By-law 2017 Kitchissippi stats

By-law services has sent us their year-end wrap-up of calls for service. It's a fascinating scan though I haven't done an analysis of the numbers. You can see our ward-specific stats here and the city-wide stats here (or click either file below).

On a quick scan, there's a not-unexpected continued rise in parking calls, up 14% from 2016 to 2017. We now account for 7.5% of the parking calls in the city. Much of that is simply due to intensification and our continually successful main streets, of course, but I would guess that some of that relates to infill construction as well. Graffiti calls were nicely down, from 61 in 2016 to 46. The headline number has to be noise complaints, though, which were up a staggering 31% rising from 488 in 2016 to 641 in 2017. I know of some ongoing issues in the ward that account for some of that, but clearly the ward is becoming a noisier place overall. Property standards complaints were also up a very sharp 24% from 488 to 607. Again, more analysis would be needed, but I believe that much of that would be infill-related as neighbours call by-law to address construction sites left in a careless state.

City-wide, by-law calls were up 11%, led by property standards calls up 20% and parking calls up 15%. Sign calls fell a remarkable 56% from 2016 to 2017. I know we implemented a new approach to signs on the sidewalk on our traditional mainstreets that may have led to some of that reduction, but there's likely an interesting study to be done here.

The ward with the greatest number of calls was, not unexpectedly, Rideau-Vanier ward (eastern downtown) with 9,776. Somerset ward (western downtown) had 8,070. Capital ward (Old Ottawa South and the Glebe) saw 5,320, and we had 4,978. Ward 5, West Carleton, saw the least with 801.