Bylaw officer dumps on rules: homeowner

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/10/2014 (3468 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When Gord Buczko put down his phone after speaking with RM of Hanover bylaw enforcement officer Brian Brunelle one July morning, he thought he had reached a mutual agreement to forego a fine for depositing litter.

Buczko’s landscaping crew was some 90 minutes away from visiting his New Bothwell home to clean up anyways.

No reason, he must of thought, for the RM to hire their own landscaping crew to tidy up the debris.

“I said you better cancel your guys,” recalls Buczko. “He said, ‘OK, I better get off the phone right now and cancel.’”

But that’s not what happened, apparently.

Brunelle never cancelled his landscaping guys. By the time Buczko’s hired help arrived, the job was nearly done.

Buczko was now faced with a $500 fine, plus the several hundred dollars he projects it costs to pay the landscapers that arrived.

“If he would have told me, ‘I’ve issued the fine and I’m having it removed,’ I would have cancelled my landscaping guys,” said Buczko. “There’s no sense in going.”

Concerns over this dispute is not the sole issue the homeowner has with the RM, which described removing the debris to be an “emergency.” Of greater concern, he says, is the absence of an impartial judge to handle issues like his.

Buczko appealed his fine at a municipal public hearing but found the endeavour fruitless as council ignored his complaints, he said.

“Independent people should hear a case and decide, not peers of the bylaw officer,” said Buczko. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Brunelle declined to respond to the accusations since the matter may come before the courts.

More on the dispute and what’s next in the Oct. 23 edition of The Carillon.