Dogs, Wood Chips and the Dirty Business of Campaigning

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Dogs of Ward 14.

I have been campaigning for three months, and I have been licked, slobbered on, jumped on, covered in mud and had my pockets thoroughly investigated for treats and balls.

The dogs, the parks and the people have been some of the best parts of this campaign, and I am genuinely grateful for them.

Ward 14 has some great dog communities. People meet every day, usually at the same time, and they know every dog, every owner, every broken gate, muddy corner, bad surface and missing bench. They know who is away, whose dog is sick, which puddle never dries and which patch of ground is about to become a disaster.

The dogs mostly sort themselves out too. Big dogs, little dogs, old dogs, designer dogs and mutts of completely uncertain origin all run amok together. Someone steals a ball, two dogs disagree, there is some barking, sniffing, and a brief diplomatic crisis, and then everybody gets on with playing. They sometimes manage conflict better than we do as we watch the disdain for politics that has permeated our consciousness.

Dog parks and parks in general create community in a way we do not talk about enough. Not the polished, brochure-ready version of community, but the real kind, built in the cold and rain while holding a coffee in one hand and a bag of dog crap in the other. People with absolutely nothing else in common stand around talking while their beasts chase each other. They notice when someone has not shown up. They know whose dog is getting old and who needs a hand getting through the gate. They have built something meaningful together.

They also know an astonishing amount about surfaces.

I have now heard more about dog park surfaces than I ever expected to know, and somewhere along the way I became a wood-chip advocate. Wood chips are messy. They get kicked around, stick to things and end up in shoes, socks, car mats and places I am not going to describe. They need replacing and raking. Fine. Give people a rake. People are already doing much of the maintenance themselves, cleaning pathways of chips.

Grass is lovely until you put hundreds of dogs on it, at which point it becomes mud. It gets destroyed, has to be restored, and everyone has to stay off it while it recovers.

Artificial dog turf can work very well in a heavily used park if it is properly built, drained and washed regularly. It is also hot in the summer, expensive, and hard to replace.

Greenwood is the park everyone points to, and for good reason. It works. It also took several attempts and a lot of money to get there, which should mean we learned something.

Then there are pebbles.

Pebbles are stupid. I don't know how else to put this. Dogs don't like them. People don't like them. They are terrible for wheelchairs and mobility devices, difficult for kids and older people, and apparently we needed years of municipal experience to establish that loose rocks are not an ideal running surface.

Please stop putting pebbles in dog parks.

Greenwood is also what we celebrate when we talk about good dog parks in Ward 14. We should. It is a great park. But we tend to stop the accessibility conversation at the park gate.

You still have to get there.

That matters if you use a wheelchair or walker. It matters if walking any distance is difficult. It matters if you are older. It matters if you do not drive. And it matters when you are doing all of that with a dog.

No streetcar runs along Dundas to Greenwood Park. Dundas becomes a very different transit proposition east of Broadview, and getting to a beautifully accessible dog park isn't necessarily an accessible trip.

That is the part we keep missing.

We can build the best surface in Toronto, with accessible gates, benches, and drainage, and absolutely celebrate it. But accessibility starts before you arrive at the gate.

A great dog park that some residents cannot reasonably get to cannot be our answer for the entire ward. Greenwood should show us what is possible. Then we need to make the neighbourhood parks work too.

This is partly why I did not fill out questionnaires asking candidates to commit to more restrictions on dogs in parks. We have to share our parks. There should be places where dogs are leashed, places where children can play without dogs running through them and places where dogs can run. We are a city of almost three million people. Surely we can figure this out without treating dogs and their owners as a municipal crisis.

None of this means every dog belongs off-leash everywhere. Dogs running loose in parks that are not off-leash areas still need to be under control, and a dog that does not reliably respond to its owner should not be running free. Dog bites are serious; aggressive dogs need appropriate restrictions, and owners must understand what their dog can safely handle.

We can also be a little more creative about sharing limited park space. In some parks, designated off-leash hours, perhaps before 8 a.m. and after 8 p.m., could give dogs room to run while leaving the busiest daytime hours for children, families and other park users. For instance, Jimmie Simpson. We cannot ignore that dogs are in this park. We can make it safe and reasonable by restricting times.

Not every park needs the same solution. Good rules should reduce conflict, protect people and still recognize that dogs and their owners are part of our neighbourhood.

The Metrolinx consultation at Gerrard and Carlaw was a perfect example of what happens when the people who actually use a place understand it better than the people redesigning it. The new replacement dog park that sits at the top of Boston St. is long. That sounds small until you watch people use it. Dogs can actually run. You can throw a ball down the length of the park without launching it at somebody coming out of a transit station. The shape works. So keep it there.

It does not need to become a grand design exercise. It is lit properly. Add more benches, and provide rakes. The large square space around the new station can become useful public space for people, children's play structures, seating and trees. Let the dogs keep the long run that already works.

At that consultation, I listened to residents explain why they wanted wood chips while the former incumbent arrived late and seemed rather dismissive of the wood-chip constituency. I stand with the wood-chip people. They had done the work. They knew what their dogs could handle, what people could navigate and what would turn into a swamp by November. I never expected wood chips to become an election issue for me, but here we are.

