The Equine Rangers on a ride into downtown Enderby.
Image Credit: Equine Rangers
September 04, 2013 - 4:55 PM
ENDERBY - Efforts to install hitching posts and corrals to downtown Enderby streets have stalled.
During a council meeting Wednesday, the Equine Rangers, who have championed the idea of a horse friendly city, got up and left.
"It was like we had never been in city hall. They wanted to know what we wanted, where we wanted the corrals," Naomi McGeachy, a founding member of the Rangers says. "It felt like we were back in March."
She says there is a lack of commitment on the city's end to find a place for the corrals to go, and that calls to council and staff were not returned. At the meeting, it also became clear that the city wouldn't be offering any financial support to the initiative.
"The Rangers are all volunteers... They wanted us to pay for the corrals, for everything," McGeachy says. "It all fell in our lap."
The Equine Rangers are no longer trying to obtain a license of occupation from the city, which would allow them to install hitching posts and corrals on city owned land.
"There was too much red tape," McGeachy says. "We basically said, we did this for Enderby and obviously Enderby doesn't want to help."
As in previous meetings, the issue of manure clean-up arose. Coun. Raquel Knust says she got numerous calls from the public complaining about it.
"(The riders) were finishing their ride, going home, then driving back out, retracing their route and picking it up then. Meanwhile, people had already driven through it and seen it," Knust says.
Knust says she can't support corrals when there aren't even enough bike racks in the city.
"How can you justify corrals?" she says.
While Knust says the Rangers "chose" to abandon their efforts, McGeachy says the city was "making it impossible" for them to meet the requirements of manure clean-up, financing and planning.
"We wanted to promote the city," McGeachy says. "There's nothing attracting tourists to Enderby. Painting some lamp posts isn't going to do it."
The Rangers will be focusing their efforts on events and communities that share their vision, McGeachy says. But you'll still see them around town.
"We'll still be riding into Enderby and promoting everything we believe in," she says.
To contact the report for this story, email Charlotte Helston at chelston@infotelnews.ca, call (250) 309-5230 or tweet @charhelston.
News from © iNFOnews, 2013