At its regular meeting, Pelham Town Council voted Wednesday, Nov. 15, to adopt a pilot project that will allow alcohol consumption at Fonthill’s Peace Park between May and October next year. Members voted for that option after shooting down the idea of also allowing public drinking at Fenwick’s Centennial Park.
“I have concerns about Centennial Park,” Deputy Mayor John Wink said, citing its use by families and youth sports organizations. Adding that certain issues were reported during last spring’s Fenwick Lions Carnival, Wink said, “With the carnies in there and whatever, we’re just asking for trouble if we allow that at that point in time.”
Staff prepared the report recommending some relaxation of public drinking rules after a much-ballyhooed pilot project in Toronto this past summer, as well as other Ontario municipalities.
“We live in a world where it is lawful to consume cannabis in public parks, but it is not lawful to have a glass of wine or a glass of beer during a picnic,” CAO David Cribbs said. “And it’s not lawful because of a Town bylaw, to be clear.”
Not all councillors were on board, however.
“I don’t think what works in Toronto is necessarily going to be working in Pelham,” Ward 1’s Wayne Olson said. “Maybe we just need a place where we don’t have alcohol.”
While Wink said that Pelham didn’t need to be a trendsetter on the issue of public drinking, he moderated on the idea of allowing libations at Peace Park while standing firm against the idea in Fenwick.
“Frankly I don’t want to see a bunch of baseball teams in Centennial Park, adults with cases of beer on the bench,” he said. “Back in the day, I was on one of those teams that would do that. But is it appropriate? At this point in time, I don’t think it is.”
Ward 2 Councillor Brian Eckhardt, a former police officer, acknowledged that policing public drinking has always been “complaint-driven enforcement.”
Depending on who is drinking and how much, “we sort of turned a blind eye to it,” Eckhardt said.
Mayor Marvin Junkin said that there has been little negative evidence of cannabis use in local parks, and reminded council that as a pilot project, it can be cancelled at any time if desired results are not achieved.
Transit talk
Olson, the Town’s representative on the Niagara Transit Commission board, spoke to council on the heels of news that Pelham will be on the hook for $952,000 for the Regional transportation collective in 2024. While he noted that Pelham has had a decline in transit taxes of 16 percent, the transit agency must replace older equipment for the entire Region, and that Pelham itself will need new vehicles for its on-demand service. Olson framed the cost as an investment in the area’s future, citing a U.S. statistic that teenagers with driver’s licences dropped 24 percent in between 1995 and 2021.
“They’re increasingly drawn to active transportation,” Olson said of younger people. “The trend is away from individual cars, although sometimes you’d wonder when you look around the parking lots and on the roads.”
Odds and ends
Collected development fees through September of this year were only 58 percent of the Town’s projected estimate, with Director of Community Planning and Development Barb Wiens saying large-scale developers are slowing down projects due to higher interest rates and borrowing costs. While Wiens said she expected this to continue into 2024, she said reserve funds are still “fairly healthy.”
Olson asked CAO Cribbs if the Town was meeting its statutory requirements for marketing materials and public notifications.
“We feel we are meeting our statutory obligations, and doing the best we can in a world where a year ago we had two printed (weekly newspapers) in this community, and now we have none,” Cribbs said. This month, all Pelham residents are set to receive a mail-out campaign for the “Life in Pelham” mini-community guide, previously carried in the Voice.
