(prepared by Martha Goodings)

The main purpose of this meeting was to hear a presentation from Peter Simon, of the City of Toronto 's Urban Forestry department, about what would be required for Roncesvalles Renewed, (RR), to become a model for a new approach to tree planting in Toronto, and what role members of RR can play.
Prior to Peter's talk, a few important items were discussed:

1 Street Furniture

Abby Bushby from the RR design committee brought up the proposed new street furniture. In her view, there are a lot of issues to be addressed, and members of the community need a detailed understanding of what is being proposed, and the different options available.
It was decided that a public forum at the library on street furniture would be the route to go.

Tim Dobbins, at the city is the person to contact to speak at this forum.
Mary agreed to arrange.

Abby also mentioned that The Friends of Dundas and Bloor group has extended their area to Bousted, (which is the northern boundary of the Roncesvalles BIA), so there are no gaps in coverage.

2 Parking

Mark Ellwood discussed the work he has been doing around parking. As many people are fearful of the effects of reduced parking, Mark quite rightly feels we need to have a good idea of the current situation, in order to understand how the loss of some spaces would affect business on the street.

Currently there are 237 legal parking spaces. Mark divided the street into 19 segments, and noted the actual parking in each segment.

He discovered that the busiest time is Saturday at 2 PM, when about 95% of the spaces were taken, with more than 100% at the centre ( Wright to Garden), where there was some double parking. Mark noted that there was massively more pedestrian traffic than people emerging from parked cars on the street at that time. In about 4 minutes, 75 people walked by.

He gave out copies of his survey, and will also put it on the website. He wants people to do the survey for their areas ( apparently it takes about half an hour and can be done walking babies, dogs, etc), and particularly at peak time, such as Sunday church time, late Saturday shopping, etc.

3 Connection with York University , and other students

Dave Cruikshank told us about a new venture involving York ’s Faculty of Environmental Studies. There will be a two-week workshop at the Wabash Fieldhouse, which is about to open.

During the first two weeks in May, two urban design and planning firms are working with students on a myriad of topics having to do with Roncesvalles . The goal for the students is to teach them the practical application of urban design and planning. The project also has the potential to generate valuable information on issues relevant to RR.

Gail Schillingford is one of the instructors as well as a member of the RMRA’s greening committee. She told us that two or three of the topics will be presented to the community. She also mentioned that Roncesvalles has one of the highest concentrations of live-work arrangements in the city making it a particular useful neighbourhood for learning key planning and design principles.

4 Sustainable Tree Planting by Peter Simon, from Urban Forestry

Peter Simon is our liaison at City Hall around tree planting. His focus with our group is new planting techniques for growing trees to maturity along urban main streets. He feels that there has never been a true appreciation of trees in urban settings. In some places, through luck as much as planning, trees have thrived in urban setting (the Annex neighbourhood in Toronto , the city of Paris ). Mainstreet trees need to share space underground with many other utilities including gas and hydro lines and telecommunication services and water mains.

Even though many people say they like trees on city main streets, trees are treated as an afterthought. They are not given the necessary requirements (decent soil, air circulation, water, space) to thrive, or even survive.

Peter explained that the planting of a tree involves more than just sticking a root ball in the ground. The roots go about 6o centimeters deep, and taper to 30 cms. The watermains become part of the planting approach, allowing storm water to percolate through the root system. Trees also need generous horizontal space underground for the roots to spread, where the soil does not become overly compacted. These planting conditions require paving tiles rather than an unbroken stretch of poured concrete, making it easier to access underground utilities in need of repair without damaging the tree's root system or compacting the surrounding soil. The cost of providing a suitable environment for a mainstreet tree to flourish, is about $8,000 per tree.

For trees to thrive, the sidewalks must be made of paving blocks (not poured concrete). Peter showed an area of College, near Kensington school where this is being done. It also requires that at least some of the utility wires be buried.

Peter Simon also showed us some slides of the new construction techniques for planting healthy trees. Soil trenches, rather than individual holes, have been dug along University Avenue. The trenches or pits allow the roots of individual trees to expand into the space occupied by the neighbouring tree, giving each tree double the space and creating a much healthier environment, closer to the way tree roots intermingle in nature. Also, an aeration pipe has been installed, by which the trees are also watered, and from time to time a compost tea is run through the pipe as well. The soil composition is also critical – mostly sand, for maximum drainage, mixed with clay and organic material.

Peter also said that a “fantastic new product” called silvi-cells (think of a plastic milk crate, except one big enough for tree roots to grow through) has been developed that could have application on Roncesvalles . These cells protect the soil from compacting, another major problem at present for our sidewalk trees.

Peter gave us some helpful information on how to go forward. City planners are now aware that $8,000 per tree is a realistic figure (another way to look at it, $1000 – $1,500 per linear foot of sidewalk) to plant a tree so it will thrive. Under the existing conditions, sidewalk trees survive only 3-7 years.

Proper conditions for trees are being constructed along St. Clair, due in large part to the efforts of the local councillor, Joe Mihivic in getting the necessary money. That said, Peter warned that the dynamics of the planning process (with the opposition and animosity around the streetcar right-of-way) did not serve the community well, and prevented them from negotiating other streetscape improvements.

Peter believes, if a proper cost benefit study was done, this price would actually be economical. Not only would the trees last their expected lifetime, but the sidewalk would not have to be dug up for constant utility repairs, etc. Such repairs wreak havoc on the trees as well as leaving behind unsightly asphalt patches.

Peter has agreed to talk to Gord Perks, and make sure he is aware of all these developments.

Next Steps

Mark agreed to talk to John, to see where Gord, and other city officials are in the process.

Marty Collier, who is a new member felt that we should be moving ahead with a more open process, such as more public discussion, and Rakesh Ratti suggested we conduct a door to door blitz.

Comments from me, the note taker

This presentation was extremely important. We have always said that we wanted a better tree canopy for Roncesvalles . In fact, that is one of our key goals.

We now know what that will entail, and the cost whicy requires that we move to a new stage.

As soon as those who are finding out where we are at with the city have more information, before we go to the community I think we need a Saturday morning strategy meeting to plan, collectively, our next steps.

It is way more expensive than many of us realized. Still possible, but we have to move from just saying vaguely that we want better trees, to saying what we need to have happen to get these trees, and engaging the community on how to get it.