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Jutta Mason, Editor
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Friends of Dufferin Grove Park Website and Newsletter
Editor:
Jutta Mason
Illustrations:
Jane LowBeer
Webmaster:
Henrik Bechmann (bechmann.ca)
Digital photographs:
Wallie Seto
E-mail:
editor@dufferinpark.ca
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www.dufferinpark.ca
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875 Dufferin Street
This website was originally developed thanks to a generous grant from the Toronto Parks and Trees Foundation.
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From the editor
THE RECREATION SERVICE PLAN: THE MOST GRANDIOSE SCHEME OF ALL
Just before the city workers’ strike last summer, Parks, Forestry and Recreation General Manager Brenda Patterson asked the Executive Committee of City Council to approve the development a new “Recreation Service Plan,” based on four principles: equitable access, quality, inclusion, and capacity building. Unsurprisingly, the councillors voted yes. So the city staff got ready to work on a new way to shape our public spaces.
The work plan for making the Service Plan was to include a bit of community involvement. The staff report said: “A strategy to engage staff, key stakeholders, and the broader community in the development of the Service Plan will take place over the next several months.”
But then the strike began, and lasted for six weeks. Recently, a good six months after the community consultation was supposed to begin, I asked city staff about the timing. A Service Planner wrote back that it might happen in late fall of this year (i.e. around city election time). In the meantime, he wrote, “ the project team is making steady progress on developing a data base to house information that will be gathered from stakeholders and the community. Once the foundation has been laid and the project is fully back on schedule, residents will be given opportunities to provide their input to the service planning process.“
Making the blueprint and laying the foundation first, then asking the people who have to live with the structure, what they want? That certainly seems like a “bogus consultation process.” And it raises a question. Is this plan a structure built on the four pillars of equitable, access, quality, and inclusion, and capacity building – or are these four principles more like the four legs of a Trojan Horse, entering the city’s public spaces via the sleeping sentries of City Council.?
Verdict: a Trojan Horse. Reading the rationale of the Recreation Service Plan, you can begin to make out the rest of the horse. Parks, Forestry and Recreation management staff want to shape our public spaces centrally, all of them, in one grandiose plan. They intend to “articulate the diverse recreation and leisure needs of the City’s many communities; provide a basis for decision-making; and establish priorities and principles for investments.” In their report they see themselves as scientists, ready to “establish consistent processes and methodologies.” It’s no wonder that they haven’t got time until much later to ask ordinary people, or even their own field staff, for advice. Their project is too big for that, and inside their own bubble, too important. They will speak for everyone.
It’s not surprising that the councillors didn’t take note of the grandiosity of the Service Plan last June. The Neighbourhoods Committee was once one of the most active committees of Council. Now most of what counts comes through the Executive Committee. Sitting on that central committee, it’s no wonder the councillors didn’t object to the city staff’s power grab. But now that so many people have spoken up to counter the arena takeover, the councillors will have to begin paying attention. There will be lots more troubles to come, and this is an election year....
CENTRAL CONTROL: If the City’s recreation management wants a new level of central control over all public spaces, how well equipped are they for this self-appointed task? The verdict: not very.
Problem #1: No continuity of leadership: since the last election, there have been three different general managers and an unstable number of directors varying between 4 and 8 in number, some of them with uncertain portfolios. The most experienced of the directors was declared redundant in 2004 and forced into early retirement. Another director was escorted out of his office in 2009, after a surprise dismissal. Two more have recently taken retirement.
Problem #2: No continuity of structure: in the past 15 years there have been four major restructurings of this department, with the fifth now in the planning stages. In 2003, City Council directed staff to hold off on the restructuring of that year. Staff brought in virtually the same plan two years later, without resistance, or much interest, from city council.
Problem #3: Little direct experience: Many Parks and Recreation management staff have spent little or no time working at the front lines of any public spaces. Therefore they often can’t give helpful direction to the supervisory or front-line staff.
