By David Topping

Early June on Eglinton Avenue West, between Oakwood and Almada Avenues—part of the area covered by the York-Eglinton BIA. Photo by Kevin Steele.

One of the less expected results of the city workers’ strike, about to enter its second month, has been that its most visible effect—you know, the garbage on city streets—has not accumulated consistently across neighbourhoods, even neighbourhoods adjacent to one another. Our daily Strike Watch feature has demonstrated as much: while some stretches of the city’s main streets seem to only get progressively dirtier, others seem to have their level of cleanliness ebb and flow, and others seem to have never gotten near dirty in the first place. While some credit for the cleanliness should go to the elusive but much-heralded management staff tasked with cleaning up parks and streets, some of the city’s Business Improvement Areas (or BIAs)—the organizations that watch over commercial strips across the city—have been quietly stepping in and up, too.
So, last week, in an attempt to get a wider picture of the strike’s effects across the city, and especially its effects on small businesses, we canvassed the bulk of the city’s sixty-something BIAs to hear what, if anything, they were doing in their areas to cope with the strike. We heard back from…a little more than ten percent of them, mostly representatives of areas that have been kept unusually clean anyway. (Presumably there is at least some correlation between a BIA that stays on top of emails and one that stays on top of tending to their areas.) Still: what’re they up to?

Beach BIA

Deborah Etsten, Executive Director, writes:
In an effort to keep Queen Street East looking as clean and beautiful as can be, and recognizing that local residents as well as tourists want to enjoy their experience here, the Beach BIA organized a group of volunteers (local merchants and residents) to pitch in and help clean the sidewalks and street on Monday, July 13. The group cleaned from west of Woodbine to Neville Park. They stopped when the job was completed and they had filled nearly twenty bags full of garbage, which were then hauled away. Pizza Pizza donated lunch for all the volunteers.
Like other areas, Beachers care about where they live and work, and strike or no strike, they want to see their streets clean, so what we did was not unusual. The same activity happens in April during the annual mayor’s clean-up or any other time it’s warranted. There are often Beach clean-ups that are organized by different groups. As well, the East Beaches Residents’ Association did an earlier clean-up of the street, and early every morning a group of people meet to clean a portion of the Beach. If there’s a need to do another cleanup, we’ll post a notice on our Facebook page, our website and on TheBeachBuddy Twitter page for volunteers looking to help out.

Yonge Lawrence Village BIA

Rick O’Connor, Coordinator, writes:
Many of the merchants within the Yonge Lawrence Village BIA—in particular, the restaurants—have arranged for their own private pickups, while others have taken advantage of the City’s offer to allow them to dispose of their trash in designated public drop areas (ones that are still open).
We are encouraging all merchants to take five to ten minutes out of their busy schedules to clean the areas located immediately outside of their respective storefronts.
Some BIAs have considered supplying a bin for merchants to deposit their garbage into but two problems associated with this are: one, no appropriate area to locate and police a bin (they must be put on private property); and two, no allocations in their 2009 operating budgets to pay for this service.
Right now, our area (on Yonge Street, Lawrence Avenue north to Yonge Boulevard) is respectable and merchants have done a great job in picking up debris.

Queen West BIA

Laura Schaefer, Coordinator, writes:
On July 13, the Queen West BIA hired a forty-yard garbage bin for the use of our members. To avoid illegal dumping we kept the drop-off time to a maximum of one and a half hours (a standard practice of many BIAs during the strike). The drop went very well; we intend to offer this service again in the next couple of weeks to assist our members.
Recognizing the need to keep our sidewalks clean during the strike, we have engaged Mark Giesbrecht—“Mark the Litter Guy”—to clean up the litter on the sidewalks along Queen Street West. The Queen West BIA is very excited to be working in collaboration with the West Queen West and Parkdale Village BIAs on this month-long pilot project. Mark has been voluntarily keeping Queen Street cleaner for the past three years, and we are all pleased to be working with him. As part of the pilot project, The Queen West BIA has sent a request to our members seeking volunteers and/or new or used supplies to help Mark with this project. To date, I have been receiving positive feedback from members offering help.
Since we all take pride in the appearance of Queen Street West, the Queen West BIA has also sent communications to members encouraging businesses to sweep up the sidewalks around their stores.

Danforth Mosaic BIA

Patricia Silver, Chair, writes:
Danforth Mosaic BIA has two initiatives. We have contracted a private garbage collection company to pick up garbage from our stores and restaurants once per week. We have also employed a student for the summer to walk along the sidewalk and pick up litter. That program was in place prior to the strike and will continue after the strike, as we find that, although the City does send a sweeper along our street, the heavy pedestrian traffic means that we have more litter that is picked up by the City sweeping machines.
We are very proud of our strip of stores, restaurants, and services and feel it is imperative that it remain clean and attractive for our customers. This is especially important to us at this time because we are running a weekly Wednesday night Jazz Festival and want to ensure that the Coxwell Parkette and pedestrian areas are clean. As an aside, we have been impressed with the fact that Jazz Festival patrons have been diligent in picking up their own garbage, so there is minimal clean-up required at the end of each three-hour concert.

Church-Wellesley BIA

David Wootton, Managing Director, writes:
We are monitoring the situation and keeping communication open between all members. Quite honestly, though we are certainly dealing with the lack of garbage dispensers, we are coping well. Merchant owners and services are keeping an eye on their front entrances and surrounding sidewalks by hanging additional bags onto city dispensers, sweeping up garbage, and utilizing private services. We also have support from some of our homeless folk on the street. It’s a testament of the people who work and live in the Church Wellesley Village. Most of the garbage comes from the pedestrian use.
However, the BIA’s planning efforts of our 2009 events and 2010 gateway installation project is greatly affected by the strike. I have projects and street closure events scheduled for the coming month and for 2010 which are all behind due to the lack of personnel available at City and Metro Hall. Deadlines within each event’s schedules are not only behind schedule but now part of a huge pile of business that City employees will face once returning to the job.

York-Eglinton BIA

Preeti Atwal writes:
The York-Eglinton BIA has been trying to deal with the strike as best as any BIA is. We have a lot of second-story apartments where residents do not have access to rear exits and balconies. Therefore, we have been experiencing a lot of illegal dumping in the back of our business members’ back lots and storefronts, of garbage piling up in small bags. This has been a huge inconvenience for our vendors and for tourists and shoppers that are coming into our area. Our businesses are doing their best to keep our area clean—so much so that they have picked up bags of garbage and have brought them to nearby dumping sites. We feel that our community is not being rewarded by the course of action the city workers have taken, because taxes are still being collected and our services are not being restored. Our community is an up-and-coming area for shoppers and potential business members and needs more attention and recognition for our ongoing efforts to serve our community better.
However, we still want to serve our BIA to the best of our ability and recently just had our fifth annual Community Clean Up Day. We made arrangements for a company to set up dumping bins in our Green P parking lot and we had volunteers that were business members themselves driving forklifts up and down our streets picking up garbage bags and emptying garbage bins. We had over one hundred volunteers, 13 Division, Tim Hortons, and Inorganic Market come out and clean all along Marlee to Dufferin and our area was spic and span! Our BIA was very happy with our efforts!

Liberty Village BIA

Francesca Fabry writes:
Liberty Villagers have been coping well with the garbage strike. I have placed some additional signs in the area asking folks not to litter and we’ve had to pay our maintenance man to pick up some excess litter along Liberty Street, but other than that, we are just holding tight and hoping for this strike to end like everyone else.