Brentwood plans moving forward
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ndp soul search going nowhere
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clark pitches carBon tax
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wednesday
July 31 2013 www.burnabynewsleader.com
Burnaby puts in impressive effort against canada’s national training squad. See page A19
Will the city ban pet sales? Wanda Chow
wchow@burnabynewsleader.com
MARIO BARTEl/NEWSlEADER
anton heggen is concerned the operator of a medical marijuana grow up that’s set up next door to his fraser park restaurant is endangering the health of his staff as well as the safety of the 14-unit strata building where he’s been selling schnitzel for 16 years.
Pot smell has restaurateur fuming Grow op next door needs to go, Anton Heggen says Mario Bartel
photo@burnabynewsleader.com
When Anton Heggen was waging his own battle with colon cancer, he tried a few puffs of marijuana to ease the nausea from chemotherapy treatments. He says it did nothing for him. Now the owner of the Fraser Park Restaurant is upset he, the staff and customers of his south Burnaby
diner are being forced to inhale the fumes of a medical marijuana grow operation that has set up right next door in the 14-unit strata industrial building on Byrne Road where he’s been slinging schnitzel for 16 years. Heggen said when the wind blows right, the skunky odour of the pot plants wafts into his establishment through the fresh air intake on the building’s roof that is located only a few feet from the venting system of his botanically inclined neighbour. His customers may crack jokes
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about the smell, but Heggen said he worries about long-term exposure, as well as the safety risks a medical grow op may present to his business and the building it occupies. “They’re making it mandatory for my staff to smoke it,” said Heggen. Moreover, the president of the building’s strata council said they’ve received indications from their insurance company that their coverage could be in peril. Keming Ling said a meeting last Thursday between lawyers for the strata and
the marijuana grower failed to resolve any issues. Those issues include work done on the roof to install a venting system without the approval of the strata. A meeting of the building’s strata in June, which wasn’t attended by the operator of the grow op, ordered him to hire a professional roofer to restore the roof to its prior condition. “We don’t like it,” said Ling. “The work should be done properly.” please see GROW Op, A3
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Will the City of Burnaby ban the sale of animals in pet stores? Will it decide to target specific breeds of dogs, applying stricter rules to them than other dogs? Those are two questions that will likely be answered in September, when a long-awaited update of Burnaby’s animal control bylaw will be presented to council, according to the city’s finance director. Denise Jorgenson said while city staff thought the new bylaw would have been ready in June, council suggested changes when staff presented it at a workshop earlier this month. At the workshop, council wanted two key issues in the bylaw separated out— whether or not to ban the sale of animals in pet stores and whether to put in breed-specific legislation for breeds such as pit bulls. That was out of a desire to give “enough time and attention to each of those very important aspects,” said Craig Collis, who was chief licence inspector at the time of the workshops (now assistant director of recreation). please see puppy, A3