By Cecilia Nasmith
Cobourg's new Administrative Monetary Penalty system – begun with the task of moving the processing of parking tickets out of the Provincial Offences Court system to be enforced by the town – is going so well it's ready to take on more of a caseload.
At this week's committee-of-the-whole meeting, council approved moving the enforcement of infractions of nine more bylaws into the AMP system – Animal Control, Property Standards, Clean Yard and Lot Maintenance, Parks Use, Noise, Nuisance, Heritage Permit, Fireworks and Open Air Burning.
That's a lot of bylaws to review, Councillor Miriam Mutton objected.
Councillor Adam Bureau said his impression is that the agenda item was to move these bylaws out of the Provincial Offences Court system into the Administrative Monetary Penalties system – not to review the bylaws.
Municipal Clerk Brent Larmer reported that the AMPS system is up and running and ready to begin accepting cases based on further bylaws. While this process may offer the opportunity for reviews and updates of the bylaws, Larmer said, the focus now is to get cases out of the courts – where the wait for hearings can be more than 18 months.
“We want to see these dealt with. It's not good for the town It's not good for residents to leave things hanging. It reduces the complexity of these things,” he said.
Larmer acknowledged that the process of bringing bylaws into the AMP system is only about one-third of the way through, but said they are trying to select the most important bylaws earlier.
