An absurd solution to a non-compliant basketball net

NationalPost.com
Chris Selley
Nov. 3, 2015

Among the less-than-earth-shattering items Toronto’s mayor and 44 city councillors will consider at this week’s council meeting are four “applications to remove a private tree”; three liquor licence applications; and “the installation of mid-block pedestrian activated traffic control signals,” which is what humans call a crosswalk.

These excruciating minutiae are routine. Council’s last meeting featured something pretty special, though: member’s motion 9.7 requested “permission for the installation and maintenance of a basketball net fronting.”

Bernard Bourret installed the controversial net last summer for his sons Jackson, 16, and Mitchel, 11, on what he knew to be city property in his front yard, on a lovely leafy street near Kingston Road and Woodbine. But he made no secret of it. He says the city advised where he could dig safely. And in short order the family had a local hit on its hands. Kids dropped by and played with the Bourret boys, and if they weren’t around, there were always balls free on the front porch.

For a year, everyone was happy. But then in July, along came city hall: a friendly bylaw officer informed Bourret the net was non-compliant. Local councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon, who tabled the motion, suspects an unidentified “curmudgeonly neighbour” blew the whistle: not only is the base of the net on public property, but the net itself overhangs the sidewalk, flouting the very notion of law and order.

So the net came out. But the boys did not concede defeat, however.

“You want to learn to advocate for yourselves?” Bourret says he asked them. “I said if you want to you can try and get a petition going in the neighbourhood, and see how people feel about it. If they support you, good. And if they don’t, well, you’re no worse for that.”

The neighbourhood did indeed support them. Armed with 59 signatures, they headed down to McMahon’s office, where Bourret says they were advised to … test the inspector’s resolve, shall we say. The net went back in on Aug. 17. Wholesome fun returned. But then so did the friendly inspector.

Thanks to the petition and some well-connected neighbours, the Bourrets had McMahon’s attention. City staff proposed an “encroachment agreement” under which the Bourrets would assume liability for their “encroachment” upon public property — normally a simple extension of a homeowner’s insurance coverage, according to Kyp Perikleous, director of transportation services for Toronto and East York. That’s what city council approved.

In many ways, then, this is a good news story. “It’s very validating to them,” says Bourret of his sons’ experience. “Our kids are a little more guarded than other kids, and it was great for them. When you learn to follow rules all the time and the rules make sense, it’s great. But when the rules don’t make sense,” he says, you don’t necessarily have to take no for an answer.

In other ways, however, this is a maddening tale. It shouldn’t have taken all this palaver to discover there was a fair and easy solution ready at hand. And then there’s the absurdity of city council, representing a population larger than six provinces, concerning itself with a bloody basketball net.

“I was so embarrassed to bring it (to council),” says McMahon. “I just thought it could be solved (a) with city staff, or (b) at community council.”

Not so, says Perikleous. Community councils and staff can only approve encroachment agreements relating to specific items laid out in bylaws. Basketball nets aren’t among them. At one point during last month’s council meeting, Scarborough councillor Ron Moeser even had the net held down for debate. “He did not want it to be precedent-setting,” says McMahon. “(But) basketball nets aren’t going to come and take over your street. And even if they did, is that a bad thing?”

That’s a question neighbourhoods might answer very differently — and they should be entitled to do so. McMahon supports the idea of delegating some local matters to community councils, but that’s easier said than done; it’s limited by provincial statute, and it is not clear the will exists on council.

In any event, the majority of local matters get rubber-stamped at city council, with not too much time wasted. But the need to have a council for 2.6 million people sign off on a basketball net that should probably be decided by staff, in consultation with its owners and neighbours, is an invitation to precisely the sort of meddling officialdom of which this city needs decidedly less.