No consultation

Beach neighbours feel left out of process

For those residents whose properties enjoy uninterrupted views of Lake Ontario, whose lawns reach for the water, and who have until recently enjoyed the relative peace and quiet the Wellington Beach location offered, the summer of 2020 changed everything. The municipality had to act fast to mitigate the chaos and disruption that descended upon the village last summer, closing access to the beach at certain times in order to control numbers and maintain a level of safety. They did the very best they could given the circumstances, acting quickly and efficiently in order to maintain control of crowds, the likes of which have never been seen before, and all this during a pandemic. This is the second of a two-part story focusing on those folks directly affected by the ‘commercialization’ of Wellington Beach— or as some put it, residents losing their community beach to visitors. Last week, the municipality shared its Tourist Management Plan (haveyoursay.thecounty.ca/tourism-management- plan-2) with details of the changes being implemented to accommodate what is expected to be a large influx of tourists again this summer, not just at Wellington Beach, but throughout the County. A new website, the Summer Hub (thecounty.ca/summer-hub), has also been launched with tips on how residents can survive another crazy County summer.

While food trucks are just one piece of the bigger puzzle at Wellington Beach, nearby residents have expressed concerns over noise pollution, light pollution, illegal parking, illegal camping, garbage issues, unleashed dogs, trespassing on private property, camp fires and bonfires and more at all hours of the day and night. “Sometimes, there are people down there letting fire crackers off, sometimes they are into their beer or whatever and they get a little bit rowdy,” says JMD (full name supplied). Jeremy and Carol Gander, who live on Beach Street, said one of their concerns pertaining to increased activity on Wellington Beach is about crowd control and the prevention of trespass onto private property. “This is something we have experienced too often in the past, and the perpetrators have been confrontational when asked to leave. The gate-control personnel tried their best, but their main concern is traffic control,” say the Ganders. “In light of the considerations for food trucks on the beach, my concern would be the control of refuse in the form of papers, wrappers and excess food scraps. I would hope that anyone applying for a licence to operate, or the County in issuing same, would include this concern in their application.”

JMD’s frustration stems from the lack of consultation by the municipality and planning staff where her on-going concerns have not been acknowledged or responded to. “I have been angered, disappointed with a lot of decisions that have been made, or not made, on the beach issues,” she says. “Nobody has reached out to us about any of the plans coming forth.” Last summer, she endured people accessing the beach from the front of her Main Street property. “People come through our property, they go right down to the beach and say, ‘I might as well cut through here and walk to the beach, we won’t have to pay entrance fee’. You confront them and they walk right by you and tell you to go to hell.” As an older person living alone, she feels vulnerable and it was a stressful experience for this long-time Wellington homeowner and Dorland descendant. “I see bonfires on the beach which are not supposed to be there, I see camping, also Quebec licence plates when people are not supposed to be travelling.” She says there have been RVs and campers parked at the foot of her property that stayed for days, even though there is supposed to be no overnight camping allowed. She says one group of young men set up a volley ball net on her property. “I’m not happy seeing 4,000 people troop across the bottom or through my property, I’m not happy with that, it’s not right and it’s not just.”

She says on holiday weekends, tourists park on the bottom of her property as if it were a parking lot. “I say this is private property, get off my property, only to hear, ‘we drove all the way from Ottawa’. We need more bylaw people and security people if you are going to open it to the public: holiday weekends were just a total nightmare, it was just horrendous on the beach.” She says correspondence to the municipality goes unanswered, along with concerns made directly to her Wellington councillor who suggested she phone the police and bylaw. “The police don’t want to come, the bylaw people’s number isn’t available at night and I was told they only had two bylaw officers last year who cover the whole County.” Likewise, she was told by the police, they cover the whole County and have to cover more pressing issues, something she doesn’t dispute. “Once they start charging at the gates, we get the trespassers and that was abundantly clear last year when they were just marching from Main Street straight on down through my property and neighbouring properties to the beach,” said JMD. “We are not trying to be disagreeable to council, but we thought there would be some consideration or our opinion asked, other than a survey. “That isn’t consultation about the impact it has necessarily on our properties.”

JMD asks why efforts are being made to attract more people to Wellington Beach. “We don’t need any more people as there’s no place for the people we do have,” she said. “I used to look out on water, that was our view for the last century and they have created a parking lot to make more people come to the beach; now we look out at cars,” she says. “Blocking access to a property that has had access for the last 100 years, that’s not an option.” For the small number of residents directly affected by the massive impact of tourists to Wellington Beach and the changes being proposed, they don’t feel they have been heard, and they have never been consulted. “It would have been nice if we had been spoken to or even consulted about some of these changes because we are impacted, as is the whole village, but we see the garbage, we see the bonfires, we see the people down there at one-thirty in the morning,” said JMD. “We have put time and effort into sending letters and emails and you don’t even know if it has been received, acknowledged or read. There was no interest in answering us, and there is nobody to call: we provided information to our councillor and we felt a little bit not worthy of consulting.”