Example: the effects of these problems on the outdoor rinks: Parks and Recreation management often doesn’t seem to know how to make outdoor rinks work well, or how to figure out what’s not working, and why. The staff don’t remember, or never knew, how outdoor ice-making works. They don’t know how to structure the work of ice rink maintenance or rink supervision in a fiscally workable way. They don’t know what ice resurfacing equipment they have (a recent freedom of information request asking that question has been extended to 60 days, to allow more search time). They don’t know how to turn rink clubhouses into neighbourhood social spaces, only into locker rooms. They don’t know how to rescue faltering skate-instruction programs. They don’t know how to get rink information out into the community, or even how to correct schedule mistakes on the city website. They don’t know how to set up programs like kids’ hockey, so they rely on volunteers who know how. (They make them buy permits, and then they turn these permits into cash cows. For instance, the Swansea Hockey League has to pay the city $12,000 to run the kids’ hockey program, with no extra help from city staff.)
The management staff also have trouble making and evaluating policies – for example, the special events permit policy, for which the Permits office shows only 6 outdoor rink events in the past 5 years, among 49 rinks. Another example: the mandatory helmets policy for non-contact-shinny, which has led to so much friction and declining outdoor rink use, as well as to higher risk of lawsuits for an unenforceable policy. Management staff don’t seem to understand risk analysis. They don’t know how to foster their field staff’s talents, or how to magnify existing resources even when they are cheap or free. Instead, much of their energy is applied to prohibition. An example: Grenadier Pond, a vast natural rink in cold weather if there’s not much snow, is ringed by signs: “No Access. No skating.”
BEFORE PROHIBITION
Jane Jacobs said: “those who can, do. Those who can’t, plan.” Or (we say) they prohibit. PROHIBITION is the default position for Parks and Recreation. It threatens almost everything that can turn outdoor rinks into wonderful winter social spaces for their neighbourhoods.
Here’s the back story. Dufferin Rink, and then Wallace and Campbell rinks, became neighbourhood places before the big prohibition wave hit. At Dufferin Rink, neighbours removed two non-functional interior walls that restricted the space, after checking with the city to make sure they were not load-bearing. The City said – “raise $15,000 and we can remove those walls.” But the neighbours wanted to skate, not hold months of fundraisers. So in two days they took down the concrete blocks themselves, for free.
Then they lobbied their city councillor to have some eye-level windows installed, so the room would look like a clubhouse and not a prison. That only cost the city $6000. Light and a view onto the rink!
Someone donated a stove, and the rink guards started baking cookies and making mini-pizzas. The teenage shinny hockey players started behaving better, no longer grouchy from being hungry. Then the recreation supervisor made the rink friends aware of a city grant program for installing community kitchens in city-owned buildings. The rink users got a city grant of $8,000 to turn the rink slop room into a little kitchen and the office into the Zamboni Cafe, selling cheap food – good soups made at the rink, fresh bread, and endless cookies and mini-pizzas. They got up the nerve to ask Home Depot for a donation of better lighting. The Home Depot manager said, “no, we don’t do that” – and then on Valentine’s Day, he changed his mind, and said, “here’s a coupon for $1,000 of track lighting.” What a good guy.
Someone brought in a photo of a woodstove at a ski club, and the rink friends asked if they could try to get one for the rink. Recreation Director Mario Zanetti said “hot stove league? Sure.” (He’s the one who was later squeezed out.) So the rink friends got $3000 from the Maytree Foundation to buy an energy-efficient woodstove. Maytree mainly uses its funds for refugee newcomers, and newcomers from warmer countries can get chilly in winter. So the woodstove went in, and the money from the zamboni cafe paid for firewood. Neighbours donated kids’ books and a bench for parents to read stories in front of the fire.
The recreation supervisor heard about some equipment donations available from the NHL Players Association. So he told the rink friends, and they applied for 50 set of skates, sticks, gloves, and helmets. They got them, and that was a thrill. The rink staff spray-painted the skates and helmets yellow and the gloves and sticks red, and started lending them out, $2 for skate rental, $1 for a stick or gloves, helmets no charge. The rink filled up with so many newcomers wanting to try skating, and so many families who couldn’t afford to buy new skates every year for their growing children, and so many neighbours wanting fresh air in friendly surroundings, that it got too full. The rink staff made a campfire beside the rink on the busiest days, with hot chocolate, for the overflow.
