Category: Toronto Beach News
Mayoral Hopeful Brad Bradford Robs Beach Residents of Parking on Pine Crescent
Authorize the removal of the overnight on-street permit parking program on Pine Crescent, between Balsam Avenue and Glen Manor Road East
Authorize the removal of the overnight on-street permit parking program on Pine Glen Road, between Glen Manor Drive East and Pine Crescent
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Mayoral Hopeful Brad Bradford Robs Beach Residents of Parking
By Melissa Peters
On a beautiful summer day, in comfortable shoes with nothing to carry, walking six blocks or more might not seem like a big deal. Renters in the Toronto Beaches might even enjoy the opportunity to explore the area and check out the unique gardens, Little Free Libraries, and, of course, the stunning beaches themselves.
A few months later, though, coming home from Costco with two little kids in an ice storm, finding overnight parking, or any parking at all for that matter, starts to look like one of the most important things in the world.
It all started back in 2019, when between two and four premium Beaches parking spots vanished from the waterfront at Hammersmith and Hubbard. That was around the same time that the resident parking instead became paid parking for shoppers and tourists close to Queen Street East in the popular Beaches neighbourhood.
Fast forward to 2023. It’s been quiet in the Beaches lately. Covid shut down the Beaches Jazz Festival for a couple of years. People were afraid to leave their homes out of fear of contracting COVID-19. Was parking in abundance, or were people too worried about more important things to notice? Maybe it’s just that they weren’t notified about the plethora of parking spots being stolen from their neighborhoods?
It looks like we might just be out of the woods, and tourists are venturing back down to the sparkling water as the weather gets better. Problem is, this leaves absolutely nowhere for the renters and residents to park. It was always a challenge in the Beaches, but something else has changed. The dawn of yet a New horizon of vanishing overnight parking spots. The count has begun.. One of nine streets. .Pine Crescent 80 spots.
25 Over night permit parking spots lost on Long Crescent Beaches Toronto
Authorize the removal of the overnight on-street permit parking program on Pine Crescent, between Balsam Avenue and Glen Manor Road East.
Authorize the removal of the overnight on-street permit parking program on Glen Ames, between Southwood Drive and Lee Avenue.
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Enjoy Parking Overnights in the Beaches While You Can. Brad to Remove 100+ Spots.
My mother got approved for a beaches parking pad right under the wire, right before they stopped approving them all together. I was pregnant with my daughter at the time and I will be attending her high school graduation the week of the election. If nobody can get parking pads and nobody can get beaches parking permits, we’re on earth, or in the beaches east end of the Earth are people expected to park? Even beaches homeowners without overnight parking are being forced to walk six blocks, but not all homeowners. It appears There are a select few lucky enough to have on-site parking, a place to park overnight. What a novel concept. And some of those select few don’t think that they should have to look at some pesky vehicle within 30 ft or three blocks of their driveways.
Do renters and fellow homers deserve to be late for work? Do they not deserve overnight parking? Does it not occur to you that this might actually affect property values when even people who own homes can’t find parking because this bill over is affecting the streets beside you? What about tourism? When the world finds out that select Beach homeowners want entire blogs to themselves and feel that they are so entitled that nobody else deserves to park including their own neighbors. There are a lot of people in the beach who have lived here their entire lives, including elderly people disabled people and people who might have cancer or might be pregnant. What about them? How are they supposed to get to their cars? Are they supposed to call the cab to get to their cars when they might be having a baby in 6 or 7 hours? Does this occur to these homeowners?
Vote Brad Bradford if you want to take a cab to your own car!
The count has begun. Long Avenue. 25 spots.
Beach Residents Expected to Park on the Sand
By Melissa Peters for Queen Street News
People who can afford homes with parking spaces (and who happen to know the right people) are calling the city and telling them to take parking spots from those who DON’T have them. On October 28, 2019, between two and four parking spots were ELIMINATED from the waterfront, just east of Kew Gardens.
In the heart of the Beach neighbourhood, down by the water, is the intersection of Hammersmith and Hubbard. A three-storey building with 18 units backs on to the boardwalk, offering a stunning view of the lake to lucky residents since 1929. Over the years, more and more single-family homes have been built around 15 Hubbard and the surrounding area, but, as prices soared, many have been converted into multiple-unit, often fourplex-style dwellings. It’s no secret that parking is at a premium in the Beach, especially when the weather is nice, and as more people flock to live near the Boardwalk, it is already next to impossible for the locals to park anywhere near their homes.
