Prince George City Council took action to address a nuisance property at tonight’s (Monday) meeting.
According to a staff report to Council, the property, located at 4235 Quentin Avenue, has been the subject of 25 calls for service from Bylaw Services, as well as 19 visits from the RCMP since July 2024.
Some of the reasons for the visits in the report includes illegal camping on the property, noise, barking and aggressive dogs, and unsightly conditions.
Councillor Brian Skakun questioned why it took so much to get to this point.
“The Nuisance Abatement Bylaw has only been exercised a few times since it’s inception,” said Director of Administrative Services Eric Depenau.
“The previous instances were at a higher call volume than the one before you, and staff are now working to calibrate where that threshold ought to be.”
Depeneau noted work to bring this before Council started in August.
Under the Nuisance Abatement Bylaw, both the owners, Sau Wu and Josephine Lau, and the tenant, Beverly Cote, are ordered to immediately cease causing the nuisance activities on the property.
Under the bylaw, the City can also recover certain abatement costs if nuisance activities continue.
A letter from the owners to Council, dated October 16th, 2025, states the tenant has since been evicted, and promises to keep the property maintained.
“I assure you that I will ensure the property, both inside and out, is properly maintained going forward,” the owners wrote.
“When I first rented the place to them, I genuinely believed they were sincere individuals looking for a peaceful home. I never imagined they would leave the property in such a filthy condition and cause daily disturbances, leading to numerous complaints from the neighbours.”
Council unanimously voted in favour of the orders.
“I think what we have to do is remind people what the schedule is to the bylaw,” Councillor Brian Skakun said following the vote.
“If you look at that, there’s a lot of options for us to recover those costs, but I don’t want it to have to get to the point like it did tonight.”
Councillor Cori Ramsay put forward a motion to refer the bylaw back to staff to review the thresholds for the bylaw.
“The piece that I really want to carve out is, if you are receiving, in the report it says there were 25 calls to the RCMP, but there are 47 instances in this report where RCMP, Bylaw were involved in calls for service,”
“If you have received 20-plus calls to me, there should be some sort of fine there.”
Council voted unanimously in favour of the review.
Mayor Simon Yu was absent from the meeting.
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