The District of Sechelt has taken action against the owner of a property that’s been treated as a dumpsite since 2008.
During a regular council meeting on April 13, council decided to give William Prost, owner of the unsightly premises at 6290 Sechelt Inlet Rd., 21 days to clean up the property before the district steps in to do the cleanup at the owner’s expense.
“The property has become a safety and health hazard to all members within the District of Sechelt,” said bylaw enforcement officer Greg Horning, noting Prost lives off Coast and has not made contact with the district for over a year.
“The debris and accumulation of debris on the property is a result of the property owner to begin with, and then a fire was on the property, and most recently the property has become a place where individuals from Sechelt have begun using it as a dump.”
Horning said Prost has been sent several tickets in light of the property’s health and safety issues, but said none of those tickets has been paid and the owner has not communicated with the district since Jan. 21, 2015.
“At this point in time we don’t have any other means of dealing with Mr. Prost other than coming to a conclusion of presenting a remedial action to move forward in cleaning up the property,” Horning said.
Coun. Doug Wright said he had no difficulty with the direction from staff but noted the issue had been left unresolved for far too long.
“I don’t know what the correct timeline is, but this seems to be an extended timeline and I just can’t believe it took that long to make a decision on this,” Wright said.
“It’s been an issue for years and it appears that we’ve done very little or nothing about it and that gives me great concern.”
Horning said he became involved with the file in January and tried several times to reach Prost before recommending further action to council.
“The other parties involved in this no longer have employment with the District of Sechelt,” Horning noted.
All of council was in favour of moving forward with remedial action against Prost, effectively giving him until May 4 to deal with the issue.
Coun. Alice Lutes was concerned the property could become a dumpsite again after it’s cleared of debris and asked Horning how he could ensure that didn’t happen.
“I have to consider and talk with public works about stopping access to the property,” Horning said, adding Prost would likely have to be afforded the right to access his property.
“If we close it off, it could be something that if they request we could open again. So it would have to be something we’d take into consideration – look at all the legal aspects of actually shutting off access to the property completely.”
Mayor Bruce Milne said the question of future access raised an important point.
“This is not in and of itself Mr. Prost’s problem,” Milne said.
“These are community members who are dumping and using that as a dumpsite, so how do you actually have people with that level of understanding become more sensitive to what they’re doing? That’s the real challenge.”