There aren’t really places to put new parking spots down by the lake without destroying the natural beauty that makes the Beach so popular in the first place, so what has the city done recently to address the parking shortage in the Beach? They started by converting the bottom end of a bunch of residential streets into paid parking, which eliminated over thirty spots north of Queen. That didn’t go over well. But they didn’t stop there. As of Monday, the area around 15 Hubbard is now down an ADDITIONAL 2-4 parking spots as the signs went from “No Parking within 15m” to simply “No Parking” at the intersection of Alfresco Lawn and Wineva Avenue. Apparently some homeowners on Wineva didn’t like looking out the side windows and seeing the tops of cars, so they called the city and asked them to change the rules on that corner to eliminate the parking near the stop signs facing south and east on that particular intersection.
The city complied. If you look at the intersection, you will see that the stop sign is actually set BACK from the intersection, so parking in the previously legal spots was already WELL behind the legal 9m limit from the corner. The intersection isn’t completely straight either- it jogs slightly, so you can see oncoming cars coming and going well before making any turn or proceeding. The cars that were parked there before October 28th weren’t posing any sort of safety hazard, weren’t blocking any driveways or views, weren’t blocking a graded sidewalk designed for wheelchairs, weren’t blocking fire hydrants. They were just empty, handy, premium parking spaces that the local residents would downright celebrate finding so close to home.
One resident who has been here for the better part of twenty years had to drive around the block three times tonight before finally parking nineteen houses north of his front door. When the city was asked what became of this long-time resident’s trusty parking spots, he was told that multiple calls had been made to 311 complaining about the cars parked near the stop sign and that the city had sent someone out to inspect the intersection and assess whether or not the parking spots were posing safety concerns. When asked if this practice was normal, or if it was normal for perfectly safe spots to vanish into thin air, the answer was NO.
It’s amazing that parents can beg for speed bumps near a school, and not get them until a child gets hit by a car, while a city councillor gets them on his or her street (nowhere near a school zone) the following week. It’s unlikely that anyone could call 311 and have parking spots eliminated from an area in dire need of them, unless said person had some serious influence over the person or persons making decisions. The gap between the haves and the have-nots continues to widen, and now, even fewer of those who can actually afford to have a car in the Beach will be able to park their cars south of Gerrard.
Honey Bee Goes Condo: More Floods In Beach Homes
Honey Bee Goes Condo: More Floods In Beach Homes
Each time a few single family homes are replaced with a towering Condominium, the number of toilets, sinks and people goes up. As the waste going into the system increases dramatically, where does all of that waste go? Can our city really handle piling more people, one on top of another above a crumbling infrastructure? The Beach, especially, is dependent on little more than the R.C. Harris Water Filtration Plant, and it simply doesn’t seem plausible for the improvements to the plant to keep up with the demand on the system. It occurred to us that this might have something to do with some of the flooding issues that take place, and we weren’t wrong.
Bill the trusty Master plumber told Paul and I on the phone that, about 25 years ago, the city charged people for the installation of a mandatory dual drain system (it wasn’t cheap-twice the price of the original one) and never bothered hooking it up. They even have names and numbers of people who paid the bill for the work that the city never completed, and we intend to speak with these people to see how they feel about what happened. In theory, the system sounded like a great idea. One pipe would be the designated sanitation pipe, and the other would be reserved as a storm drain, separating rain water from the household sanitation system so it wouldn’t have to be filtered and so it wouldn’t be combined in volume with the internal pipes and cause flooding. Great idea, right? They actually do this out in the suburbs, but even the homes in the beach that have the fancy new system are still pumping all of their water to the same place, which means the R.C. Harris Water filtration plant still has to filter the rainwater on top of the ever-growing sanitation waste.
Regarding the infrastructure that’s behind many of the problems, the city insists that building permits for condos and such are based on the Engineering Department’s assessment of whether or not the city can handle the additional sanitation needs. Watching my friend on Gerrard wade through her basement last week, something doesn’t add up.Toronto isn’t the only place where the infrastructure can’t keep up with the growth, as the costs are in the billions, and nobody likes when the powers that be raise taxes, but the beach is at additional disadvantages. Aside from the obvious downhill water flow, and proximity to the lake, we have a system that simply can’t take the sheer volume of water. Aside from the filtration plant and back out, there’s nowhere for it to go. It gets pumped or run out of our homes, into the drains and ground, and right back into our basements.
Drains have a lifespan, so they will eventually have to be replaced due to wear-and-tear, tree roots or for some other reason. The city will grant some funding to replace pipes on city property, but only when there’s a problem- they aren’t in the business of preventative replacement. One politician, on live television at the time, insisted that a homeowner wouldn’t be responsible for the cost of flooding issues in her home, but she got a phone call later that night telling her that it was all for the cameras. Gotta love politicians.
