Editor:
I read the letter in the NOW about strata councils passing strict rules on pet sizes and noise and felt I needed to respond.
If you haven’t served on a strata council before, a few things to remember.
For one thing, we’re all just volunteers who care about the places we live. Few people want to serve on a strata council because it requires hard work and sometimes enduring a lot of abuse from your neighbours.
But when it comes to rules, I get that some may seem overly strict – or “petty” as the letter says – but that’s only because many of the people who live in these buildings just have no common sense.
Some are just downright reckless. Our building is a mix of owners and renters and both do some pretty terrible things that disrupt the peacefulness for their neighbours or do damage.
We didn’t use to have restrictions on dogs but one person moved in with two giant dogs that did damage to the walks and even the floor of the elevator.
Other residents are extremely loud in the common areas and it’s the kind of noise at weird hours that wakes people up and disrupts their lives.
Then there are the smokers to ignore the rules and smoke in common areas and the elevators with impunity.
The list goes on and on.
And so owners are forced to be very specific with their rules and then we have to act like enforcers, spending out casual time patrolling the building to make sure people are following them. When we do catch someone, we get yelled at or threatened.
That’s no fun for anyone, which is why it’s so hard to get anyone to join the strata council. It’s a thankless job.
T. Fong, Burnaby
