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Wednesday, June 14 |
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Sunday noise bylaw about to make a racket
Livia Prince says it's bad enough that she can't sleep in her bedroom during the week because of construction noise from the three monster homes being built across the street.
But she doesn't think she should also have to put up with the racket on weekends, too.
Last Sunday, Prince, 77, the owner of a modest one-and-a-half-storey home near Avenue Rd. and Lawrence Ave. W., said she had to endure about three hours of hammering in the afternoon. Someone on her street called the police. Problem solved for that day.
But Prince says enough is enough.
After putting up with construction noise on her street since 2000 from "infill work" at six other monster homes — developers tearing down bungalows and putting up multi-storey homes in their place — she says the least the city could do is implement a ban for Sundays and statutory holidays.
"We're entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of our property, but that's what we're being robbed of without any compensation," Prince said.
Before amalgamation, all municipalities save for the old city of Toronto had noise bans on Sundays and holidays.
Since amalgamation in 1998, Toronto has once considered a city-wide ban on construction noise for Sundays and statutory holidays. After hearing from the construction industry and hobbyists who work on their own homes, the city backed off.
The city's bylaw permits construction noise from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekends.
Now, the city's planning and transportation committee has put forward a plan calling for Sundays and holidays to be noise free, all day — but just in low-rise residential neighbourhoods.
But Councillor Howard Moscoe (Ward 15, Eglinton-Lawrence) doesn't like the sound of that. He says that's "discriminatory" toward people who live in highrise apartments and condos. He argues there should be a Sunday and holiday noise ban everywhere or no ban at all.
"More than half the people in the city live in highrise buildings. People who have condos deserve as much right to noise protection as people wealthy enough to own a single-family home."
The proposal for the ban in low-rise locales was on the agenda for last month's city council meeting, but Moscoe had it held up.
It's on the agenda again for today's council meeting, but Moscoe said he hopes to get it deferred again. He wants his proposal for an all-inclusive ban dealt with at the same time.
Councillor Karen Stintz, vice-chair of the planning committee, said a ban covering only low-rise residential makes sense. "If you can, imagine streets where they've had seven years of construction activity because of the demolition of homes and reconstruction of new homes and the pressures that puts on a street when the lot's only 25 feet (7.5 metres) wide," said Stintz (Ward 16, Eglinton-Lawrence).
The issue comes down to this: If you ban construction noise on Sundays and holidays in residential areas, you get a little resistance. Try doing it city-wide and there's lots of resistance.
That's because crews doing work on major roads, office buildings, hospitals and shopping malls use Sundays to do "tear downs" or dismantling of their equipment at the work sites.
"The difficulty is, (by including Moscoe's plan) we would actually be limiting construction activity in the downtown core, and areas where the best time to build is actually on the weekend and statutory holidays," Stintz said.
"This should have been a law ages ago," Livia Prince said. "No work on the day of the Lord, whichever god you worship. But when you worship the god of money, this is what happens." |
posted by ^%&^
@ 2:17 PM
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