A few blogs back I waxed on about the city’s forestry department and its efficiency. They even came and picked up the remnants of our huge, dead tree before last weekend. For an 8 man department, they’re pretty good. For us, at least. We learned that some people have been waiting for months for them to tend to their deceased trees. We got lucky. But I digress.
Our neighbour on the north side is a plaza and its snow removal contractors decided, unwisely, to shove snow against our common fence over the winter. Well, the fence buckled and eventually caved in onto our property creating a gaping hole at the back of our deep yard of at least 15 feet in length. We have shooed away kids and watched as neighbourhood cats ambled in to use our lawn as a toilet. There is now open access to the back of the house for anyone who notices (and who couldn’t notice?) the toppled fence.
I made my first call to the property management company in the winter to let them know the collapse was imminent and it was because of their contractors. I have made 3 phone calls since then and on one occasion, a couple of disinterested looking dudes came out and spent a couple of hours basically making the fence collapse further. They haven’t been back in a month.
So I called the city thinking a call from them to the property manager would speed things up a bit. It’s actually quite the opposite. The woman I spoke to advised against lodging a formal complaint because, “the onus falls on the owner of the property where the fence lays. We would come out and charge YOU and YOU would have to get it fixed.” I thought perhaps she missed some crucial details in the story. Nope! That’s how it works. It’s our problem now.
I’ve left a message with our city councillor whose assistant assures me it will be looked into. This is an absolutely insane bylaw! Oh if we have to we will have the fence repaired, alright, and then send a bill to the property management company. It’s just crazy. I’ll let you know how it turns out.