this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024
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Ontario family selling house over new Christmas lights bylaw (globalnews.ca)
submitted 4 days ago by NarrativeBear to c/[email protected]
45 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Colten Williams began putting together his Christmas light show a decade ago at the behest of his grandmother, who was inspired by light shows she had seen on TV.

But trouble started brewing in Kingsville after several neighbours lodged complaints about their street being crowded with cars for six weeks every year.

This month, the city enacted a new bylaw that would force the Williams family to apply for a permit for their display while also placing restrictions on the number of hours they would be allowed to leave the lights on.

β€œThey basically limited the amount of hours I could have my show from about 28 hours a week down to 10 hours a week,” Williams said. β€œSo you have 500 hours, 600 hours worth of set up time just to have 40 hours the lights on all month long. That’s an insane amount of work.”

Rogers said the council is sad to see them turn off the lights but said the show had outgrown its location as well.

β€œWe were saddened to learn that the Williams family will not move forward with their light display this year,” he said.

β€œOur discussions with the family last year at a council meeting we both agreed that they had outgrown the neighbourhood.”

Rogers went on to say that the city had tried to work with the family to find an alternative location but was unable to meet their demands.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It sounds like people who live around there were taking ridiculous times to get in and out of their houses because of the traffic. This would also be a bad situation for emergency services such as ambulances and firetrucks, potentially.

[–] Nouveau_Burnswick 3 points 4 days ago (3 children)

So it's a traffic problem, not a capacity problem.

Ban on street parking, direct people to the closest lots. Problem solved.

[–] Odo 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's in the middle of suburbia. There are no nearby lots, and their street has no sidewalks.

[–] Nouveau_Burnswick 0 points 2 days ago

Downtown Kingsville to the edge of the suburbs is about 2km in the furthest directions.

So the issue is that the city has decided to not build sidewalks for super walkable distances, there are more than enough lots around.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Over here in Europe we'd just arrive by public transport.

[–] FireRetardant 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yea but Canada refuses to build a functional country. Hell we can't even keep bike lanes installed without drivers feeling attacked.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I read about that, and my first thought was that bike lanes adjacent to streets indeed aren't a great thing - but then again, you probably don't have all the bike/pedestrian only paths offering way shorter connections we have here. In the area I live in I can reach pretty much any house by foot within 5-10 minutes - while most of them are only reachable by car with a lengthy detour, if at all.

[–] FireRetardant 3 points 3 days ago

The lanes weren't the best but they are way better than nothing. Everything must be car accessible here, no exceptions. Cars must always get prioirty. It really is so vastly different you really have to experience it to understand. Standing next to one stroad makes you really ask "how the hell is this the best way to build the majority of places in this country?"

Most of our transit is hourly bus service that is late from the poor roadway network. Most of our stops don't even have shelters. Trams don't have prioirty at lights. It's all so backwards.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

If it's like the places I grew up, people are driving through neighborhoods. They're not parking, but driving at basically a crawl (sometimes pausing to take pictures). If they enforced local traffic only (i.e. anyone who wanted to see it had to go on foot), that would solve the issue so long as the parking exists somewhere.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's not. It's a 17-minute show timed to music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJIuS2NHH_k

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I mean, there were specific shows at a couple houses when I was a kid, but no one stopped there to block everyone for the whole thing because that's a dick move. If people are, then they definitely needed to enforce local traffic only and a permit to set all that up and organize it makes sense to me.

[–] Nouveau_Burnswick 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

File a permit with the city to put up Holiday decorations. Ludacris. Do I need one if I put a tree inside my house?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If it generates traffic and fire safety issues and requires coordination with police, fire, and/or other municipal services to make it safe, then yeah, a permit makes sense as it covers all that. The other option is to tone it down. It's all fun and games until you or a loved one is dying in a fire or waiting for an ambulance that can't get to you

[–] Nouveau_Burnswick 1 points 2 days ago

As I said elsewhere, just ban street parking and the problem evaporates. There is no more car traffic generation or precived blocking of emergency vehicles.

The problem is cars not people.