Over the past year, we explored the City’s stance on dealing with problems such as noisy neighbours, leaf pick up, tree removal and unsightly yard waste.  Our inaugural bylaw-related post generated great discussion regarding other pesky issues including parking regulations, lighting fireworks in residential areas, smoking in multi-tenant buildings, as well as which streets you’re allowed to bike and rollerblade on.  Sure bylaws aren’t the most exciting topic of conversation, but knowing the letter of the law can come in handy now and again.

Kingston Bylaws

A couple of weeks ago Harvey and I were walking down our street and noticed a mattress that had been discarded and placed on a lawn outside someone’s home. The mattress had a “free” sign on it. After a couple of days, I passed by again and noticed that it was still there, only now the mattress had been rained on twice and appeared to have squirrels living in it. After another couple of days I’d had it. Harvey and I, and most of our neighbours, take great pride in making our homes look nice so we feel kind of put off when we see something like this going on. Accordingly, I made a call to the City of Kingston Bylaw office to ask for their advice and assistance.

This situation, along with other issues we’ve noticed in our neighbourhood (dogs barking all night, people not mowing their lawns, late night partying etc…) got Harvey and I talking about bylaws in Kingston. We quickly realized that we aren’t very informed when it comes to this topic and we suspect that some of our readers may feel the same way. In an effort to familiarize everyone with local bylaws, we’ve decided to create a series of posts based entirely on answering your bylaw-related inquiries.

When I called the City of Kingston bylaw office about the aforementioned mattress/squirrel nest, I got an answering machine and although no one ever returned my call, I’m happy to report that the mattress was gone two days later. So the system sort of works. Upon further investigation, I uncovered bylaw 2005-100, which prescribes standards for the maintenance and occupancy of property withing Kingston. Therein, para 4.42 backs up our feelings about the abandoned couch:

Yards, compounds and lands whether vacant or not shall be kept clear and free
from any furniture that is manufactured for interior use.

While the City maintains a webpage that’s dedicated to bylaws, we’d like to help you wade through this information in an open forum. What are your bylaw-related questions and experiences? Whether they are related to your home or neighbourhood directly, or are more general, please share your questions and anecdotes by way of commenting below.

Special thanks to LexnGer for today’s photo.