepancy with what he was told when he installed the pool 24 years ago and what has now been uncovered means he’s encroaching on town property. Without an encroachment agreement he’d potentially lose the pool because there’s not enough space to move the fence.

For Konrad’s situation, Councillor Nick Dubanow suggested through an amendment to have staff work with the property owner to come up with a fencing solution that offers the necessary safety and minimizes impact, while clearing out the encroachment.

Staff did point out that council has a strict policy when it comes to water access.

“This council has taken the position that encroachment along the water windows was a zero tolerance approach,” said CAO Chris McQueen.

Redekop said that position goes back several years, with previous terms of council who pushed hard to clear encroachments out of other waterfront access areas.

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