Abandoned, vandalized car squats in southwest Edmonton for a month and counting

An abandoned vehicle that had been parked in a west Edmonton neighbourhood for weeks has finally been towed.

UPDATE: The car is no longer in the spot as of Friday.

Cyrell Cainglet’s security camera picked up the figure of a person leaving a car parked in front of his house one evening in Edgemont.

That was a month ago.

The car, a Honda sedan, is still there, its rear end jutting out into a feeder road in the southwest Edmonton neighbourhood just enough that it partly blocks a lane.

“It’s been hard for cars to drive by when they’re coming from both directions,” Cainglet told CTV News Edmonton on Wednesday.

The neglected car’s tires are now flat, and in the last week, someone broke some of its windows.

City parking enforcement staff has placed a $50 parking ticket on the car and given it two 72-hour warnings. One of the warnings is from December, listing a different spot in the neighbourhood.

And although Cainglet and neighbour Wilf Kuhn have repeatedly contacted the city’s 311 service since mid-January, the car remains perched next to a windrow.

“They basically made a note of it and said they’re very sorry, and they’ll look into it and they’ll take care of it,” Kuhn said. “They’ve been saying the same thing every time we’ve called for virtually the last three-plus weeks.”

He said Edmonton police told him they can’t deal with the vehicle because their impound lot is full. The police service told CTV News Edmonton on Wednesday the lot located on the northside near the CN railyards and the former municipal airport is operating at a “limited capacity” because of ongoing nearby construction projects, including the Yellowhead Trail expansion.

A spokesperson for the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) told CTV News Edmonton in a statement on Thursday morning that, as the nearby work on the Yellowhead concludes near the end of the year, police and the city plan to allocate a site adjacent to the police’s seized-vehicle lot to increase capacity.

“Given the current state, the EPS is prioritizing vehicles that pose a safety risk or required as part of a criminal investigation,” said Aminah Syed, a police communications advisor.

Mayor Andrew Knack admits the city doesn’t employ enough enforcement officers and doesn’t have enough towing capacity to deal with problems such as the one in Edgemont.

He said Wednesday at city hall that the city needs to ensure it’s “investing in the right areas” by “build(ing) the budget from the ground up” this year.

“I think there’s a major gap right now in the people-facing services, those services that impact people’s day-to-day life,” Knack told media.

“They’re the most visible. It’s snow removal, it’s grass cutting, it’s bylaw enforcement, the things that people expect that should be a basic expectation, but I don’t think we’re reaching the standard we should be.

“We need to set a much higher bar for ourselves, and through this budget process, my plan is to put far more resources into the public-facing services that people expect us to be doing right from the start, because it’s not good enough.”

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Connor Hogg