The Cheat Sheet: July 2018 City Council

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It’s the last Council meeting of the 2014-2018 term. Whew. Here’s a rundown of the sizeable agenda, including addressing recent gun violence, end-of-term concerns, plastic straws, affordable housing of all kinds, planning studies, and the newest addition to the PATH.

The Big Ticket

In the wake of the recent spate of shootings, politicians have pledged to address community violence in Toronto. Here’s the motion; check out the report appendices for current initiatives under way and proposed investments. The police have asked for more CCTV, as well as controversial technology to detect gunshots.

Housekeeping

The end of term calls for a few special motions:

Delegating authority to staff to approve contracts, adjust the budget, attend hearings, and so on.
Interim property taxes until the 2019 budget gets approved.

More Council/City Hall business:

Standing committees are being rearranged; there will be a new Housing Committee, and the Interim City Manager recommends merging the Community Development and Recreation Committee, the Economic Development Committee, and the Parks and Environment Committee into two: the Community and Economic Development Committee, and the Parks, Recreation and Environment Committee.
Cllr Kristyn Wong-Tam proposes a Gender Equity and Gender Equality Office to address the needs of women and girls, particularly the disproportionate impacts faced by those who are racialized, Indigenous, LGBTQ, disabled, and so on. These factors all overlap and interact in complicated ways; that’s what we mean when we say intersectionality.
A new Chief Financial Officer will be appointed soon.
The City continues to struggle to find a suitable replacement for Café on the Square, the City Hall cafeteria.
The City’s writing off 30 years of uncollectible taxes from various sources. Amazingly, it amounts to under half a million. Not bad, all things considered.

Housing and Shelter

An ambitious ten-year Housing Opportunities Toronto Action Plan is in the works—if Council approves.
TCHC is refinancing several properties to replenish its line of credit and pay for maintenance and repairs.
A slew of affordable housing units as part of the City’s Open Door Program. Obligatory nitpick: keep in mind that the City defines “affordable” as “at or below AMR (average market rent)”: “The rents will be affordable for households with incomes between $40,760 and $63,800. In addition, 10% of the units are targeted towards lower income households in receipt of housing benefits that will further reduce the rents and improve affordability.” The definition does not include the LICO or the social housing sector’s definition of 30% of monthly income. You can read about the eight projects receiving tax breaks starting on page 9 of the full report.
More affordable units: East Bayfront, Eglinton West and Kipling, Eglinton East and Markham, the old Parkdale LCBO.
Tax breaks for affordable units in the next phase of Regent Park revitalization, including 798 “deeply affordable” rent-geared-to-income units.
An interesting venture in Parkdale: buying a rooming house and getting a non-profit to operate it.
What’s next for the Palace Arms, the former rooming house soon to become a condo?
As you know, survivors of domestic violence get “special priority” on the City’s social housing waitlist. As an extension of a pilot project, the City is getting $500,000 over the next two years as a portable housing benefit so they can find housing faster. According to the report, there are about 1,200 priority applicants on the waitlist; the program funding could help about 500 of them.
Gearing up for another winter of the Out of the Cold program.
The City has asked the federal government for data about refugee and asylum claimants in the Toronto shelter system.
This seems like a bit of an oversight: “The City of Toronto does not currently have a policy or standardized approach to the acquisition/ expropriation of properties for affordable housing development.”

Getting Around

Cllr Mary Fragedakis suggests that each councillor get to choose four locations in their ward for Vision Zero improvements.
So, about that $5.5 million in provincial funding for commuter cycling projects…there may not be more where that came from.

(Related: The Parks and Environment Committee recommends that “City Council express its deep concern with the provincial cuts to programs that reduce greenhouse gases and the withdrawal from national, regional, and international agreements to reduce greenhouse gases.”)
Just common sense: letting people Skype in to their Wheel-Trans appeal meeting.
Council has long pleaded for more say in Metrolinx decisions. Now, they’re like, you can put someone on the TTC Board if we can put someone on the Metrolinx board.
A big-ass planning application for the General Motors “Mobility Campus”, including GM and Cadillac sales offices, Chevrolet Buick GMC and Cadillac dealerships, and “Urban Mobility Research and Development (e.g. first mile/last mile solutions and autonomous vehicle systems)”.
The City’s getting funding for an automated shuttle service pilot project. Some hints at what’s to come: “the shuttle will not be tested on an existing transit route” and “will operate for 6-12 months”.
It’s My Council Round-Up And I’ll Include What I Want To: Freaking finally, a pedestrian crossing on Marine Parade Drive (between Humber Bay Shores Park and the condos and ground-floor restaurants and retail on the other side). Humber Bay Shores Park is my prime wolf spider-watching location and so this is extremely relevant to my interests.

