It was all a bit of a misunderstanding.
That’s how High River Mayor Craig Snodgrass describes a recent incident involving a local woman ticketed for riding her horse in town.
Shelby Anne had garnered a great deal of attention riding her horse around town, some of the attention was of the negative variety.
“Our guys absolutely did their job. This all stems from complaints that we get from the public on it and that’s what triggers our bylaw officers to look into things and they did that and there was some discrepancies as to whether it was allowed, or isn’t it allowed, we don’t want horses in park spaces or school grounds for various reasons so where did it pertain to just riding on the street?”
“They went to and got our lawyers to give them a legal opinion and unfortunately nowadays the way the legal system works it’s everybody trying to cover each other’s butt, so I have found they always take the safe route, and their recommendation was to not allow the horses and that’s what they took back to Shelby.”.
Snodgrass says council tries to stay out of individual issues between residents and municipal enforcement.
“At the end of the day after some good chats with our staff and CAO and protective services, my piece is, any Town of High River bylaw is owned by town council of the day and that needs to the first question that comes to us. It’s not a lawyer’s bylaw, it’s town council’s bylaw so we’re all on the same page there if there’s any discrepancies as to how a bylaw’s written that it comes to council first,” Snodgrass says.
He says the town’s rich agricultural heritage is part of what the town has been, is today and will be into the future and part of that is some people like to ride their horses into town and stop at Tim Horton’s, Memory Lane or the most natural spot at the Hitchin’ Post.
He’s still asking riders to make sure their horses are well trained, and they won’t have a rodeo on Centre Street if someone honks their horn and drivers need to be respectful around the riders and their horses.
