Each week, we round up the latest news, views, and rumours from City Hall.
HEADLINES
Relief closer than we think?
Toronto’s most pressing transit priority is likely the mythical Downtown Relief Line, which would link Union Station to the outer reaches of the Bloor-Danforth subway line. Unfortunately we have no money to build it, but there seems to be growing feeling on council that existing tracks could be exploited to build a DRL on the cheap. This week, council approved two separate motions to look into converting the planned Air Rail Link in the west, and the Stouffville GO corridor in the east, into an ad hoc DRL.
There are many obstacles to the idea however, including how to electrify the lines, subsidize the fares to the point they become affordable for daily riders, and integrate them into the TTC system. Add to those hurdles the fact that regional transit agency Metrolinx (which is responsible for the ARL and GO routes) has shown no interest in the concept whatsoever, and our chances of getting a DRL soon and at little expense look dim. But hey, a city can dream.
Council backs clean contracts
Rob Ford’s slump towards empty figurehead status continued this week with a significant council defeat and an unsightly reversal. On Wednesday, councillors threw a wrench in Ford’s mission reduce the city workforce by voting to subject further contracting out of cleaning work to council approval, instead of leaving it up bureaucrats. The vote, which was animated by an emotional speech from Councillor Ana Bailão (who as a 15-year-old Portuguese immigrant helped her mother clean offices), will also ensure that any companies bidding for cleaning contracts will have their employment and health and safety records reviewed as part of their application.
A day earlier, council voted to waive sports field fees that had caught many parents and little league officials by surprise when they were included in the 2012 budget. All of council comes out of this looking slightly inept, as apparently nobody realized the chaos that would result from suddenly charging to use fields that had been free. But it’s particularly bruising for Ford, whose political brand is built on defending the little tykes out there.
BULLETINS
- The High Park Zoo will likely stay open until at least the end of 2012, after a secretive donor stepped forward with an offer to match up to $50,000 in public donations between now and June 15, giving a reprieve to the attraction that was defunded by Ford’s 2012 budget
- The gaming debate will go another round at City Hall, after council punted two motions that would have prohibited building a casino without an election-time referendum and banned a gambling facility at Ontario Place to Rob Ford’s executive committee on Wednesday
- On Tuesday, prompted by recent police charges in the 1994 murder of Jamaican-born Melonie Biddersingh – whose disappearance went unnoticed at the time – Councillor Michael Thompson (Scarborough Centre) proposed an ambitious (some would say overreaching) plan to keep a registry of immigrant children
#TOPOLI DOCS
This letter from Tenants For Social Housing to Councillor Ana Bailão (Davenport), head of the special housing working group, conveys growing distrust that she’s committed to finding an alternative to a major sell-off of Toronto Community Housing properties. The members of the working group were announced last week, and TCH chair Bud Purves was a surprise inclusion. The tenants rights group is disappointed in his selection, because he’s already on record as supporting a sale.
“In his first major decision as chair, Mr. Purves brought forward a report to implement a mass sell-off of social housing without notifying the tenants living in the identified homes,” the letter reads. “Tenants For Social Housing request that he be replaced.” The group is also concerned that no tenant representative has been appointed to the working group.
MEETINGS, MOTIONS, AND MINUTES
On Wednesday, Councillor James Pasternak, dressed adorably in a vintage hockey sweater, managed to get council to endorse a motion titled “Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the 1972 Canada-Russia Series that Changed Hockey and Relations between our Two Countries.” As a result, city staff will put together some plans to mark the momentous hockey tournament this September.
Toronto: celebrating past hockey triumphs since 1967.
COUNCILLOR OF THE WEEK
Since January Councillor Sarah Doucette (Parkdale-High Park) has worked tirelessly with a team of volunteers to find a way to save the High Park Zoo, and this week those community efforts paid big dividends.
CITY SOUND BITE
“Don’t send us any more activists, don’t send us anymore unionists, don’t send us anymore cyclists.”
– Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday (Etobicoke Centre) gives voters some helpful advice on who not to elect to council
“If the Deputy Mayor doesn’t know how to ride a bike, I can give him some lessons.”
– Councillor Adam Vaughan (Trinity-Spadina), in response
NEXT WEEK’S AGENDA
The mayor should have an eventful Monday morning, as PETA activists clad only in lettuce bikinis plan to pay him a visit at his weekly weigh-in in an effort to convince him to go vegan.
If he makes it through that encounter unscathed, he’ll convene a meeting of the executive committee at 9:30 am. On the agenda is a motion to support the federal government’s plan to create the country’s first urban national park in the Rouge Valley, and a report on councillors’ and appointees’ 2011 expenses.
Also on Monday, Councillor Bailão’s housing working group will hold its first public meeting.
