We are soon approaching Canada Day and the wonderful celebration that happens every year at Bower Ponds that the citizens of Red Deer have come to enjoy so much.
As you are enjoying the festivities down at Bower Ponds a lot of us that live up in Fairview will be “enjoying” seeing people urinating on our lawns and in our flower beds and on our vehicles, not to mention the verbal abuse we endure when we dare to ask celebrants of the Red Deer Canada Day festivities to “keep it in their pants.”
In addition, we get to enjoy the sights and sounds of drug deals openly going on in front of our homes, liquor being delivered and consumed in the streets, and broken beer and liquor bottles littering our streets and yards that we have to clean up. Residents phoning in to the complaint line to report trouble are themselves given the third degree and made to feel like it is our civic duty to put up with this because it’s just one day a year!
There is also the garbage that people throw on our lawns, dirty diapers, and everything else you can imagine from clothing to condoms.
The city issues parking passes to the residents who live here which are supposed to be placed on the dash of our vehicles and are supposed to stop people who don’t live in Fairview from entering the neighborhood and parking anywhere they bloody well feel like, but that was totally disregarded last year as the commissionaires saw fit to let anybody through the barricade.
Streets and alleys were so clogged with vehicles without parking passes that had an emergency vehicle needed to get into this neighborhood at the time the fireworks started it wouldn’t have been able to.
Not to mention the vehicle parked here without a parking pass whose car alarm went off and blared for several hours that we all got to listen to. Again we were told there was nothing we could do about it until the owner came back. We were told we could not phone and have the vehicle towed! And the commissionaires told us they couldn’t do anything about it!
Why is there no RCMP presence in our neighborhood on Canada Day? Or where is Bylaws and the Commissionaires (who I might add are extremely well paid for the day) and are supposed to be enforcing the parking passes? Why do the residents of Fairview have to put up with the swearing and vandalism and property damage so the rest of the city can have a celebration?
We have children and seniors in this neighborhood as well who would like to be able to walk down to the park and enjoy the day but instead a lot of us have to stay at home and protect our property. People will open our gates and walk right through our yards, our gardens, our flowers, even go so far as to kick down our fences. Vehicle windows are being smashed as well.
Perhaps law enforcement response times would be shortened considerably following phone reports of armed homeowners sitting on their front steps.
And I’m pretty sure a snarling, lunging Rottweiler on the other side of the hedge would make someone think twice about dropping their drawers.
It’s time for the city to take Fairview’s complaints seriously before someone gets seriously hurt or one of our senior neighbors has a heart attack and the ambulance can’t get in here.
The amount of tossed cigarette butts into our yards alone is a fire hazard especially this year with conditions being so dry. Traffic enforcement or Bylaws with a tow truck and RCMP presence would certainly put a damper on the illegal activities in Fairview on July 1.
The RCMP could use this opportunity as well. How about parking a cruiser in the store lot and make yourselves accessible to educate the public?
Talk to the people, answer questions, and educate children as to emergency situations and what to do.
Have information for the public such as how the assignment of a specific officer to a specific neighborhood is working out.
Make your presence known!
Hey, maybe then at least I wouldn’t get spat upon by some drunken lout taking a shortcut across my lawn to urinate in my lilies.
Brad and Debra Rudolph
Red Deer