Who Is This Mysterious Someone Who Controls Our Fate

Whether it is an event at Cherry Beach or Dufferin Grove or the neighbor on the next street why do these things piss off "somebody" that we can never put a face to but they seem to have a direct line to the bureaucratic minions and the rain begins on everyone's parade. Open the shades and get a life. When I first read about the Dufferin Grove project I saw it as a community iniative to stop people pissing on the trees and promote environmental options.

Pumped on poop

Dufferin Grove flushes out city ’crats in stinky composting toilet controversy

By MIKE SMITH

Dufferin Grove has been described as a "community centre without walls." Now, arguments over the construction of a compost toilet may be making a case for a bit of City Hall without the hall.

When an eco-friendly toilet was donated recently, park volunteers expected to do the same as they did last year, when they built a cob courtyard and fireplace (made of earth and straw) near the playground: pitch in and get the job done. They went to digging a 2-foot foundation hole for the outhouse, which was slated to be built of the same mud and straw.

But someone complained, and staff from the buildings department concerned over an unpermitted "construction site" contacted the parks department.

A steel fence was put up around the dig, children were barred and steel-toe boots mandated, ironically making the safety measures the most dangerous thing about the site. Bureaucracy does not react well to things it doesn't already have sheafs of documents on.

But after an anxious meeting of 75 people at the rink house on September 12 and lobbying by local parks manager Sandy Straw, parks supervisor Peter Leiss and councillor Adam Giambrone, the project is a go. Architect Martin Liefhebber checked the plans and, with only minor changes, certified the construction.

Staff at buildings department now say they will fast-track the approval as soon as the certification reaches them. At a certain point in the construction, it will be re-categorized as an art project instead of a building project. That means children can help again and the fence will come down. But the delays have meant construction won't continue in earnest till spring.

Straw says she has always taken a "community involvement approach,'' which doesn't always fit into the city flow chart. "Parks is so front-line – we're the ones who have to push the envelope,'' she tells me.

Projects like this "open up opportunities that the city, with financial constraints, might not be able to do."

She says that after a playground was built at Kew Gardens, with $228,000 from a community fundraiser topping up the measly $72,000 parks had budgeted, it was easier for her to facilitate a similar project in High Park.

But if we really want more experimentation at the local level, it seems the first step is abandoning the idea that city legislation implicitly prohibits anything that it doesn't explicitly permit. Currently, it's easier for condo developers to apply for variances to rules than it is for mud mounds.

"Straw and Leiss have a job that's incredibly hard," says Georgie Donais, a volunteer coordinator. "They have to fight against the whole city structure."

But what if every park group had clearly codified ties to the city through local councils or advisory committees? Council is already talking about delegating power to community councils; could that process empower the model loosely developed by the Grove?

"You're light years ahead of where the community engagement piece is right now," Straw told the rink meeting. "We don't even have the documents to show where you are."

Well, behind a fence – but maybe near an open door.