It only took two sunny weekends....

Summer has come to Cobourg and the event season is in full bloom. Rotary Club inspired events - the Waterfront Festival and the Ribfest have brought to the surface the letters to the editor that have been lying in wait all season. Predictable problems: too many people, too much garbage, too much parking not enough washrooms for people who prefer to use private bushes and public sand. An editorial in NToday decries the situation, presumably because this is placed in the prime editorial spot as opposed to the opinion slots this is official newspaper policy. A story that told of Town workers picking up mounds of garbage bags, and quoted the Parks Supervisor as saying, "We have staff working till 11pm on Sunday night". This gives the impression that working until 11pm on Sunday to pick up garbage is unusual.

In an interview today, Director of Public Works, Stephen Peacock told me that the Town schedules full crews and full shifts of 14 hours a day, as a matter of course and that this weekend was just normal cleanup.
Whenever Clubs and Organisations ask for permission to hold events in the Park they have to sign a contribution agreement. Cobourg in its wisdom has always, in its negotiations conducted by Lara Scott, been scrupulous in making eventholders take their own garbage away, and to provide extra toilet facilities- at their cost and to conform with many other conditions that cost money that the Town might have had to pay. In order to help defray the cost of cleanup, with full shifts and full crews the parking revenue, from those meters, has been dedicated to that cost. So the Town has been trying hard to offset the burden of providing public space to private money raising events.

If there is a problem it could be put down to some events being too big for the Park, was it really necessary to have a Midway in the spot that regular park users inhabit? Another problem is that the Town may have not made any effort to accommodate the park users because they only come on weekends and don't go uptown and spend money? An excellent suggestion has been made to fence off the Beach and Park and charge out of Towners for the privilege of using the beach. But then we get into the problem of assuming that it's only visitors who deposit garbage and nothing else. In one letter published today the writer told of seeing Cobourgers dumping household bags by a Park bin. We know this happens downtown why wouldn't it happen in the Park. It's a collective problem and as a Town we must solve it. But to assume that it's only the poor (people needing sympathy not the affluent) folk on Bay St who suffer is wrong.

Just let me finish this by telling the world that a day after the Mayor received a letter from an grieved motorist who had been towed for overstaying a spot on the Pier, two weeks ago, an Executive Order was issued - "No more towing from overstays on the Pier" So how do we fulfill the demand for more enforcement of when enforceement of existing laws is over-ridden because of adverse publicity?

This image is provided by W Keeler and shows the damage done to the park by one of the Ribbers. Just how will the park will recover from this damage in this heat? We still haven't devised a way for compensation for such ecological damage - perhaps we should?

The bottom line is that the problem of problems in the Park is, and always will be, an ongoing one that everyone will have to help solve.