Meeting with City Officials today – Friends of Winchester Park

Our first of many meetings took place today at 11:00 AM at the park with city officials and we highlighted the need of more community involvement.  Following were the members that were present at the meeting:

• Sam L
• Roger L
• Karen M
• Don K
• Addy Saeed

We also had two city officials, Soloman and Jillian,  that we discussed our concerns with.  Following were the highlights of our concerns:

• Safety issue created by the boxes
• The amount of space taken over by the boxes
• The inherit design defects of using the boxes and their layout
• The use of public space as a community garden
• The historic significance of the park
• Neighboring properties and current active community gardens
• Emphasis of park ownership

We are very appreciative of the gents that came to meet with us and heard us out.  We seemed to have an agreement that there’s definitely something wrong with the current design.  Our group was supportive of having discussion around where a community garden can be placed and emphasized that a smart design is required which would deter loitering of our public spaces.

I’m really excited about how the meeting went and even though I couldn’t stay till the end and do the walk about in the area to show other initiatives, I’m optimistic that we will have some constructive conversations in our meeting at Central Neighborhood House tonight.

Are you coming?  6:30 PM at Central Neighborhood House, 349 Ontario Street, Toronto, ON

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