Wolverleigh tree incident successfully dealt with by city’s 311 service

The boss asked me to share an e-mail that he sent to Janet Davis, our city councillor. We live on a street with a lot of older trees that need constant care. The video above shows Councillor Davis attending at another more serious tree incident in 2010:

Contents of the boss’s e-mail:

As I said in my e-mails yesterday, I contacted 311 after sending you the note about the branches in the Manitoba maple on the boulevard in front of 367-369 Wolverleigh. It was a Sunday. I was walking home and noticed some branch debris on the sidewalk. When I looked up at the tree on the boulevard, I saw two large (approximately 4-inch diameter) branches that had broken off the tree. One was trapped on the hydro wire and the tree and the other was higher up in the branches of the tree. If either fell to the sidewalk, it could seriously injure anyone who happened to be there. I got on the phone to 311 at 11:37 and reported the branch problem described in a previous message. A courteous and competent operator named Michael took the message and said he would alert the appropriate department. The whole call took less than 90 seconds.

A city crew showed up to remove the loose branches at about 4:30 on Sunday afternoon. As you can see from the picture of the two branches that were removed, they were large enough to hurt anyone they might have fallen on. Both had broken off completely from the tree and posed a significant hazard. The city crew that came on Sunday did not have a chipper. A second crew with a chipper came this morning about 8:45 AM and disposed of the branches.

As a long-time Wolverleigh resident who has lived through at least five large tree incidents*, I would have to say that the 311 service and the city crews performed extremely well yesterday. A few years ago before 311, I reported a loose branch on the same tree. I made the report using the phone numbers on the list that you provide to your constituents. At that time, a crew arrived fairly promptly after the report. However, it was a weekday, not a weekend or night. It does seem to me that the 311 service is very effective and efficient. It would be unfortunate if its capacities were undermined by auditor anecdote, a plague that has brought Toronto so many idiotic solutions to non-existent problems over the last twenty years.

Please let the folks at 311 know how pleased I am with their efforts. Keep up the good work.