In a part of west Toronto, people were really happy when they found out they were going to have a community garden.
The garden was planned for Tom Riley Park, which everyone in the area loved, especially the older people.
But there was a big problem – there weren’t any stairs to get down to the garden.
This made it really hard and unsafe for the older folks to reach it.
This exquisite garden held a special place in the hearts of the entire community, especially the elderly residents residing nearby.
“People were falling down. One person broke their hands. So it is not a good situation for anybody,” a local senior named Adi Astl shared to a local news station.
Adi reached out to a member of the city council and asked if they could build some stairs to make it safer.
The response he got was really surprising.
The council member told him it would cost a lot, somewhere between $65,000 and $150,000, to make a staircase.
Adi used to work as a mechanic and was good at building things, so he decided to make the stairs himself.
He only spent $550 and worked for 14 hours, and then he had a brand-new set of stairs ready.
The whole neighborhood was really happy about it.
Unfortunately, not long after the stairs were built, the city brought some upsetting news – the stairs didn’t meet the required standards and had to be taken down.
This left the previously satisfied neighborhood feeling frustrated once again.
“At the end of the day, the city has a liability issue. We have to make sure that assets in our public spaces are to code and meets certain safety standards. The stairs that Adi built were well-intentioned. They worked well. They would have worked well for the short-term. They wouldn’t have worked for the long-term.”
After Adi’s homemade stairs were removed, but he received a call from the mayor.
John Tory, the mayor of Toronto, personally contacted Adi to acknowledge his efforts.
The mayor expressed his gratitude and informed Adi that they had managed to find a much more affordable option for installing city-approved stairs – estimated to cost around $10,000.
Even though Adi’s work had to be taken down, he was pleased that the mayor had taken meaningful steps to address the issue.
“Everything is a negotiation in life, so long as you reach the meaning and the end. The meaning and the end was to have steps for people to go down safely. Who installs it, doesn’t matter anymore. We’ve proved our point.”
The mayor released a statement expressing his dissatisfaction with how the initial staircase idea had been managed.
“I want to thank Mr. Astl for taking a stand on this issue. His homemade steps have sent a message that I know city staff has heard loud and clear. The city always needs to be looking for simple, cost-effective solutions to problems no matter how big or small they are … I’m not happy that these kinds of outrageous project cost estimates are even possible. I’ll be working to identify what changes we can put in place to make sure this doesn’t continue to happen.”
The community was excited about the upcoming construction, which was eventually completed soon.
As a result, everyone celebrated Adi as a local hero for his efforts.
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