Hideaway Park tells a similar story. Behind Pape Avenue is this little park trying to do about six jobs at once. There is the dog area, children's space, and that old concrete wading-pool bowl. Residents want the water area modernized so kids can run through the water rather than wading through an old bowl of standing water. This is hardly an extravagant demand.

People remember a larger plan for Hideaway. They remember development contributions being discussed and improvements being promised. Yet the capital work moving forward now focuses on the dog portion, while the water-play area residents have been talking about remains unresolved. This is how people lose faith in City Hall. They are not stupid and they do not have collective amnesia.

They remember what was promised, when money was mentioned and when plans changed without anyone bothering to explain why.

Then there is Thompson Street Parkette. They meet there every day around lunch and know that tiny park better than anyone sitting in an office at City Hall possibly could. They know its history, the dogs, the surface, the surrounding development, and the development contributions that were supposed to benefit it. Also. Mabel the St. Bernard has the longest tongue and slobber and wins the award for mass mucous.

Then there is the money.

We should not need a séance to find the funds.

Toronto now has a citywide Off-Leash Area Enhancement Program. Great. We need it. It is finally addressing bad surfaces, drainage, gates, fencing, and accessibility, and both Hideaway and Thompson Street Parkette are on the list. 

But that is citywide capital money. It is not the same as development money already collected or set aside for particular neighbourhood parks, and we should stop talking about these pots of money as though they all came from the same municipal couch cushion.

Hideaway had $40,000 specifically secured through Section 37 for improvements to Hideaway Park, plus separate money for local off-leash improvements. The park requires an overhaul, and improvements that were promised (again) with surrounding development.

This is the part of City Hall that drives people crazy. We collect money from development because development creates pressure on parks and public spaces. Then the development gets built, people arrive, dogs arrive, everyone uses the park, the surface gets destroyed, and somehow residents are expected to become amateur forensic accountants to figure out why the money hasn't followed through on the promised improvements.

If money has been collected for a park,

spend it on the park.

Then there is Thompson Street Parkette, where the residents have apparently been keeping better financial records than City Hall.

Thompson Street Parkette residents have been following roughly $300,000 connected to the renewal of their dog park. The money did not magically turn into a better park. Council had to allocate it to the capital project, which required political work to move it. That did not happen, so the funds sit ... somewhere.

They were correct about the $300,000. I went back and found it. In 2015, when Streetcar's Riverside Square development was approved, Council required the developer to contribute $300,000 specifically for an off-leash dog area adjacent to the development or elsewhere in the old Ward 30. It was even indexed for construction inflation, so we are not necessarily talking about $300,000 anymore.

Here is the slightly ridiculous part. Paula Fletcher herself moved the amendment that created the fund. She did not move an amendment to release the funds, so they remain unutilized.

So the money was secured. The development was built. People moved in. Their dogs moved in. Thompson Street Parkette continued to be used every day. The surface continued to be terrible. More than a decade later, residents are still asking what happened to the dog-park money. In unanswered letters, calls and advocacy.

This is where municipal government turns something very simple into archaeology. A developer gives the City money for an off-leash dog area. An off-leash dog area needs work. Residents know about the money. Residents ask for the work. Somehow everyone ends up digging through eleven-year-old Council minutes trying to reunite the money with the dogs.

Residents should not have to understand Section 37 agreements, reserve accounts, capital-budget amendments and Council motions to get money collected for neighbourhood improvements actually spent in their neighbourhood.

This was not a mystery pot of money. Council specifically negotiated it from the Riverside Square development for an off-leash area right there.

So yes, I want to know where that indexed contribution is today, what it is worth, why it wasn't allocated to Thompson Street when residents asked for the park to be renewed, and why the exiting incumbent didn't pass a motion to release the funds.

At some point, “the money is there, but nobody moved it” stops being an accounting explanation and starts being the problem.

Because if we have managed to keep dog-park money and a dog park apart for eleven years, that may be the most successful leash program in Toronto.

And this is ultimately why I am running.

I live here. I work here. I walk these parks, use these streets and pay the same taxes. I have already voted for myself in this election because I actually live in Ward 14.

The decisions made at City Hall are not theoretical to me. I live with them because my family, two dogs and I are your neighbours.

I also know that representation is more than showing up for the photo when the project is finally announced. Councillors have to understand the budget, know where development contributions sit, bring the motions required to move them, and follow capital projects until the money becomes something useful.

Sometimes that means billions of dollars of infrastructure. Sometimes it means finding $300,000 that was collected for dogs and actually spending it on the damn dog park.

Ward 14 voters can decide whether they want continuity with the previous administration and its chosen candidate, or something different. I am offering something different: local representation, municipal experience and someone prepared to do the deeply unglamorous work of figuring out where the money is and getting it into the infrastructure it was supposed to pay for.

Apparently that includes wood chips.

October 6-11th advanced polls, or October 26th.

VOTE CHAPELLE.