Winter Walking and Cycling

[danbrotherston]

Oh, the cost will be low, they have only a few officers, which means they basically take days maybe more than a week to get through the back log.  Just one more way in which bylaw is a sad joke of a solution.

I think they have around 15 or 20 officers -- mathematically: If we have 100 days of complaints, that would work to 21 complaints per day.  If we assume that they have 10 officers working per day, that's 2.1 complaints per officer per day for them to investigate. Mind you, some days it will be more, sometimes less. But if they can't figure out how to deal with anything less than 10 complaints per officer per day, then something is seriously wrong. Even if we said there are 10 by-law enforcers (that can deal with sidewalks), and the 2,145 complaints, that's still about 220 complaints per officer for the winter months (100 days). Of course, 100 days of winter might be on the low side some years, which only spreads the complaints more thinly.

I do agree, though, that this isn't the best solution. Wish I had an answer.

I'm not sure why you think there are 15 or 20 (or even 10) Bylaw officers doing this--do you have a source?  I believe four were hired for the proactive work.  I would be surprised if there were more than 2-3 officers on duty on any given day before this year.

Also, complaints are extremely bursty, like the snow which causes it, and most days the officers cannot enforce because there has been in the last 24 hours or currently is snow falling. For example, I was told, that over the last weekend, there were multiple hundreds of complaints, even if officers can hit 100 complaints a day, they might still be well beyond capacity on first visit alone this weekend, never mind follow up.