Idea of citywide front-yard parking moratorium a political can of worms

Nationalpost.com
April 6, 2016
By Chris Selley

loor West Village resident Jennifer Hargreaves understands why digging up your front yard for a parking pad is a controversial issue in Toronto. Any new paved surface hinders the city’s ability to absorb storm water. However nicely a parking spot is landscaped, it is no match aesthetically for a lawn.

“If everyone has parking pads there’s no front yards,” says Hargreaves, a mother of two who works at home. “So I understand from an environmental perspective, and from a curb appeal/community feel perspective as well.”

But the daytime parking situation in her neighbourhood is murder, she says. “I’ve got to carry two infants, and groceries (a long way) to get to my house.”

So more than a year ago, Hargreaves and her husband spent $393 applying for a front-yard parking pad. The city turned them down, citing a vulnerable tree. They then spent $822 more to appeal the decision to Etobicoke York Community Council, and an additional $500 for the opinion of an independent arborist. And on Tuesday, subject to myriad tree-friendly conditions, that council granted its application.

Many are not as lucky. Fewer than half of applications are approved by the city itself. And Toronto East York Community Council (TEYCC) in particular is a very tough nut to crack on appeal. Tuesday marked the first time in downtown Coun. Gord Perks’ career that he voted in favour of one - and it was a unique situation that might never recur.

If an unusual political alliance that includes left-wingers like Perks, centrists like Coun. Shelley Carroll, and conservatives like Deputy Mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong has its druthers, Hargreaves’ may be one of the last front-yard parking pads ever installed in Toronto. In December, City Council directed staff to examine extending an existing moratorium on new pads in the old City of Toronto across the 416, and Carroll says momentum is on their side.

One’s home is one’s castle, and perhaps one’s front yard, too. But the policy as it stands is difficult to defend. Under Section 918 of the Toronto Municipal Code, which is 26 pages long, residents of most wards cannot apply to the city for a front-yard parking pad at all. In some cases, they can nevertheless appeal directly to their municipal council, as can residents whose applications the city denies.

That brings politics into the game, and politics isn’t good at balancing sympathetic individual concerns against goals like storm water management. (Perks calls front-yard parking pads “a ward heeler’s dream.”) On TEYCC, victory or defeat can hinge on which councillors happen to comprise quorum at the moment. “It’s a crap shoot,” concedes Coun. Janet Davis.

You might be out of luck simply because someone went for a pee.

“I take absolutely no pleasure in watching someone who’s paid a fee, hired a landscape architect, canvassed their neighbours, been turned down by the city, paid another fee (to appeal), taken a day off work, come down and watch the guy in front of them get (a parking pad), watch (a councillor) leave the room and then they don’t get it,” says Perks. “It’s a horrible way to do it.”

A citywide front-yard parking moratorium - with some very narrow exceptions, perhaps - might be more plausible than it would seem at first. Perks says there was blowback at first over the ban downtown, but it didn’t last. In many outlying wards, traditionally at odds with downtown on automotive issues, it’s simply not an issue. People who have driveways and garages neither need nor want to park in their front yards.

This can of worms is certainly full to bursting. If a moratorium involved pursuing Toronto’s innumerable illegal front-yard parking pads, it might get very ugly very quickly. But Carroll and Minnan-Wong are both willing to talk tough, and they make good sense.

“I’m prepared to be heartless about this,” says Carroll. “You have to make life choices. If you absolutely need a front-yard parking spot, she suggests, “you’re living in the wrong neighbourhood.”

“You buy into the neighbourhood knowing what the rules are,” echoes Minnan-Wong - or you should, anyway. He argues parts of North Toronto have become significantly less attractive thanks to front-yard parking.

“There’s an environmental reason” for a moratorium, he says, “but there’s also a ‘looks-like-s-t’ reason.”

“When we bought the house, the people who lived there told us there was no problem with parking. But that’s a joke,” laughs Hargreaves. In future, Toronto homebuyers may have to do more homework on such matters. Considering the unfair, random and undemocratic current process, that might well be for the best.