The problems aren’t limited to the older homes though- the charming little neighbourhood between Woodbine and Kingston, Queen and Lakeshore, not the best place to build three-story homes. The homes were essentially built on what the plumbers referred to as ‘table’ or ground water. The land is at such a level that it is practically a dry(ISH) extension of the lake itself. — By Melissa Peters
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Danforth Music Fest and / or Beaches Blues Festival are Fake Charities
There are some wonderful charities out there, without whom many people would have little, if anything to celebrate this holiday season. So far, it seems you can’t go wrong with toys/food/clothing drives, donating goods or your valuable time to causes like the CHUM Christmas Wish, or the Daily Bread Food Bank. Sadly, there are Grinches out there trying to take advantage of your charitable nature, and it’s important to ensure you donations are going to the right place. Many fraud artists know how to avoid getting caught, asking for smaller donations, or asking that people purchase a ticket to something, claiming a portion of the proceeds will go towards a particular cause are common tactics.
If someone asks you for money, ask for details about their organization, for their charitable organization number, the name of the founder/CEO, business address, and where you can find more information online. Hopefully this will weed out some of the fakes. Do your research- Google is a good thing, so use it and ask around.
The Danforth Music Fest/Beaches Blues Festival (not to be confused with the Waterfront Music Festival!!) is an example of a “charitable organization” to watch out for. The proof that the organization no longer qualifies to distribute tax receipts is a matter of public record, yet it is business as usual for Mr. Leroy St Germaine and his minions selling tickets with the promise of “a portion of the proceeds going to charity.” That portion is LESS than 1%. There is nothing illegal about selling tickets for a music event and collecting donations with nothing more than a PRETENSE of charitable fundraising, although it is most defininitely reprehensible and behavior void of morals.
Banks get to know customers, and aren’t as cautious about checking the annual validity of supposed charities before cashing their cheques… maybe the banks should be required to review which charities are still eligible to accept donations annually in order to prevent fraud. If the cheques aren’t being watched by the banks, where is the money going? If the charity is no longer registered, maybe nobody is asking for a statement- that’s scary.
This is not to say that all charities are bad, or that anyone should be jaded by the bad guys, but please make sure your hard earned money goes to those who really need it!
Leroy has crossed the line in his latest issue, of Ward 32 News
Leroy has crossed the line in his latest issue, of Ward 32 News, but what can Paul do about it? It’s not a police matter, and you can’t sue someone with no money or assets. All I can do is write the truth. I have known Paul Murton for over fifteen years. I have done everything from silly little jobs, to customer service, to helping print CD’s, to writing front page stories for his online and web-based publications. Included in the “silly little jobs” category was accompanying Paul to a Miss Toronto modelling tryout/photo-shoot, where the organizer, was running late. It is mandatory for Paul to have a second person at any of his photo-shoot/modelling events, preferably female for a few reasons. Paul is a good photographer/videographer in his own right, but he isn’t the ideal person to direct a shoot- make the model(s) feel comfortable, suggest poses, etc. He simply doesn’t feel comfortable telling a pretty girl to look sexy- he would feel creepy doing so, which is why he has never organized any sort of one-on-one modelling project. As stunning and photogenic as some women may be, shyness or lack of confidence get in the way, making it impossible for them to connect with the camera and allow their true beauty to shine through. I am not all that shy though, so I had no problem joking around with the women who arrived, trying to help them loosen up. When Karen finally arrived with the reigning Miss Toronto Alana Kindree, I couldn’t help noticing that our city’s beauty queen was almost as tense as the poor girls who had faced their first photo-shoot. I remember Paul asking me to tag along for similar projects over the years, but until I developed my shameful obsession with ‘America’s/Canada’s Next Top Model”, it was of no interest to me.
Paul has been hired to take pictures of aspiring models by the Miss Toronto Pageant, and is happy to continue putting tasteful and clothed shots/videos of hopeful young ladies in print and on the web at their request. Modelling careers come out of exposure of potential, and physical appearance is a large part of that potential. There are links to all of these aspiring models on most of Paul’s websites, and many of them have short clips on Youtube. There is nothing fishy, creepy or weird about it, and Paul has nothing to hide. He is simply using his web presence to give aspiring models exposure. Nobody is naked, or under age, and nobody is being manipulated.
From a co-worker of Paul Murton, and her daughter, there is nothing creepy about this man. He is simply a nice person who is happy to help his friends, and a businessman trying to pay the rent.