The Cheat Sheet: July 7 & 8 City Council

Monday’s City Council is actually a Special Meeting, and for once it’s not a transit debate that we’ll all walk out of hating everyone and everything. This time, Council will appoint fill-in councillors for Wards 5 and 20, vacant after councillors Milczyn and Vaughan levelled up to MPP and MP, respectively. You might see some familiar names on the list of candidates for Ward 5 and Ward 20. They include former Ford staffer Nico Fidani, cinephile urban legend Reg Hartt, and, uh, me. Yep. After saying on Keenan’s show that you couldn’t pay me to be Ward 20 councillor, I went and signed up, mostly as a joke…but upon consideration, I guess I know this beat pretty well.

The July City Council meeting proper starts Tuesday. (You’ll have gotten a preview of several of these items if you followed my Executive Committee livetweeting.) Here’s the full agenda and the livestream. My picks for items to watch are after the jump!

Ethics, Schmethics

• In response to the Mayor excluding many journalists from his recent press conference, Cllrs Fletcher and Doucette are putting forward a motion to make a rule against that.

• Now that the Mayor’s back, Council can ask him to apologize to Cllr Ainslie for robocalling Ward 43 constituents in revenge for Ainslie’s subway vote.

• Why no, you can’t be a registered lobbyist while working for a councillor on the issue you registered to lobby for.

• As widely reported, Cllr Mammoliti breached the code of conduct by taking an $80,000 “gift” from the event company that helped put on a $5,000/table fundraiser for him.

• The Toronto Ombudsman: threat or menace? It’s time for Council to decide whether to extend her term for the mandated 5 years or the 2 that the Mayor wants. Check out @WiTOpoli’s excellent breakdown.

A Part of Our Heritage

• After years in limbo, the Sam the Record Man sign is finding a permanent temporary home atop the Toronto Public Health building near Yonge-Dundas Square. There’s also references to a possible “Toronto Music City” facility in the area. I suggest kicking out the Hard Rock Cafe.

• The “Maple Leaf Forever” tree, felled in last July’s storm, will live on. Its wood is being turned into City Council gavels and a new Speaker’s podium; a canoe paddle for Evergreen Brickworks; walking sticks that Jane’s Walk will give away as awards; a guitar (with the help of Blue Rodeo); paper for official city declarations; and more. Here’s the full list.

• Guess what’s coming to Fort York next year? The Magna Carta.. Yes, that Magna Carta. This is coming before City Council because, unsurprisingly, the 800-year-old document that laid the foundation for Western constitutional law costs a lot to insure.

Public Realm

• The City’s finally getting around to milking the cash cow that is construction hoardings. Ads on construction hoarding would incur a monthly fee, with proceeds going into a reserve fund for arts programs. And 50% of construction hoarding on public rights-of-way would have to be used for community art projects — not shitty condo concept art.

• One of the ideas put forward years ago in Dave Meslin’s “Fourth Wall” exhibit is slowly becoming reality. Cllr Matlow has a motion to revamp Toronto’s dry, boring development proposal signs into something eye-catching and easy to understand.

• Those big, bright electronic signs along the Gardiner near the Ex aren’t so popular now that people are actually living in Liberty Village. City staff are recommending shrinking the area they’re allowed in.
  

• edit: Thanks to Dave Meslin for passing this along! Metrolinx and Allvision are trying to put up four giant double-sided LED billboards next to the 401. It has to be approved by Council because the signs “are approximately four to six times larger than and twice as tall” as the Municipal Code allows — to say nothing of provincial highway regulations. Staff recommended denying all the applications; the Planning & Growth Committee was like “screw that, full steam ahead!” Anyway — read more at Scenic Toronto.

• Not all of Toronto’s public space is actually owned by the City. Sometimes parts of developer-owned land can be designated public space via, e. g., Section 37 agreements. This is known as POPS, or Privately Owned Publicly Accessible Space. However, not many people know about this, so City Planning has been designing POPS signs that developers will be required to post. I have several quibbles: the sign is pretty but not terribly striking or readable; and THE FUCKING QR CODE. No one fucking uses QR codes. No one. Just put a fucking URL on: “toronto.ca/pops” or something. IS THAT SO HARD.

Urban Planning

• Hoo boy. Here’s a motion that would introduce what’s called a development permit system in Toronto. It’s kind of an alternative way to do zoning that (among many other things) pre-empts OMB appeals and gives more power to city planners, which is both good and bad, really. The community is meant to get a lot of say in creating a development permit by-law for their area, at the cost of being able to appeal or make exceptions for individual developments as they come up. See Dylan Reid’s article for a thorough explanation of how a DPS works and the pros and cons of implementing it here. And much thanks to Andrew Jeanes for walking me through the basics.

