If a legal bylaw cannot be enforced, then there is a “credibility issue” on Gabriola according to Advisory Planning Commission (APC) Commissioner Stewart Denholm, and he thinks a new bylaw dispute adjudication process being offered to the Trust islands might address it.

According to a report by Islands Trust Chief Administrative Officer Linda Adams, the new programme “provides a more cost effective and timely way of dealing with minor, straight-forward bylaw violations”.

The APC discussed the adjudication process at a Feb. 11 meeting in response to a request by the Local Trust Committee (LTC) that they consider whether Gabriola should adopt the programme.

Commissioner Melanie Mamoser said that Bylaw Enforcement Officer, Peter Phillips, thinks that Gabriolans are not well informed about the ways in which bylaws are enforced on the islands, and that public education is needed in this area.

Commissioners recommended that the LTC hold a public information meeting on bylaw enforcement and the dispute adjudication programme and gauge public response to the latter.

In discussion about the programme, commissioners noted that there is already a municipal ticketing bylaw on Gabriola, but that it is not used. Trustee Sheila Malcolmson explained that when the current ticketing programme was launched, the Province was going to court on behalf of local governments if people did not pay their fines. She said the Province stopped providing the service to local governments. She said that the adjudication system provides a route to a ticketing system that can deal with minor bylaw infractions without having to involve lawyers.

Malcolmson said the intent of the programme was to have an option to deal with offenders who can’t be persuaded to comply with the bylaws by “moral suasion” without having to take them to court. She said that she got a lot of negative feedback on the fact that currently there is nothing in between the two options. She added that the Trust always has the option to take someone to court.

Commissioner Jenny MacLeod noted that the decision to take someone to court often depends on the Trust budget and that when there are a number of infractions the Trust may have to “pick and choose” which broken regulation gets enforced. She said: “You can have all the pretty words in the world, but if you don’t have enforcement capability, you have nothing”.

Malcolmson said that other local governments who are using this system seem to be happy with it, and noted that the administrative work of going through the Land Use Bylaw to set up a fines schedule for each relevant regulation has already been done on Gabriola.

According to a staff report on the process, the proposed system would begin with a refusal of a disputant (homeowner) to comply when notified of a bylaw infringement. From there a “screening officer” would review the infringement, contact the disputant, ascertain whether they would comply or were willing to go to adjudication, set up a date and time for adjudication, and notify the attorney general, who would appoint an adjudicator.

The report notes that the adjudicator would hear both sides of the dispute, and then make a decision about whether the situation in dispute was a bylaw infringement.

Planner Patricia Maloney said: “The idea is if both parties agree to adjudication then we can go and get an out-of –court settlement for hopefully a lot less money”. She said that this only works if the disputant agrees to go through the process.

Mamoser said that she thought it was good that disputed issues would be dealt with by someone at arm’s length from the Islands Trust.

Commissioner Jacinthe Eastick noted that offenders could get a discount on their fines if they paid up quickly. Suggesting that having higher fines would encourage people to comply in order to get the early payment discount, she moved that all the fines be set at the allowable maximum of $500. The resolution passed in a split decision.