Dog walkers in Port Coquitlam will have two new parks to let their pooches run free.
Last week, the city’s committee of council OK’d:
• Skyline Park, between Western and Eastern drives;
• and Chelsea Park, on the northside and away from the playground.
The shared — that is, unfenced — parks will be tested for a year under a pilot program starting next February or March and, if successful, council will consider adding more off-leash zones for the city’s 8,000 registered dogs.
The two park picks came after municipal staff this fall surveyed for locations and received 1,603 responses via the PAWsition input.
Besides Skyline and Chelsea, the city also recommended: the non-sports field areas around Gates Park, the Traboulay PoCo Trail from Gates Park to Pitt River Road, Castle Park’s southside and Cedar Drive trail between Lincoln and Prairie avenues.
In addition to the park designations, the city will hire two part-time bylaw officers for 16 weeks, between May 21 and Sept. 1, 2019, to patrol the parks in the evenings and weekends — at a cost of $35,000.
That bill will be added to the city’s 2019 budget, Mayor Brad West said.
Robin Wishart, PoCo’s corporate support director, told the committee the two officers will also enforce other “hot spots” in the city to control smoking and parking violations, for example.
Currently, PoCo has two fenced-in dog parks: in the downtown, at Maple Street and Bury Avenue; and in the 3330-block of Shaughnessy Street, across from Chester Place.
Coun. Darrell Penner said the city is doing its due diligence by creating more off-leash dog parks. “We wouldn’t have to do this if we had all responsible dog owners,” he said while suggesting the next off-leash pilot project be the dyke along the Pitt River.
Still, Coun. Dean Washington scoffed at the idea for city off-leash dog areas, saying, “Every park I walk by is an off-leash dog park. People are not going to drive to Chelsea Park. Is this a just a feel-good?”
Forrest Smith, PoCo’s director of engineering and public works, agreed the two new off-leash parks aren’t “going to end the off-leash problem.”
Added Coun. Glenn Pollock, a dog owner, “Eventually, we need an off-leash [park] in every neighbourhood…. I think this gives us the ability as a city to say, ‘There’s a dog area there. Go use it.’”
