It took one viral video — boys throwing a basketball at an empty backboard in broad daylight — to halt a long-standing city practice.Whether it was the Raptors effect or just embarrassment for the city, staff will now stop removing rims from city basketball courts before the end of the day, city spokesperson Brad Ross confirmed Thursday.The practice, at least 10 years old, Ross said, is reactionary. He said staff were responding to neighbourhood noise complaints at courts that are in “close proximity to homes.”But after the video posted to Twitter showed a city worker removing rims from a city park as young people dribbled balls nearby, the mayor’s office said it had told staff, and that they had agreed, nets should not come down. In a statement posted to Twitter Thursday, the city acknowledged what was seen in the video was “not reasonable.”City staff couldn’t immediately say how many courts were targeted for regular rim removal, but Ross said crews “would make their way to various parkettes ... and remove the nets and replace them the next day to mitigate noise complaints.”Ross said the issue will not go to council for consideration and that it’s still within staff’s purview. He said staff consulted with the mayor’s office Wednesday night about the decision to suspend the rim removal.Going forward, he said staff “will monitor noise complaints on a case-by-case basis.”“Having a big city is a balancing act all the time,” Mayor John Tory told reporters Thursday morning. “I think that what happened, as often happens in cases like this, is that balance was lost, in that I can understand 10 o’clock at night people maybe — or 11 o’clock at night — saying that they’re concerned about noise. But at 6 o’clock in the evening or even 9 o’clock in the evening at this time of year we should be doing everything we can to get as ...
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