The city will look to impose a fine on a developer that cut down a number of trees on a midtown lot without a permit over the weekend.

The incident took place on a wooded lot on Chatsworth Drive, near Yonge Street and Lawrence Avenue, on Saturday and led to a hurried response from Coun. Karen Stintz and several neighbours, who attended the site and physically blocked a truck from leaving with the trees until police arrived.

“It is important for the city that everybody understands we have rules in place to protect trees for very good reasons and everybody is expected to follow those rules,” Stintz told reporters at city hall Tuesday. “The bylaw has fines and it has a process when a tree is cut down without a permit and we will be following that process.”

Stintz, who was flanked by Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly and Ward 13 Coun. Sarah Doucette at city hall, said the site in question had no approved development on record and the workers removing the tress were not authorized to do so.

The Ward 16 councillor added that she was informed that the trees posed a safety risk when she questioned the workers, but she dismissed that logic out of hand Tuesday.

“That is really not the case because the trees were located well within a development site that was horded from the public and even if it was someone’s belief that the trees should have been removed then there is a process to take them down and it was not followed,” she said.

Residents asked to be on the lookout for trees being chopped down

City bylaws require that a permit be issued for anyone to cut down a tree with a diameter of more than 12 inches, even if the tree is on private property.

Under the bylaw anyone who illegally removes a tree can be handed a fine of at least $500 up to a maximum of $100,000.

Doucette, who has been outspoken on protecting the city’s tree canopy in the past, said the bylaw can be a deterrent, but only so much as it is enforced, and called on Torontonians to be on the lookout for violations.

“When trees come down illegally it is usually after 5 p.m. on Friday and before 9 a.m. on Monday, so we need residents to be our ears and our eyes out there and let us know if someone is taking a tree down,” she said. “We need to keep our trees because we need them for our environment and a developer should not be able to take them down just because they feel that they are in the way.”

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