Thank the Lord for saving us from broken skateboards and marshmallow roasts

Armchair Mayor column for The Kamloops Daily News, Saturday, July 10, 2010

In another example of its anal obsession with rules, the City bylaws department eclipsed the Abby of Aberdeen fiasco with another display of over-zealous application of the law this week — this time over a broken skateboard.

There are two sides to this story, but the punch line is plain ridiculous.

In one corner we have Charlotte Shaw, who may be the most famous skateboarding mom in Kamloops. In the other corner, we have Brian Cassell of City bylaws. Yes, the very same who prosecuted Abby the Golden Retriever for wagging her tail at passing school children and stepping on a City sidewalk while she was doing it.

To refresh our memories, Shaw is the mother of longboard skater Nikolas Marshall, who’s had his share of run-ins with the long arm of the (by)law. The pair fought, and lost, a battle in May to have the City’s skateboard bylaw relaxed so skaters could travel freely down the hills of major Kamloops thoroughfares without regard to personal or public safety.

I happen to agree with City council on that one, but jeez louise, while rules are necessary, reason is kind of important, too. We seem to be over-legislated and over-enforced in this town.

Anyway, Marshall has received frequent warnings about skating in all the wrong places. On one occasion, when he was approached by a bylaws officer, he launched a fast get-away, tearing through an intersection without stopping or looking out for traffic.

At the time of her son’s appearance in front of City council, Shaw also complained about the City’s authority to take skateboards away from skaters caught in violation. Of particular annoyance was a $500 fine she’d received for littering in connection with an incident at the bylaws office involving her son’s skateboards. Yes, I said littering.

Details of that incident came out this week in bylaws court. In support of the $500 littering fine, the court was told that not one, but two skateboards had been impounded from Nikolas because he hadn’t paid a previous $100 fine.

One of the boards was broken. When Shaw went to make bail for the good board, she was informed she’d have to pay $50 rather than the usual $25 because there were two boards. She said she didn’t want the broken board, so would pay only $25.

Verbal push came to verbal shove, and Cassell informed the court that Shaw got mad, uttering on more than one occasion the B-word expletive. (If that is cause for a fine, Mayor Peter Milobar would be in front of the justice of the peace looking at a handsome penalty. The fine multiplied, perhaps, by the number of times his use of the term was reported in the media and by the number of people who heard him.) But Shaw paid the $50. As she left, she planted the broken board in the garden by the front door of the office.

“Cassell said he tried to chase her down and get her to take the broken board away but Shaw drove away,” The Daily News reported. “Two days later bylaws officers issued her a $500 littering ticket.”

If we accept the definition of a skateboard as litter (the City bylaw on that defines litter as “any refuse or any offensive matter”), one must nevertheless be flummoxed at Mr. Cassell’s decision not to simply pick up the abandoned board/litter and deposit it in the office trash. Elapsed time: oh, maybe 45 seconds, and get on with the day.

But no, this was somehow worth the Corporation of the City of Kamloops’ time and resources to take the woman to court on a littering charge. This, despite the fact the bylaws office had no authority to insist on double payment from Shaw on the skateboards.

The City’s bylaw says it can seize a skateboard for up to 60 days, after which the owner “may” redeem it by paying the $25 fine. If not, it becomes the property of the City. No “musts” or “shalls,” nothing about all or nothing.

Therefore, the littering charge — under a different bylaw — came as a direct result of the City ignoring the fine print of its own skateboarding bylaw. How absurd is that?

And don’t even get me started on the lecture meted out by JP Joan Hughes, who called Shaw’s behaviour “childish” and “definitely littering,” and suggested she needed anger management. Our reporter Robert Koopmans, who sat in on this example of Kamloops justice, will have more to say about the JP’s court behavior on Monday, both in respect to the skateboard case, and a marshmallow roast that also ran afoul of the City.

In that one, Barnhartvale dad Mathew Simons lit a campfire to roast marshmallows with his son last winter as they were working on a backyard skating rink. A neighbour complained, firefighters arrived, and Simons was handed a violation notice for breaking the City’s backyard burning ban.

One has to think a warning might have been appropriate rather than a charge. He did beat the rap this week due to the fact the fire guys couldn’t properly identify him as the culprit, but he didn’t escape a tongue-lashing from Hughes.

The phenomenon of bylaws creep in which more and more rules of behavior are legislated into existence by our municipal lawmakers is, I suppose, the price of an ever more-complicated society. However, this zero-tolerance-take-no-prisoners approach is totally alien to how the bylaws system is meant to be.

Bylaws are supposed to be there when we need them, not to be wielded like a club at the first sign of non-compliance.

mrothenburger@kamloopsnews.ca

http://www.armchairmayor.wordpress.com