OSOYOOS TIMES-June 17, 2009
“No more wall, let ‘er fall,” said Lobelia Drive resident Ken Nelmes.
His words are in response to the B.C. Supreme Court’s decision to grant an injunction that will make him remove his 5.5-metre-high retaining wall.
“In theory, I haven’t really lost. They lost,” Nelmes said. “I’m feeling pissed off, but I don’t care. I’m going to let it go back to the way it was. Dirty, filthy. I’m just going to let it fall.”
On May 28, Justice G.M. Barrow decided in favour of the Town of Osoyoos in its five-year-long battle with Nelmes over the wall.
Barrow ordered the removal of the wall that stands along Jasmine Drive.
Parts of the wall encroach upon the Town’s road allowance on Jasmine Drive as much as 2.82 metres and Barrow said such an encroachment may infringe upon future renovations of the roadway.
“The Town and I have been fighting for five years over the wall,” Nelmes said.
It began about three months after the structure was installed when complaints started to file in about his display of bicycles on the wall.
“They were antiques,” Nelmes explained.
The last one he hung on the wall was a 1953 CCM and it was immaculate – with chrome basket and fenders.
But Nelmes said he got tired of listening to the complaints, so he planned to take them down.
Instead, he said he was going to plant trumpeter vines and bamboo at the bottom of the hill.
He wanted to meet with his neighbours and the town to explain the plan – council actually agreed to the meeting by resolution in 2005 – but negotiations came to a halt.
Nelmes is disappointed.
He said the problems could have been solved out of court.
“They wouldn’t have complained if they knew the bamboo and trumpeter vine was going to be growing there,” he said.
Nelmes said he is going to enjoy the wall for as long as the court order will let him – which is until next May.
“My driving range is going back for a year,” he said.
He has a large plastic frame with a net set up on the edge of his property – right along the top of the wall – and likes to hit golf balls into it.
When the deadline to remove the wall comes due he will take it down and sell the blocks.
“I’m just going to pull the blocks out next year, and let it fall down to normal,” Nelmes said. “Maybe throw a few dandelion seeds in there.”
Barry Romanko, Osoyoos’s chief administrative officer, said the Town’s next step includes seeking a caveat on Nelmes’ property title.
The injunction is against Nelmes, not the property, and the Town doesn’t want a similar battle with a new owner.
As for sloppy hillsides and dandelions, Romanko said the Town’s recourse would be the unsightly property bylaw.
