Fletcher gets City Council to double Environment Days to hold one in East York

\ By Gary Webb-Proctor \

Although it still must pass through the upcoming budgeting process, a motion by Toronto-Danforth Ward 14 councillor Paula Fletcher that enables her to hold an Environment Day in East York this year was resoundingly endorsed by Toronto City Council on Thurs. January 31.

As passed by a 21-3 vote, the motion also enables other councillors who feel the need to hold two such days per year rather than the one that had been planned by staff in the city’s Solid Waste Management department.

In previous years each councillor has been allotted one such day on which city staff comes out to collect various types of recyclable and hazardous waste as well as to hand out free backyard compost and educational materials to area residents. As some councillors noted, the events have a community festival feel and usually include displays by various environmental stewardship groups and other city agencies such as Toronto Water.

But despite the reduction in the size of city council by nearly half by the Ford government last year, which also doubled the size of most wards, the number of Environment Days had still been scheduled to be just one per councillor —until Ms. Fletcher requested an additional one for the convenience of her East York area constituents.

“That’s what we said would happen, that people would lose services that things would be cut and there’s your first one,” Ms. Fletcher said in a telephone interview with East York Chronicle a few days before the meeting.

She raised the issue with city staff on January 7 when she wrote a letter noting that “I … see that there is only one day being offered for each ward this year.

“I am requesting that Ward 14 receive two Environment Days to accommodate residents in both sides of the new larger ward,” she wrote.

“I have always hosted the former Ward 30 Environment Day in Riverdale, which is far from the residents who live in East York. I would like to also host another Environment Day in the north part of the ward.”

After being told the policy change would have to be approved by council, Fletcher struck her motion to add to this month’s meeting agenda.

Discussion of her proposal —which also included a soundly rebuked motion by Etobicoke councillor Doug Hollyday to do away with the program entirely— also revealed that this year the compost will be pre-bagged prior to being delivered to the locations where the events are being held.

Under questioning by one councillor about the cost of bagging versus dumping the compost in a heap, Matt Keliher, newly appointed General Manager of the city’s Solid Wasted Management department, said it worked out to about the same, since residue from the unbagged piles needed to be cleaned up by staff after each event.

The cost of adding the extra day per ward would work out to about $375,000 across the city, Mr. Keliher said, bumping the total up to about $1 million for the 25 wards plus mayor, compared to $900,000 spent last year for one events in 44 wards and the mayor’s.