The Cheat Sheet: April 2018 City Council

Livestream · Meeting Monitor

This month’s City Council meeting looks like it’s going to be a bit of a clip show. On the agenda: SmartTrack, the Scarborough subway, gambling at Woodbine, a 350-year-old red oak tree, and more. Read on for my overview.

The Big Ticket: Transit

Chevron Stage Gate 5, locked and loaded. The nebulous SmartTrack is at a key juncture. Council will vote on a wide range of steps forward, including:
paying Metrolinx $1.2 billion
paying Metrolinx $268 million for extra stuff
expropriating land for stations
hiring a whackton of people to work on the project, for some $35 million over the next couple years (Metrolinx is going to pay us back for $7 million of it? idk)
creating Tax Increment Finance zones (here’s an explanation on how that [doesn’t] work). (Sort-of related.)

Oh, and the Star just broke a story that City staff fudged the data to make the mayor’s promised Lawrence East SmartTrack station look more justified than it actually was. So yeah, this will be interesting.

Cllr Josh Matlow has two Scarborough subway-related motions:

A request for a judicial inquiry, “similar to the [Bellamy inquiry]“, into the misleading briefing note that the Mayor’s office used to justify a subway over light rail in July 2016.

(Previously: after a complaint from transit advocacy group TTCriders, the auditor general found no evidence of political interference.)

Back in 2016, when City staff told Council the Scarborough subway extension was at 5 per cent design completion, was it really just drawn on the back of a napkin?

Neither of these will go anywhere, especially not before the election, but expect plenty of debate nevertheless.

The Arts

Cllr Cesar Palacio wants to license sidewalk portrait artists. There should be auditions, like for the buskers!
A mildly interesting proposal: extend the StreetARToronto program—you know, all those painted traffic signal boxes—to long-term construction hoardings around City properties.
The Harbourfront Centre is extremely broke.
Toronto’s film industry is concerned about the loss of studio space in the Port Lands. Among other things, consultants recommend re-opening the recently purchased Showline Studios. Expect lots of Guillermo Del Toro name-dropping.

Urban Planning

In case you thought Cabbagetown got all the fun, here’s yet another case of local residents opposing a daycare—this time, in Etobicoke.
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. Then they paved the parking lot and put up a mixed-use development, a park, and also a new parking lot. Don’t it always seem to go…
Bessarion: no longer a pristine desert, apparently.
What in tarnation is going on here? It’s about, like, parking spaces? and an application for a development that was built years ago? I feel it boils down to “Cllr Di Giorgio doesn’t know how Section 37 works.” I don’t have the time to get to the bottom of it, but since it’s been deferred about a gazillion times, it’s probably not that urgent anyway.

Regulations

Note: I normally try to avoid lumping items from the same committee together, but it was unavoidable this time.

call them sex co-working spaces and innovation incubators that are disrupting the traditional brothel industry and bam, decriminalization

— neville park (@neville_park) April 16, 2018

Did you know that there’s legally only 25 massage parlours allowed to be licenced in Toronto? The law was created in 1975 and hasn’t changed since. So a lot of places that offer what the City officially calls “body rub services” are in fact licenced as “holistic centres”—which have cheaper licence fees and fewer restrictions. Years back, in an effort to crack down on unauthorized massage parlours, the City said people who work at holistic centres have to be members of approved “professional holistic associations” (PHAs). You’ll be shocked to learn that a bunch of PHAs are not totally on the up and up, and are basically a fig leaf, so to speak, for massage parlours.
So there’s two tacks. One is like, “crack down on these sleazy, exploitative businesses tarnishing the good name of holistic centres and the 25 totally legitimate body rub parlours.” The other is “tightening regulations just forces already vulnerable workers underground and is an excuse for by-law enforcement officers to harass them and threaten to get them deported.” I’ll give you three guesses what side the Licensing & Standards Committee is on and the first two don’t count.
The revised interim car-share policy attempts to find a middle ground between car-share companies and people worried about PAAAAAARRRRKINGGGGGGGGGGGG.
Thanks to new legislation, the City now has the ability to limit and regulate payday loan places. For background, do see this CCPA report.
The sudden emergence of monstrous creatures that are attracted to sound poses regulatory challenges for governments everywhere. The City of Toronto continues to review the Noise By-law to balance the interests of industries, businesses, and the arts and culture sector with the need to keep citizens safe from vicious roving mutant alien things that attack at the slightest noise.

The Great Outdoors

Corporate sponsorship is the future of parks in this city, I’m telling ya. The latest example: the High Park Forest School, brought to you by TD™.
The public will soon get to weigh in on the proposed new name for the parks around the mouth of the Don River: the Wonscotonach Parklands.
The Pollinator Protection Strategy comes to Council for approval. As part of the City’s effort to conserve native bees, the metallic green sweat bee, Agapostemon, will be declared Toronto’s official bee. This is one of the few times my interests in entomology and municipal politics combine, so I’m extremely psyched.
Special dog poop containers? Yes, please.
“The last few years have seen a dramatic rise in rat control related complaints…in the west-end of Toronto.” *starts banging on table* RAT CZAR! RAT CZAR! RAT CZAR!
The blue bin recycling program is in trouble if the City can’t stop creeping contamination.
This “350-year-old” red oak tree was 250 years old in 2015, but 350 by the end of the year. By my calculations, it should be 5,000 years old by now.

Council Business

Shelley Carroll has stepped down to run in the provincial election, which means Council has to 1. appoint a replacement and 2. elect a new Deputy Speaker. Cllr Mike Layton has suggested Cllr Gord Perks, one of the Mayor’s consistent opponents. However, even his strongest detractors would agree he knows the rules.
Councillors can get extra severance pay from the City with this one weird trick!
Some councillor is suing someone for defamation, and the City Solicitor is to report on whether the City should foot the legal bills. I honestly don’t know who the people involved are because there’s so many possibilities. (This situation last happened in 2009.)

Miscellaneous

Talk about a blast from the past—gambling expansion at Woodbine Racetrack is a go, subject to a community benefits agreement that aims to make sure the economically depressed neighbourhood gets a share of revenue and good jobs.
The proposed anti-racism advisory committee would become the City’s sixty-seventh program advisory body. What are they? What do they do? Read the full report for details.
The Board of Health recommends that Toronto remain a nuclear weapons-free zone. While I appreciate the sentiment, I feel that if anyone has the desire and the means to bring a nuke to Toronto, the Board of Health ain’t gonna stop them.
Apparently you can have 0 as a street number. Huh.
Thorncliffe and Flemingdon Park are getting 135 metres of protected bike lanes. Whee.
The Ombudsman’s annual report is worth a skim; I haven’t had the time to read it yet, but will update with anything noteworthy.
Count the buzzwords! “Innovative”, “co-create”, “civic tech”, “start-ups”, “social enterprise”, etc., etc.
Tree Removal Permit of the Month: This lovely silver maple near Gerrard and Jones.
Massive Electronic Billboard of the Month: this billboard proposed for the Fred Victor shelter is “greater than five times the permitted height and almost 14 times the permitted sign face area”. But it would help end homelessness, right? Mmm. Tough call.
Pilot Project of the Month: Mediation in neighbour disputes could be a better solution than by-law enforcement.
“By the Glass” Liquor Licence of the Month: Black Lab Brewery, from the guy who brought you RunTOBeer.
This is my mech, Wellington Destructor.

As always, thanks for reading along, everyone. Corrections and suggestions are most welcome.