Bay Roberts gets serious about old vehicles
By Patrick Newhook/January 27, 2022
Bay Roberts council is out to get a firmer grip on the issue of wrecked, abandoned and unused cars left on private properties.
The subject got an airing at council’s January 11 meeting. In an interview afterwards, Mayor Walter Yetman said there’s a number of reasons council wants to see action.
“It’s part of beautifying your town of course,” said the mayor. “It’s all a part of beautification, cleaning up, it’s out of respect for neighboring properties. If you have wrecks and untidy property, it certainly affects the value and aesthetics of someone who is keeping up their property. It’s just being fair to other property owners.”
During the council meeting it was suggested the Town should be willing to take action as far as needed, including taking people to court if necessary.
“This is my 17th year (on council), we’ve been through this all before and I know the challenge of trying to deal with this,” Yetman said. “People don’t cooperate sometimes and so you want to take it that step further. The feeling I got is that council is willing to take it further and to take legal action if needed. We try to avoid that as much as possible due to the length of time and due to the costs, but there comes a time where you have to say enough is enough,”
Yetman would like to see more cooperation between the Town and the owners of the vehicles, but also sees the need for a more aggressive stance if needed.
“I’ve been really big on beautification over my time on council,” Yetman said. “We have to take these troubled properties that we’ve had challenges with over the years and try to deal with them first, respectfully, cooperate with them and then it comes to a point where the tone of council is that if those measures don’t work then we are prepared to take it further. But full cooperation first; notify the property owners that there is an issue. That’s what I would like to see done.”