In Aurora ...Some Trees Count ...Some don't...like People.

A few weeks ago all trees (eighteen) on a particular property on Yonge Street were cut down.

Neighbors on Temperance Street were incensed. They notified the town and hoped perpetrators of the crime would be prosecuted.

What had been a screen to Yonge Street was no more. Now they could hear traffic and a view of the back of an apartment building on Gurnett Street was their new skyline. The ambiance of their backyards was completely altered.

It may seem like a small thing to some. It wasn't to them.

After all, the Town has a tree bylaw which prohibits such action. Why should residents of Temperance Street not have the same right to protection as a resident in Hunters Wood or the neighbours in the rural area of the Westhill Development Application.

It certainly seems they are not

No press release was made of the crime, the charges laid and fines imposed.

No court dates for prosecution of the offence was advertised.

No Media Alert notifying all and sundry of the dastardly deed.

No naming of miscreants. No contradiction of details between a memo to Councillors and the
Media Alert.

No Toronto Star story complete with a picture of the Mayor in the middle of a field of freshly overturned sod, feet clad in the skimpiest of skimpy, neither a tree nor stump of a tree in sight as far as the eye could see.

Because none of that happened.

A bylaw that puts complete control of tree injuring or destroying , in the hands of politicians. but not the decision to prosecute residents who injure or destroy trees they own, on land they own for purposes known only to themselves.

After two years and five unsuccessful attempts by the municipality, at substantial public expense, to obstruct and delay a lawful application from receiving a hearing from a body created by the government for the purpose of ensuring fairness in application of the rules; the same government which allows municipalities to exist.

After all that, is there a person anywhere in the Town who could argue an application to remove trees on any part of the developer's property, for any purpose whatsoever, would have a snowball's chance in hell of success, from an administration completely controlled by our self-proclaimed Defender of the Moraine which covers almost the entire Town like a blanket.

So the developer who dared, who is also a tax-paying property-owner of the town, is now chosen as Public Enemy Number One on whom to base almost an entire election campaign.

During the last campaign, the said developer was still a Public Benefactor contributing annually to the Arts and Culture Fund , attending Council by invitation to be photographed smiling with the Chief Magistrate and sharing in the distribution of cheques to various grateful recipients.

The issues then, were train whistles, the right to dry and town heritage. Enemies were Ontario Hydro, the Former Mayor, just about every Councillor who ever had any experience working with the Valiant and The Brave and moi.

Let's see if the same magic works again.