Technology

the auditor general hired a forensic examiner to confirm these signatures were cut-and-pasted

after examining them for 2 seconds they concluded "they're shopped. i can tell from some of the pixels"

(Source: https://t.co/ljXm73EMPH [PDF], from https://t.co/suPjo0of7d) pic.twitter.com/5QWHxiqcD5

— neville park (@neville_park) July 18, 2018

A gem from this Auditor General’s report on fire inspection shenanigans Did it really take a forensic examiner to tell that these signatures were copy-and-pasted?
The City’s obsolete email archive application has to be taken off the network because it contains unredacted credit card information. Also, taking it off the network will apparently cause it to self-destruct. Lol.
You know how every year you drop a ton of money on games because they’re on sale on Steam, then never get around to playing them? Yeah, that’s the City of Toronto, but with fucking millions of dollars in computers and software licenses. Yeesh. The more I learn about the City’s IT, the more of a shitshow it looks like.
Smart meters! I’ll have you know that every time I read “proprietary technology” I itch slightly.

Urban Planning and Development

Note: it’s been a busy year for City Planning. There’s a whole whackload of final reports; for brevity’s sake, I’ve just focused on very large or general ones. For more items, see the Planning and Growth Committee agenda and the various Community Councils.

A year on, the Toronto Local Appeal Body needs more members to handle the caselaod.
This year’s How Does the City Grow? report summarizes development trends across the City.
Following the Dufferin-Wilson Regeneration Area Study, staff recommend amending local zoning by-laws to remove “low intensity automobile and manufacturing related uses and large floor plate retail” in favour of denser, transit-friendlier development.
Second units, including laneway suites.
Expanding the Commercial Façade Improvement Program to include strip plazas and industrial properties.
A new plan for the Yonge-Eglinton area and Midtown in general. Intriguing next steps include looking at decking over the Davisville subway yard, studying “dedicated cycling facilities”, and “a parallel on-street parking review”.
The High Park Apartment Neighbourhood Urban Design Guidelines.
The Laird in Focus Planning Study deals with Leaside near Laird and Eglinton, where one of the Crosstown LRT stops will be.
Creating an Oakwood Avenue “Arts District”.
The Danforth Avenue Planning Study final report includes a recommendation from TEYCC for not just a “complete street” but a “complete laneway”.
The final report for the Dundas St. West and Roncesvalles Ave. Built Form Study.
Cllr Josh Colle hopes to update the Lawrence Heights Revitalization Plan with a slew of new technologies and urban planning buzzwords, including self-driving cars, free WiFi, co-working spaces, micro-retail incubation, and Complete Streets. (Related: a Community Development Officer; also, speed bumps?)
TCHC and developer Tridel propose numerous changes to the next phase of the Alexandra Park revitalization.
Protecting heritage views of City Hall, Old City Hall, and St. James Cathedral.
Cllr Josh Matlow wants to put an end to developers taking up sidewalks and lanes for construction.
A long-troublesome concrete facility could be relocatee across town to the Port Lands.

(Related: Regulating dust.)
Heritage Property of the Month: Carlton Tower, at Yonge and Carlton. Staff write,

Carlton Tower, completed in 1959, is an early representative of the tower-on-podium building type which has design value and technological merit as a representative of the 1950s Toronto School of ‘picturesque modernism” in its expressive use of concrete seen in the cantilevered canopy and decorative piercings of the concrete screen for the above-ground parking, in the ‘egg-crate’ elevations designed to reduce solar gain, and in the predominant white aesthetic of glazed white brick and concrete surfaces.
Section 37 Benefit of the Month: This report from the Ombudsman details how a plan to restore a historic train station was derailed.

