Traffic and parking tickets issued in Coquitlam in 2018 jumped 7.7% compared to the previous year.
A report to council said 19,290 tickets were handed out last year compared to 17,613 in 2017.
But Mayor Richard Stewart was disappointed the report didn’t differentiate between parking and traffic tickets.
“What troubles me is the overwhelming nature of the parking tickets,” said Stewart at a council-in-committee meeting March 11.
The report also noted there was a significant decrease in ticketing residents for improperly putting out solid waste carts dropping from 431 in 2017 to 100 last year. The report credited continued education and wildlife awareness campaigns, new warning stickers and implementation of morning and afternoon collection zones for the reduction.
Other highlights in the report comparing tickets issued in 2018 to 2017 showed:
• animal care and control down from 514 in 2017 to 268 in 2018;
• stream and drainage bylaw infractions went from 93 to 85;
• tree management tickets dropped from 93 to 84;
• unsightly premises up marginally from 73 to 76;
• litter and desecration bylaw jumped from 11 in 2017 to 61 in 2018;
• sign bylaw infractions down significantly from 112 to 55;
• 48 boulevard maintenance tickets issued in 2017, just one in 2018;
• fire prevention bylaw tickets were reduced from 70 to 16;
• wildlife control went from 90 to 47;
• no smoking control bylaw tickets were issued in 2018 after four were in 2017.
The report, written by Sarah Bull, supervisor bylaw, licensing and animal services, said about 9% of the tickets the city issued were disputed which she described as a minor decrease from previous years. A vast majority of them were resolved by compliance officers at the screening stage. In total, 219 tickets, about 1%, ended up going to an adjudicator.
The city received 1,551 animal care and control complaints which result in the issuance of 268 tickets. There were 440 complaints of unsightly premises with 76 tickets issued.
In its zoning/other category of 193 complaints, 140 of them were for homeless camps with 15 tickets issued, although that also included violations like parked recreational vehicles, setback violations and over-height fences.
Other categories included noise (301 complaints, 40 tickets), business licence (139, 59), litter (136, 61), illegal suites (128, 35), signs on public property (121, 55), smoking control (37, none), cart set-out (1,201, 100), wildlife (686, 47).
In the summer, the city issued 549 warnings and 28 tickets for lawn and garden watering outside of permissible hours.
The parks department got 1,378 complaints and service requests regarding trees. Eighty-four tickets were issued and while that’s not much different than 2017 when there were 93 issued, the report said there was about a 33% jump in the number of tree-related service requests, which is partially attributed to the big windstorm in December, said the report.
The fire department had 65 complaints and issued 16 tickets, a big drop from 2017 when 70 were issued, mostly for failure to obey a fire order. Typical violations include fire safety, firing off fireworks or firecrackers, unsecured buildings and open-air burning.
