Ontario Municipal Board ruling takes school board’s side in fight over community space in Ledbury neighbourhood

Following an endorsement by the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) to sever the lands at the Bannockburn School, residents are scrambling for a last-minute solution to save their parkland, and if it plays out on a citywide scale, it could mean more battles between the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) and the City of Toronto. 

Across the city, parents are panicking at the prospect of the cash-strapped TDSB severing and selling off parcels of land at market value in order to pay for its multimillion-dollar backlog of repairs.

Near Avenue Road and Lawrence Avenue West in the neighbourhood of Ledbury, residents are now faced with the sobering possibility that they may lose a valued bit of green space to the increasing influx of townhouses and condos springing up around the area.

It is estimated that the space could fit approximately 18 lots for housing.

Local resident Trish McMahon said her increasingly dense neighbourhood is underserved in the way of green space, especially for the many children in the area.

“I appreciate the need for promoting intensification,” said McMahon. “But this area is, in fact, not lacking for development.”

McMahon said the growing number of townhouse developments and nearby condos is putting a strain on Ledbury ’s own green spaces.

“We rely on [school playgrounds] not just for things like organized sports, but just those little things like flying a kite, kids playing tag with their friends,” said McMahon. 

One of those school playgrounds is the land at the Bannockburn School.

Though the Bannockburn School is a private Montessori school, it sits on land leased from the TDSB. 

The board first announced that it was considering severing the lot in 2013. Now, the severance proposal has been approved by the OMB.

McMahon and her neighbours, who fought to save the land, are devastated.

“This is a space that has been used by the community for generations,” said McMahon. “To take it away and just build townhouses or condos? Once it’s gone, you can’t get it back.”

Councillor Christin Carmichael Greb, who assumed office when the fight was underway last year, said it speaks volumes that the community is relying on school playgrounds for outdoor family activities.

“We are in a parks-deficient area and need more green space,” she said. 

“My children use the parks and green spaces in our neighbourhood, so I represent one of the families fighting to save these spaces.”

According to Carmichael Greb, more than 600 neighbourhood children use the green space at Bannockburn.

Mike Colle, MPP said the school board still has a chance to reject the severance, which he is trying to persuade trustee Jennifer Arp to table at the TDSB’s next meeting in October (Arp could not be reached for comment by press time).

In the meantime, said Colle, the city and province need to learn from this experience. 

“It might be too late to change Bannockburn, but the rules have got to be toughened up,” said Colle. 

“I’m sick and tired of all these squabbles between the city and the board. They don’t share property, and they constantly fight each other.”

As councillor, Carmichael Greb attempted to extend an olive branch between the two bodies when she tabled a motion at Toronto City Council on July 8 for the city to explore purchasing whatever land they could from the TDSB at the Bannockburn site. 

The council approved the motion only as a last resort.

But based on her experiences, McMahon isn’t sure the various parties can work together effectively, citing previous ineffective communication.

“When we were first talking about the city buying a part of Bannockburn, they talked about planting trees and putting up a play structure,” she said. 

“There already is a play structure. We don’t need play structures. We need sports fields.… It seems to be a case of not just the right hand and the left hand failing to work together. They don’t even seem to know the other exists.”

Coun. Josh Matlow, who also presides over a park-deficient area, says battles like the one at Bannockburn are examples of why the discourse needs to change surrounding parkland and infrastructure.

“Obviously, I support the idea of intensification,” said Matlow, whose ward was identified as a “growth area” in the provincial government’s 2005 Places to Grow Act. 

“The question becomes, do we have the infrastructure to support this influx of people — sidewalks, electricity, plumbing and pipes and, of course, green space?”

Matlow is chair of the city’s school board advisory committee, and he has spent the past year attempting to find solutions that will work with both the school board and the city. 

Matlow, a former trustee, has been sympathetic toward the board’s financial woes.

“Obviously the school board doesn’t have a lot of money,” he said. “They would have to be desperate to want to sell off land like that.”

But, he said, there are ways to generate revenue that won’t result in such drastic disruption to the neighbourhood.

“Right now they’re looking at selling off the land at market value. If they might consider selling it below market value, the city might be in a better position to buy it.”

Matlow is currently facing a similar dilemma in his own ward. Davisville Public School, a school identified by the TDSB as requiring extensive repairs, has had 0.98 acres of its land put up for sale by the TDSB in order to pay for such repairs.

In response, Matlow proposed the purchase of the land by the city to create a community centre he and residents are calling the “midtown hub.” As of August, an appraisal of the land has not been completed, so how the city will acquire the land is still up for speculation.

At a school board advisory committee meeting Sept. 25, Matlow moved a recommendation that the board look into adopting a new policy similar to the Toronto Catholic School Board’s to accrue development charges from new applications (similar to Section 37 of the Ontario Planning Act funds for the city) in order to pay for infrastructure upgrades.

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