LETTER: Is bureaucracy discouraging young folks in Surrey?<\/p>\n
Published 7:00 am Monday, May 11, 2026<\/p>\n
Editor,<\/p>\n
For the last decade or so I have hired local teenagers to do yard work and other chores.<\/p>\n
Growing up in the \u201860s, nearly all my friends mowed lawns in the summer for spending money, and in a few cases to finance world travel after high school. It seemed like a good tradition to maintain, and it feels good to support a neighbour kid.<\/p>\n
My first yard man soon moved away, but the next one worked with me for nearly 10 years until career and romance issues intervened. I was about to engage a garden service when I spotted a poster on the pole advertising a local high school student for yard work. I hired him, and he\u2019s turning out to be great; reliable, conscientious, etc.<\/p>\n
Yesterday I asked him how his customer base was growing. He explained that he was told to take the posters down or face a fine. Apparently someone complained.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know the details, but I can\u2019t fathom why a kid who shows initiative and is willing to work should be squashed, rather than encouraged. We all moan about \u201ctoo much screen time\u201d and \u201centitlement,\u201d but God forbid that a young man willing to get off the couch to earn a bit of spending money should be applauded.<\/p>\n
Michael Dickens <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LETTER: Is bureaucracy discouraging young folks in Surrey? Published 7:00 am Monday, May 11, 2026 Editor, For the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-662472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}