City Councillor Giambrone helped get windows put in and a wall taken down at nearby Wallace Rink, and the recreation supervisor got another fifty sets of skates from the NHL Players’ Association. He let the rink staff turn this rink into a family place too, and then he let them do the same thing at the third neighbourhood rink in his area. That brought in even more skaters, from across the city. Those skaters said: “how can we make our dreary local rinks more like these ones?” The rink staff said: “we can help.” And that’s when PROHIBITION struck.
PROHIBITION: THE BIG MOVE
Parks and Recreation management is making it move to homogenize its offerings. Management says: No community boards of management for arenas. And in the case of outdoor rinks, the message this year has been getting ever more insistent: No campfires. No skate lending. No mini-pizzas. No woodstoves. No zamboni cafes with cheap food. No easy collaboration between rink staff and rink friends. Rink staff are cautioned: “you are in conflict of interest. Your responsibility is to the Corporation of the City of Toronto.” No visits to other rinks to give those other rink-friends suggestions, or answer their questions. Stay in your zone, and in your assigned place in the city hierarchy.
Lines of communication are strictly laid down. The recreation supervisor is told to stop working with his on-site rink staff directly. On-site staff are told to work only with the “recreation programmer.” If rink users ask the rink staff when the zamboni crew is coming to resurface the ice, rink staff are not allowed to ask the crew directly -- they must call the Recreation Programmer, who calls the Recreation Supervisor, who calls the Parks Supervisor, who calls the Zamboni Foreperson, who radios the crew and then calls the Parks Supervisor back, who calls the Recreation Supervisor, who calls the Recreation Programmer, who calls the rink staff. Yes, really. Every time.
The supervisor himself is cautioned about being in conflict of interest. His job is: to follow policies laid down by management, sometimes backed up by council vote, often not. If he wants to support special activities put on by rink friends, he has to ask the Permit Office, which asks for permission from the Parks Supervisor. If permission is given, Customer Service enters the information into the central permit system. If the rink supervisor is seen to be helping rink volunteers avoid paying a permit fee or insurance for community events, he is warned.
Over the past two years, the Ward 18 recreation supervisor has not managed to completely cut his community ties, or completely forget his “let’s make it work” approach to his rink staff. So at the end of January, management let him know he was leaving Ward 18. He’s not the only recreation supervisor being moved away from the communities where they have relations with the neighbourhood and the local councillor – almost all of them have been transferred to new wards. But Tino DeCastro is not reassigned to another ward. For his “let’s make it work” experience at the Ward 18 rinks (and all year round), he is to be sent to an office in Metro Hall, liaising with building cleaners.
MONEY
Dufferin Grove Park has approximately the same budget for its recreation program activities as the salary of the general manager – about $180,000 a year. Indoor recreation centres cost between $500,000 and $1 million a year to operate. Under the current management culture, the centres have been shrinking in their offerings, so Dufferin Grove may have more going on there year-round than most community centres. The extra helpers needed to support all the activities are paid for by the snack bar donation money (called “cookie money”). After you subtract the grocery money and the website support and the posters and schedules and basketball nets and bandaids for first aid, that leaves about $50,000 for contracts, for people to enrich the offerings, to make more fun and try things. It’s an interesting ecology, and one that we’ve urged the city to apply elsewhere, on a smaller scale, to see if it will work. But that will require a different culture, one of small-scale curiosity and experimentation. Prohibition lets nothing grow.
WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT THE PROHIBITION ERA?
Lots can be done, and this municipal election year is the right time to do it. The first thing is to spread the word. The current culture of prohibition at Parks and Recreation is damaging our public spaces. This newsletter is available online, at dufferinpark.ca and also at cityrinks.ca (see below). Send the link to your friends, to your city councillor, to the head of the Parks Committee (Councillor Paula Fletcher, who got our first big report on the chaos at the outdoor rinks in 2005, but declined to act). Send it to the head of the Community Development and Recreation Committee (Councillor Janet Davis, who says she has worked on projects with Brenda Patterson for twenty years). Send it to the ombudsman’s office. And drop a note to your journalist friends. Christie Blatchford is right when she says there is a culture of “Let us fix what is not broken and ruin what is working well.” In response, another revolt may grow..
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