Rod Lundy hopes the public school board and town can come together to figure out a solution to a rather simple problem.
The Ingram Crescent resident said with school now out, it’s the perfect time to fix a broken-down fence that causes all sorts of issues for homes bordering a public trail near Georgian Bay District Secondary School (GBDSS).
“We’re dealing with the town, we’re dealing with the school board and all they do is pass the buck back and forth,” Lundy said, referring to the damaged chain-link fencing that lines the trail linking Hugel Avenue to Yonge Street and passes near both Lundy’s street and a newer development on Cook Drive.
“I would say the contractor did 30 to 40 percent of the damage, and the kids finished it.”
The damaged partition that also includes some wooden fencing with missing boards has made it easy for students to come over from the school undetected to congregate smoke, eat lunch and drink, according to Lundy.
“It’s been a source of annoyance,” he said, noting both the town and school board are also ignoring Smoke-Free Ontario regulations regarding smoking near schools.
And then Lundy said there’s the students who go to an alternative school downtown in the morning and then return to GBDSS at noon, but hang out on the pathway for several hours as they wait for the main school to finish so they can catch the bus home.
“Everybody's getting discouraged with what's going on,” Lundy said. “Transparency is the big key word. It just doesn't happen.”
And Lundy has heard differing opinions on who actually owns the fence with some saying it’s the town and other’s the school board, a notion Lundy favours.
“You would think so because usually when you put up a fence, if you're the one who wants to put up the fence, you do it more on your property line,” he said.
Simcoe County District School Board communications manager Sarah Kekewich said the board’s facilities department has been made aware of the condition of the fence and will be working with the town to address the area of concern.
But Randy Fee, the town's communications and marketing coordinator, said the fence and its maintenance remains the board’s responsibility since it sits on school property.
“The board is considering adding more open gates to it or removing it entirely to prevent kids from climbing the fence to get to town property,” Fee said.
“It was originally put there to stop stray balls from the sports field. However, from an engineering/site plan perspective there is no reason to have a fence there to separate school and town property. We want the students to have easy access to the town’s pathway."
Lundy, meanwhile, said that just last month two tenters camped along the pathway and only moved after police got involved.
“It's a nice, secluded wooded area back in there,” Lundy said, noting there’s also a big rock that serves as a central meeting spot that he and other residents would like to see removed.
“And it's big enough to kind of be used as a table and kids can sit on it.”
One possible solution would involve turning the pathway into a garden that might discourage people from hanging around, he noted.
“In other words, we make it very attractive and beautiful and that’s nice to walk through,” Lundy said. “This will discourage the kids because they kind of like privacy in the woods there.”