Parks and Environment

You can’t escape…THE STRAW BAN!!! Hey, remember that time Cllr Holland wanted to put the five-cent plastic bag fee towards environmental causes and the whole thing eventually culminated in Council accidentally banning, then un-banning plastic bags?
A suite of improvements may be coming to the York Beltline Trail, from Bowie to Marlee.
It will surprise no one who follows the tree by-law enforcement file (uh, literally just me, I guess) that the system has lots of room for improvement. For example, the Auditor General notes, people who apply for tree removal permits have to pay fees, but not people who illegally cut them down.
Cllrs Paula Fletcher and Mike Layton note that it’s hard for residents to find information on what to do when a tree falls down.
Okay, so right now, municipalities get partly reimbursed by manufacturing and packaging industries for the cost of running their blue box recycling programs. The plan was for industry to eventually fund the whole thing. The plan has hit a snag.
The Government Management Committee thinks the City should buy the North York property that includes a 250-year-old oak tree. I’m so sick of this freaking oak tree, if I see this damn thing on the agenda again I’m going to go up there and chop it down myself. At least they’re not saying it’s 350 years old any more.
Tree Removal Permit of the Month: A twofer this time—a honey locust and a little-leaved linden tree in North York. Select quote: “Tree roots…are not physically capable of exerting the force required to crack pool basins.”

History

One of the TRC’s Calls to Action (#82, specifically) is for each province’s capital city to have a monument to residential school survivors. This motion would put funding towards the process. An initial event is planned for October 2018, and construction would start in April 2020.
Despite a campaign by local aviation enthusiasts—#SaveLancasterFM104—staff still recommend sending the WWII-era bomber to the BC Aviation Museum.
A Torontonian worth officially commemorating: Dudley Laws, a Jamaican-Canadian activist who played a key role in establishing police oversight bodies.
Cllrs Palacio and Crisanti want Afghanistan added to the Old City Hall cenotaph.

Miscellaneous

In the term’s last operating budget variance report, Matt Elliott spots a worrying sentence: “Overall, year-to-date Municipal Land Transfer Tax revenue is lower compared to the same period in 2017.” This is a problem because City Council’s insistence on increasing services and infrastructure while keeping property tax revenue flat has forced staff to increasingly rely on record MLTT revenue. Our budgets have basically been betting that MLTT will always keep increasing. Eventually, that’s going to stop happening. And when that does, we’ll be fucked.

(Related: to real estate agents’ chagrin, the City is betting that the MLTT will be around for at least the next 20 years.)
Council will vote on whether to approve funding for a review of Toronto police’s missing persons investigations, proposed in the wake of widespread criticism of how they’ve handled several recent cases.
The investigation into the TPA land deal debacle is still ticking along, though everything’s confidential.
I know this contract for garbage truck weighing systems looks boring as hell but I heard once that transfer station weigh-ins are, like, a prime source of garbage truck driver fraud, so it’s probably worth keeping an eye on.
The Licensing and Standards Committee recommends revamping the City’s Dangerous Dog Review Tribunal, replacing City staff with public appointees.

(Related: Privatizing dog tags?)
Outgoing councillor Janet Davis, a longtime advocate for childcare, has also become a skateboarding advocate. Here, she calls for lighting at Ashbridges Bay Skateboard Park.
Parking pads?! BAN THEM ALL AND LET GOD SORT THEM OUT.
Cllr Sarah Doucette is spearheading efforts to crack down on graphic anti-abortion flyers and displays.
Fun fact: it’s not chlorine that makes your eyes sting when you go swimming in a pool! It’s actually caused by chlorine reacting with urine. Okay, so that fact wasn’t fun. But now you know. Anyway, according to Cllr Matlow and the CDC, switching to saltwater might help with the eye-stinging…if not with the haunting knowledge you’re still swimming in other people’s pee.
Cllrs Wong-Tam and Davis want the City to improve 311 response times.
The labyrinthine PATH system grows ever larger, spreading like a dark oil slick beneath the surface of the city, until one day it will rise up to consume us all.
Ah, summer, when City Council’s fancy turns lightly to thoughts of special CNE parking and traffic regulations.

Thanks for reading, everyone! Corrections, suggestions, and other comments are always welcome.