Previous Issues
A pretty pathetic pilot
?As we reported last week, the Township has embarked on a pilot project for an off-leash area for the Township’s dogs. The decision, taken by way of a narrow 4-3 vote, is to allow dogs off leash in Elgin Park only, for two hours per day, 6-8 a.m., from October 2009 through May of 2010.
Despite its apparently controversial nature, this could hardly be considered a bold step by Council.
What is the purpose of a pilot project, after all? It seems to us that if you’re going to take a serious stab at something like this (and various dog-owners have been suggesting it for years), you’d want to make it a serious experiment, by testing several things:
a. different locales, including the Countryside Preserve and the Kennedy House soccer fields, which have been most frequently mentioned whenever off-leash areas have been suggested;
b. various times of day, including noon hours and evenings, and all day during the weekends;
c. all seasons of the year. Why is summer being excluded in the trial, when the days are longest and the weather most favourable?
The pilot project as proposed is unnecessarily restrictive, and as it stands, not particularly inappropriate. To begin with, the hours suggested pretty much eliminate a large part of the dog’s family from participating in the trial: kids. During the week, no child more than a couple of blocks away is going to go all the way to Elgin Park to run the mutt between 6 and 8 a.m. And on the weekends, they’re asleep. The trial should include an evening time slot as well, say from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. (Elgin Park is seldom busy then), and perhaps some time during the afternoon on the weekends.
And if we’re going to restrict the trial to only one area, Elgin Park seems a peculiar choice. For one thing, it’s heavily treed, which can make it difficult to keep track of your dog. Most urban off-leash areas are fairly open, like Kennedy House. Elgin Park is also immediately adjacent to an urban subdivision, with no fencing separating the two. We can already hear the complaints from Joseph St., by about Oct. 2, of a Rotweiler terrorizing the inhabitants. It’s fine to include an urban park like Elgin in the trial, but test Kennedy House and the Preserve as well. Find out which works better, and is more popular. If you want to just test one at a time, test them consecutively, for three months each, or give one the morning slot and another the evening, then switch them halfway through the trial.
And how about the residents of the subdivisions in the hamlets? Are they expected to come all the way into Uxbridge to walk their dogs off-leash? We suspect that many of them don’t use leashes all the time now, but technically, they’re breaking the law if they don’t. Why couldn’t Zephyr Park, or Leaskdale Park, or Siloam Common, be included in the trial as well?
We suspect this is a case of not thinking a proposal through. People have been bugging Council for a long time about an off-leash area, so Council finally threw them a bone, to use a canine metaphor. But not one with much meat on it.
There are a lot of dog owners in Uxbridge; an off-leash area is long overdue. So a pilot project is a great idea. But only if it’s designed to answer the right questions, and lead to an effective solution. This pilot won’t tell us much of anything.
