Every spring the melting snow gives way to a vast sea of green in our beautiful city’s parks and open spaces. Right about now buds are blossoming, the first bees are buzzing and every once in a while the air carries the recharging scent of lilac, a welcome signal of early spring.
As lovely as this renewal is, spring isn’t the first act of a Disney movie where birds and woodland critters dance and prance through the forest. Spring also means annoyances like excessive dust from a winter of road filth, enough pollen to make allergy suffers want to eat wasabi powder for sinus relief and bits of trash everywhere. In parks and along trails there’s another eyesore — the leftover brownish smudges of Rex and Fifi’s wintertime kibble that their indifferent owners were too lazy to pick up. That really stinks.
What stinks even more is the deluge of doggie doo letters to the editor the Gazette receives. It’s a popular subject year-round, but the volume predictably increases after the melt as park users feel vexed enough to give their fellow citizens the scoop on the poop. It’s not the letters that stink but the poor behaviour that sparked the outrage in the first place — irresponsible dog owners.
Naturally, whenever there’s a societal ill to fix, city hall is there to save the day. The updated 10-year capital plan includes a $40,000 expense in 2012 for doggie waste bags. Some 400 dispenser units would be installed along the Red Willow Park trail system to encourage dog owners to pick up after their pets (a cheaper option is being looked at). The full-cost idea, initiated by Mayor Nolan Crouse, would be paid for through a dog licence surcharge similar to how the city plans to pay back costs for two dog parks in Heritage Lakes (a $140,000 project originally set for 2010 but delayed a year) and Lacombe Lake Park ($100,000 in 2011). At $10 a pop, that’s a lot of licences and a lot of taxpayers who have to, temporarily at least, make up the difference.
As much as keeping parks free of poop is a noble cause for government, you have to hold your nose at this idea. Sure, doggie bags would be a great convenience for owners who manage to remember their canine and leash but forget to bring a bag on a walk, but is that really the source of the problem? Doggie-doo remnants on trails or in the park are left there by owners who can’t be bothered to pick them up. These loathsome characters are from the same boorish mould as butt-flicking litterers, spitters, non-handwashers, poor tippers and sons who don’t call their mothers. Take pride in your city and help keep it pristine? Nah, that’s too much trouble.
Doggie dispensers and parks might make a dent, but the problem will be there as long as there are problem owners. In the meantime, taxpayers are forced to watch $280,000 go to the dogs. What’s next? Expensive signage to educate the public or maybe full-time staff to sort through the trash bins and separate out the doggie bags for composting? Perhaps a much lesser sum, if any extra is needed at all, would ramp more bylaw enforcement of our parks system to target the minority of owners who are responsible for this big stink, among other violations. In the meantime, dog owners — do us all a favour and stuff an extra bag in your pocket so our next park promenade isn’t so poopy.
Bryan Alary is an editor at the Gazette.
