{"id":12704,"date":"2015-11-25T23:27:10","date_gmt":"2015-11-26T04:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=12704"},"modified":"2015-11-25T23:27:10","modified_gmt":"2015-11-26T04:27:10","slug":"more-information-needed-on-tree-protection-say-councillors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/more-information-needed-on-tree-protection-say-councillors\/","title":{"rendered":"More information needed on tree protection, say Councillors"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Another day and another report to come on Aurora\u2019s tree protection bylaw.<\/p>\n

Council is set to send proposed revisions on tightening up the Town\u2019s existing bylaw back to staff for further review, following last week\u2019s General Committee level.<\/p>\n

The bylaw, which proposed, among other provisions, tougher restrictions on the numbers of trees homeowners can remove from their properties over a twelve month period sparked \u2013 as it tends to do \u2013 heated discussions around Council with some stressing a perceived need for tougher measures and others insistent these measures are addressing a \u201cproblem that doesn\u2019t exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not sure why Council is looking for more restrictive bylaws when we refused not that long ago to enforce our own encroachment criteria when we have residents encroaching on Town property,\u201d said Mayor Geoff Dawe. \u201cWe want more restrictive bylaws in one place, but we won\u2019t enforce laws that we have in another place. We need to be consistent in how we enforce our own bylaws.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mayor Dawe was one of the more vocal critics of the proposed changes last week, citing in particular a proposed change which would have limited homeowners, even on larger lots, to removing two trees per year without a permit. This, he said, didn\u2019t make sense for larger property owners who have more trees to contend with. <\/p>\n

\u201cI put all the trees in, and there\u2019s a lot,\u201d said Mayor Dawe of his own home, which he purchased in 1988 with just one tree on the property. \u201cWhat gives this Council the right to tell me I can\u2019t take them out? No one has ever explained that to me. I put all the [trees] in and I did a really bad job, by the way. They are too close together and they look like crap. That is why I want to get rid of some trees. I don\u2019t need an arborist to tell me it is not in good shape. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a ludicrous discussion. Most people are very responsible and the ones who aren\u2019t, like that clown down on Yonge Street who took out how many acres of trees, do you think he came to the Town to ask for a permit? I don\u2019t think so. We have spent how much time on this item over the last four years. That is not responsible. I am just trying to bring some sanity to this [discussion] but I don\u2019t think I am working.\u201d<\/p>\n

His arguments were bolstered by the assertion from Al Downey, Aurora\u2019s Director of Parks and Recreation, that his department has issued just 15 tree cutting permits over the last ten years. <\/p>\n

\u201cAre we trying to solve a problem that doesn\u2019t exist?\u201d Mayor Dawe asked, citing the tree bylaw as being deemed an effective tool in Aurora\u2019s recent Urban Forest Study. \u201cAre we solving a problem we do not have?\u201d<\/p>\n

Councillor Michael Thompson expressed similar frustrations as Mayor Dawe.<\/p>\n

\u201cHas anyone seen that movie Groundhog Day?\u201d he asked. \u201cThis very much reminds me of the circle we did last term. For those that are coming through this for the first time, perhaps you know why it didn\u2019t get resolved in the last term. However we finally decide [what the number of trees is], it needs to be applied fairly equally, be it a commercial property or private property, across the board. You have got to figure out what is the right metric and then you have to apply it equally throughout the whole community.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the start of the discussions, which dominated the bulk of a nearly three-hour committee meeting, Councillor Gaertner, one of the leading voices around the Council table for tighter restrictions on tree removal, said she had changed her mind on one item since Council last kicked this particular can in the last term. She was on the same page as Mayor Dawe when it came to the number of trees that could be removed on larger lots.<\/p>\n

\u201cI may have a small property, someone else might have a large property and we\u2019re still restricted to removing the number of trees,\u201d she said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t seem fair. [Determining the number of trees] by lot size seems fair.\u201d <\/p>\n

Councillor Jeff Thom said he agreed with this kind of scaling before asking staff how they came to the recommendation of limiting things to two trees across the board. This was a \u201cmade in Aurora\u201d solution that came out of talks with the last Council, said Mr. Downey, noting they previously proposed a metric with a similar sliding scale.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou mentioned this might be solving a problem that doesn\u2019t exist, and that might be true, but right now the current bylaw states that you can remove four trees,\u201d said Councillor Thom. \u201cIf you have a half-acre or a third-acre lot, I suspect most lots of that nature have four trees max. If you wanted to remove all four, fine, it takes two years to remove all the trees and you don\u2019t need a permit for that. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason you make it smaller is so if you do have the intent [to clear cut] you\u2019ll have to wait longer or you\u2019ll have to go to Council to justify why you need to remove the trees. Some might call that restrictive or onerous, some might call that responsible if you want to retain the tree canopy.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another day and another report to come on Aurora\u2019s tree protection bylaw.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-3iU","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 23:55:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12704\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}