• And here’s another proposal that would sidestep the OMB: a Local Appeal Body (LAB). Right now, if you want to do something on a property just slightly beyond what the applicable zoning by-laws allow (a “minor variance”), you need to apply to the Committee of Adjustment. If they reject your application, your only option is to appeal to the OMB. This motion would create an independent body at the municipal level to hear appeals.

• As part of the Five Year Review of the Official Plan, City Planning has drafted some new policies. The guidelines for tower renewal now actively encourage opening small shops, offices, etc., on the ground levels of high rises; building second homes in backyards and laneway garages has been explicitly nixed. Check out the rest here.

• The bar culture on St. Clair West is becoming a problem, generating complaints of public drunkenness, excessive noise, and drug dealing. The local councillor, Palacio, is asking for a crackdown on problem establishments.

• Speaking of the problems generated by a high concentration of bars, the Ontario Hotel & Motel Restaurant Association is offering to withdraw their OMB appeal provided that the concentration limit gets removed from the Queen St. W. restaurant bylaw.

• Remember when RioCan proposed a giant Walmart on Bathurst? In response to resident outcry, the local councillor, Adam Vaughan, stalled for time by passing an Interim Control By-law that halted development so City staff could carry out a planning study saying “no giant Walmarts”. The Interim Control By-law giveth and the Interim Control By-law taketh away.

Fire and Ice

• After the December ice storm that resulted in widespread power outages, Toronto Hydro put together a panel of experts to report back on what went wrong, what went right, and what to do next time. Recommendations include creating emergency protocols for city councillors; asking the province to require backup power in more types of buildings; putting $75M towards burying power lines over the next 5 years; and more.

• A new staff report, “Resilient City”, recommends making a policy to integrate considerations of the effects of climate change into all City operations.

• Twin items from the Board of Health on preventing illness and death during extreme heat emergencies and revamping extreme cold weather alert protocol (see also).

Poverty

• As part of the Toronto Newcomer Strategy, City staff have produced a report about the challenges that new Torontonians face in the labour market and how the City is trying to meet their needs. Along with youth, newcomers’ unemployment rate can be up to twice the Toronto average.

• Cornerstone Place Shelter, a 50-bed men’s shelter on St. Clair West, is getting the boot — a developer bought up the property. City Council has to approve the move to a new location near Oakwood and Vaughan. Ideally the transition will go smoothly and there will be as little in-between time as possible, but if the backup spot falls through the shelter staff will have to be laid off and the residents relocated elsewhere in the shelter system.

• Last year’s Street Needs Assessment revealed that about 20% of Toronto’s homeless youth are queer — twice the overall average. The Community Development & Recreation Committee wants City staff to look into various ways to accommodate queer youth in the shelter system, including the possibility of a new, dedicated shelter. Parents, if you could stop being total fucking assholes by rejecting your own kids when they come out, that would be great.

• Towards a slightly less excruciating social housing waitlist. Staff are suggesting an interface more like viewit.ca and less like, uh, this.

• This also falls into the next category, but anyway: the City inches closer to cutting low-income people a break on transit fares.

Getting Around

• The final 2013 operating budget surplus is out. The numbers are pretty much the same as the last estimate, but check out 28a–b. The TTC finished the year with a surplus of about $47 million. It’s supposed to go back to the City — but the TTC board wants to put it right back into next year’s operating budget to avoid a fare increase. The Financial Planning department won’t hear of it. As you might suspect, this was Karen Stintz’s idea, a thinly disguised election promise. Transit maven Steve Munro has a detailed explanation of why it’s not just hypocritical but unsustainable. Anyway, I look forward to the debate.

• Contra-flow bike lanes, contra-flow bike lanes, contra-flow bike lanes, folks. The people want contra-flow bike lanes. This time on Dixon Ave. between Kingston/Woodbine and Lockwood.

• Cllr Fragedakis wants to create an ongoing public forum on innovative ways to improve transit service. *tired wanking motion*

• Renaming Union Station after Sir John A. Macdonald: can we not?

Miscellaneous

• There’s a lot of stuff from the Audit Committee if that’s your thing.

• Save this Neville Park Blvd. oak tree!

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Christ, this was a long agenda. Just think, if they appoint me as councillor I’ll get to sit through the whole thing.