The Cheat Sheet: March 31 City Council

Agenda • Meeting Monitor • Livestream

My apologies to everyone for this late Cheat Sheet! The recent cold snap shocked me back into hibernation, and I have spent most of the last few days asleep.

If you read the previous committee meeting Cheat Sheet you may recognize several items on this City Council agenda. Accountability officer shakeup, Fimbulwinter, oil pipelines, taxi law, the Spadina subway extension, drones, spruce, Baby Point, a Baudelaire reference, and more below the fold.

Accountability

In her annual report, the outgoing Ombudsman has some real talk for City Council, which I believe is worth quoting in full. For an overview of Fiona Crean’s greatest hits, check out Ed Keenan’s recent column. And read about her background in this Torontoist interview from a few years back. I really respect her work and would totally buy her a beer if there were an ethically neutral way to do so.
The outgoing Lobbyist Registrar has a satisfyingly well-footnoted, but distinctly less well-designed annual report. To future Lobbyist Registrars: if you want the big bucks, you gotta shell out for some nice fonts and use at least one highlight colour. Word on the street is that Pantone’s next Colour of the Year is gonna be 2425.
Four years ago some councillor said that $4-10M in projected savings at TCHC due to audit recommendations “wasn’t a real figure”, and the Auditor General is still mad about it. Punchline: “The cost savings are the equivalent of almost seven times the budget of the Auditor General’s Office.”
In related news, Auditor General says every $1 invested in their office results in over $11 in savings.
Rookie shitty councillors Holyday and Di Ciano make an ambitious play for the shitty-councillor big time with a motion to cut the number of accountability officers in half by making each officer do two jobs. And maybe share offices. Could we just have them come in part-time? That would be great.
In the wake of an Integrity Commissioner investigation, Cllr Rob Ford promises to apologize for actually using “wop” and “dago” in the twenty-first century. Do you know how many people had to Google that shit?

The Great Outdoors

Despite all indications that icy Fimbulwinter is upon us, the three-seasons-long winter that presages Ragnarök, twilight of the gods, the City is still contracting with a company to carry out the annual springtime prescribed burns. Man, won’t they have egg on their face when the wolf Fenrir devours Sól, goddess of the Sun!
Cllr Layton (seconded by Official Council Lorax Cllr Doucette) argues that Enbridge’s Line 9 oil pipeline risks contaminating Toronto’s drinking water.
Cllr Mihevc, a proponent of moving hydro wires underground to protect them from extreme weather, says I told you so.
Rouge National Urban Park edges closer to reality.
Cllr Fletcher wants to solve the perennial outdoor skating rink conundrum once and for all.

Accessibility

Sure, Toronto released its own Accessibility Design Guidelines, but that was like ten years ago. Cllr Wong-Tam wants to make sure City by-laws and policies are in tune with the newest accessibility laws.
The 2014 elections might have been the city’s most accessible ever, which…isn’t setting the bar really high, I guess. Anyway, check out the report for how voters with disabilities rated the City’s new (and possible future) accessibility measures. Fun fact: 53% of post-election survey respondents with disabilities said they’d use internet voting if we had it—but only 16% felt “very confident” that their votes would be safe from tampering. Those 37% of you sure like to live on the edge.

(P. S. If the attached PDF doesn’t work for you, hit up accessiblelections@toronto.ca for a different file format.)

Getting Around

So taxi owners/brokers took the City and taxi drivers to court over the new licensing scheme and (mostly) lost. You can check out the court case yourself, but beware of falling into the CanLII click-hole!
The Spadina subway extension project is a major clusterfuck and now City Council has to figure out the least ugly solution.
<David Attenborough voice>And here we see one of nature’s rarest phenomena: the elusive tunnel boring machine surfacing for a brief migration.</David Attenborough voice>
Could Toronto take a hint from world-class cities like NYC and implement its own “Vision Zero” plan to eliminate traffic fatalities?

Community Development

Last year an Auditor General’s report found that Build Toronto was slacking: “A focus on returning a financial dividend to the City has taken precedence over all other aspects of the mandate.” (The corporation recently made the news thanks to Cllr Layton’s discovery that they simply weren’t keeping their promise to build affordable housing.) The BT board says things are cool and everything’s fixed. What do you think?
The Scadding Court kiosk market at Bathurst and Dundas is getting an upgrade thanks to Section 37 funds.
The Seaton House redevelopment continues apace.
The Partnership to Advance Youth Employment program is being expanded—from 40 to 80 employers, and from 500 to 1000 youth served.
In a surprisingly non-shitty motion, Cllr Rob Ford wants to extend the StART Outside the Box Program, which lets artists decorate traffic control boxes, to high school students.

Urban Planning

After Council approved a process for prioritizing which potential Heritage Conservation Districts to study, City Planning has returned with a shortlist. West Queen West, Kensington Market, and the Distillery District will get studies in 2015; ~~Babby~~ Baby Point, Bloor West Village, Cabbagetown Southwest and Casa Loma are on deck for 2016.
The up-and-coming Dufferin Triangle lands are also recommended for a planning review.

Technology

Cllr Pasternak, who never seemed like the kind of guy who reads Motherboard, wants the City to look into regulating the use of drones.
Some company wants to livestream hockey games played in City arenas. You’ll be disappointed to learn that the “Swiss Challenge” the proposal must pass is not a high-octane reality TV show (like Chopped but with RFPs) airing on Rogers Channel 10.
Literally no one but me cares about this software license management item.

Miscellaneous

Return of the Son of the Casino Debate: gambling expansion at Woodbine is now on the table. Are you psyched about hearing the same arguments over and over again? I sure am!
Service efficiencies studies may not be worth the money, studies show.
Which trivial items will Cllr Ford hold for debate just to make some point about the nanny state? I’ll put 50 cents on EY4.14, Application to Remove a City Owned Tree. The applicant wishes to remove a Norway spruce because, among several reasons, the sap and cones fall on cars, its roots are breaking up the driveway, and (as is common with conifers) its shade prevents the spread of grass. (Grass lawns are terrible for the environment anyway.) The Urban Forestry department does not recommend removing the tree, as it is perfectly healthy, but Etobicoke York Community Council voted to allow the application to go ahead. It has everything to attract Cllr Ford’s ill-informed ire: drivers’ annoyances; red tape; and a decision he would agree with that would have gotten approved by default anyway. Wow, it’s 2:30 in the morning and I just wrote like 130 words about some fucking tree.
And this month’s Best New Nuisance Hipster Boozecan Name goes to Dundas West’s Fleurs du Mal. The runner-up is Little Portugal’s Matador Ballroom. The winner gets a liquor license! Step up and claim your prize, Fleurs du Mal!

Additions? Corrections? Let me know!