However, it appears that only those homeowners who have filed specific complaints with the city’s legislative department will be required to make the costly changes. This is despite the fact that a large number of homeowners in the Fallowfield Road and Strandherd Drive area have added the stone paths, which make it possible to park two vehicles side by side. I came out of the house and found him measuring the hallway.- Marilyn Fairfull Marilyn Fairfull, 70, said she was surprised last November when she glanced out the front window of her Peerless Street bungalow to see a City of Ottawa bylaw officer crouching in her driveway, reading a tape measure. “I came out of the house to find he was measuring the hallway,” Fairfull recalls. The City of Ottawa allows a driveway up to 1.8 meters wide to be built next to a street as long as it is not used for parking. (Stu Mills/CBC) The officer issued an infringement notice to Fairfull and advised her that the neat, matching paving stones that had been professionally installed in 2018 should be removed by August 12. He requested and received an extension until August 2023. “He said we weren’t going to park there, that there had been a complaint,” Fairfull said. Fairfull believes the complainant is a neighbor with whom she and her 77-year-old husband have had an ongoing argument about dogs. Fairfull said the couple widened their driveway in case either of them needed to use a wheelchair in the future. Although Julian Dumanski’s lock corridor was installed nine years ago, he was ordered last month to narrow it by about a meter. (Stu Mills/CBC)
“How is that fair?”
The Fairfulls are reluctant to pay the nearly $3,000 it will cost to accommodate a variance, nor do they want to pay laborers to haul away the stones when so many of their neighbors have widened their driveways. “How is it fair when other people continue to have a driveway the same width or park in their driveway, and we’re the ones being targeted?” asked. “And I don’t feel like it’s going to stop here,” added Fairfull, who believes the city’s complaint-based law enforcement system rewards “bullies” who rob city hall. CBC News tried to contact the neighbor Fairfull is suspected of complaining about, but did not receive a response. City planner Carol Ruddy said the cumulative effect of widened roads means smaller lawns, fewer trees and, ultimately, warmer suburbs. (Stu Mills/CBC) In an email, Roger Chapman, the city’s director of regulatory and regulatory services, said the department was right to enforce the rule, which allows a 6-foot-wide walkway next to a street as long as it’s not used for parking. Carol Ruddy, a city planner with the zoning and intensification department, said street width should be controlled to allow for proper drainage, winter snow storage and adequate street parking. Randy acknowledged that while the bylaws may “seem overly prescriptive,” the cumulative effect of wider streets means smaller lawns, fewer trees and, ultimately, warmer suburbs.
“a blunt instrument”
However, along Peerless Street, Hibiscus Way and Bamburgh Way, many houses have generously widened driveways, and some have sealed concrete pads where there would otherwise be lawns. At a house opposite the Fairfulls, a car was parked entirely on the lawn. But Julian Dumanski, who has added trees and flowers to his property since he moved in nine years ago, was also ordered to rip out the interlocking stone that makes his driveway about a meter wide. He has until August 31st. In other homes in the neighborhood, the heat mitigation measures of grass and trees have been completely removed. (Stu Mills/CBC) Dumanski, 82, also believes the regulation is being applied unfairly. “It’s applied as a blunt instrument,” said the former Agriculture Canada soil scientist, who doesn’t know who complained about his professional layers. “I’m sure regulation has much more important things to do than that.”
