The city is taking a proactive 'boots on the ground' approach to address issues around dirty yards in Windsor.
Since the beginning of the summer, bylaw enforcement officers have been going ward by ward to look for glaring issues such as tall grass and weeds, garbage at the curbside, dirty yards, and any other bylaw matter that may make a neighbourhood look bad.
Manager of Licensing and Enforcement Craig Roberston says the intent is to have officers knock on doors and speak with the tenant or property owner to let them know what the issue is and how to correct it with the goal of doing a better job to let the community know what the rules are.
Robertson says they ask for voluntary compliance and if they don't get it, they let the person know about the potential penalties and what those consequences may be.
"So far it's been a great success. We've been able to get anywhere from 50 to 65 per cent compliance within 24 hours simply by notifying residents of what our bylaws are and having those boots on the ground rather than relying on issuing orders or charges and dealing with those complaints that come through 311," he says.
The bylaw enforcement department receives around 16,000 complaints a year, with dirty yards making up 10,000 to 12,000 of those complaints.
Another goal of the outreach is to help reduce the backlog of complaints. As of September 8, the bylaw department had a backlog of 1,916 calls.
Roberston says from what they're seeing out there, only around 10 per cent of the issues have been called in to 311.
"Those are alarming stats in my opinion, which tells me we need more boots on the ground, doing more proactively, getting the messaging out there, and speaking with our residents," he says. "Eventually these will probably just get called in to 311 at some point."
If a complaint is filed, bylaw officers will conduct a site inspection and issue an order to comply, giving the property owner seven days to bring their property up to bylaw standards.
If the property owner fails to comply with an order, the city can go in and conduct a cleanup with the expenses applied to the property tax bill.