Toronto Council will hold its first meeting at 2 p.m. Ceremonial stuff. Speeches and handshakes, no business. Here’s how I described the first council meeting in 2014, last term. https://x.com/GraphicMatt/status/539865885918633984
You can stream today’s council meeting here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6ynQyYKhtg
City Clerk Ulli Watkiss is handling emcee duties for the beginning of this inaugural Toronto Council meeting. If @Torontoist were still around, Watkiss would be an easy pick for one of their Heroes of 2018.
Mayor John Tory recites the oath of office, pledges allegiance to the Queen, signs a document. Now he gets to wear a giant gold chain, as presented to him by special guest Marcia Brown.
I am not a big fan of the chain of office as a thing mayors wear, but here are some facts about Toronto’s chain. Animals depicted on it include a beaver, a bulldog and parts of an eagle.
North York’s old civic motto is also on the chain. It was “Progress With Economy” and I am going to be honest: that’s a bad motto.
Councillor Gord Perks to Mayor John Tory: “You stand on the right, I’ll stand on the left.” They pose for a photo as Watkiss laughs.
Councillor Josh Matlow, probably the mayor’s most fervent foe on council, makes a show of putting his arm around Tory for their photo.
Tory thanks Watkiss for all her work running the super chaotic election. Standing ovation for the city clerk! That’s a really nice moment.
Tory introduces special guest Marcia Brown, executive director and founder of mentorship organization @Trust15Official in Rexdale.
Tory gives his inaugural speech: “I would remind the other governments that OUR ability to be able to do OUR job has a definite impact on the success of the provincial and national economies.”
Mayor points to softening real estate market. “Land transfer taxes aren’t growing — as we knew would be the case,” says Tory. “We won’t be able to do things exactly as we have in the past.”
Tory: “There’s an energy in the city unlike anything we’ve seen before, but to keep that going we have to invest — and we have to build.” If city wants young people to say, housing needs to be more affordable, he says.
Tory says in the coming days a new class of police officers will graduate, “bringing us closer to the deployment of 200 new officers for 2018 which I committed to during the campaign.”
Tory: “I urge colleagues to work with me — harder than ever — to resist the politics of division which seem to be so prevalent in so many other places today, sometimes not too far away.” Pretty good subtweeting.
Mayor Tory concludes by thanking everyone. Standing ovation from councillors.
Councillor Minnan-Wong nominates Councillor Frances Nunziata for speaker, would be her third term holding the position. No further nominations.
Council votes 26-0 to make Councillor Frances Nunziata their speaker. (The new voting results screen looks weird.)
Councillor Shelley Carroll is the only nominee for Deputy Speaker. She is confirmed by council, 26-0. Same Speaker/Deputy Speaker combo as last term. Carroll is glad council won’t have to print a new sign. Finding efficiencies.
Tory announces there will be a draw for the chamber seating order. Today councillors sat in order of ward number, but the draw will mix ‘em up for tomorrow’s meeting.
Following four years of helping the Ford administration, Nunziata was a controversial choice for speaker in 2014. Maria Augimeri almost challenged her for the position. But in the end, Nunziata got the job on a 38-6 vote. Four years later, no controversy at all.
The first council meeting of the 2018-2022 term is over. Back at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow to begin the tricky process of figuring out how the hell to run a government with about half as many elected officials.
Get hyped. Here is the new randomly-drawn council seating arrangement. May still change as councillors can trade. Whole new world for the mayor, who last term sat next to Giorgio Mammoliti. https://x.com/jpags/status/1070055665186586625
The first meeting of this Toronto Council term without a jazz trio begins shortly. Watch live here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46sUHC4tuos
For a great rundown of the various changes council will debate today, check out @neville_park’s agenda preview. https://nevillepark.ca/2018/11/30/the-cheat-sheet-december-4-2018-city-council/
Councillor Stephen Holyday moves to increase councillor staffing budgets by 1.5 times, while leaving expense budgets at the same pre-cut level.
Councillor Michael Thompson moves that the special committee on governance also review councillor salary levels.
Oh, here’s an important one: Councillor Thompson wants the “Community & Economic Development Committee” to be renamed the “Economic & Community Development Committee.” Can’t have community development without economic development, he explains.
Another councillor budget motion: Councillor Paul Ainslie wants staffing budgets at $482K, and expense budgets at $50K.
One of the obvious tensions in this debate is that the job of councillor is pretty variable in terms of workload. It’s a harder gig in wards with lots of development applications.
Another office budget motion! Collect ‘em all. Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong moves Option 1 from the staff report: $424K staffing budget, $61K expense budget.
OFFICE BUDGET MOTION SHOWDOWN HOLYDAY: $361.5K Staffing / $34K Office AINSLIE: $482K Staffing / $50K Office MINNAN-WONG: $424K Staffing / $61K Office (Before Council Cut: $241K Staffing / $34K Office)
Councillor Josh Matlow points out Doug Ford’s claim that cutting council would save $25 million was “never true.” And yeah, a big chunk — and maybe all — of the supposed “savings” could disappear after council votes to set their staffing/office budgets today.
Councillor James Pasternak introduces a motion to move the responsibility for city parks to the Community & Economic Development Committee / Economic & Community Development Committee.
Councillor Jim Karygiannis moves to amend Ainslie’s budget motion so that the office budget is $55K. He also wants the city to create an emergency fund of $5K per ward, to deal with stuff like SARS or a rash of break-ins in a ward. Okay.
Another office budget motion! Councillor Gary Crawford wants $460K Staffing / $50K Expense.
And one more office budget motion. Councillor Anthony Perruzza moves $482K staffing / $69K expense. Nice.
Thompson motion to rename the Community & Economic Development Committee the Economic & Community Development Committee PASSES 19-7.
Ainslie motion to continue appointing one councillor to the Ontario Good Roads Association PASSES 21-5.
Bailao motion to have six councillors on budget committee (staff report recommended five) PASSES 25-1. (Corrected tweet - earlier deleted.)
Pasternak motion to gives responsibility for parks to the Economic & Community Development Committee FAILS 4-22.
Robinson motion to continue to appoint a councillor to the Canadian Film Centre Board of Directors CARRIES 24-2. Guess Ford & Holyday aren’t big film buffs.
Grimes motion to prevent councillors on the Exhibition Place Board from also serving on the CNE Board FAILS 9-17.
Holyday motion to set staffing budget at $361.5K, office budget at $34K — lowest of today’s options — FAILS 6-20. Tory in favour!
Ainslie motion to set staffing budget at $482K and office budget at $50K PASSES 18-8.
Filion motion to increase salary range for Councillor EAs so they top out at $99,372 FAILS 12-14.
Crawford motion to allow councillors to go above salary ranges for their staff as long as they stay within overall budget PASSES 14-12.
Karygiannis motion to establish an emergency fund of $5K per councillor for dealing with, like, SARS or crime waves or whatever, FAILS 5-21.
Karygiannis motion to look at hiring research staff that city councillors can use when they need research FAILS 4-22.
Perruzza motion to review councillor salaries and recommend appropriate compensation PASSES 18-8.
Council votes 25-1 to accept interim committee structure and new community council areas.
Council votes 25-1 to adopt other staff recommendations re: governance reform, the big one being the creation of a special committee to consider governance reform.
Here’s where council ended up on staffing and office budgets. Based on this, it would appear the overall council budget with 25 councillors will be higher than the overall budget with 44 councillors.
Mayor John Tory puts forward four suburban councillors for appointment to the striking committee, who will make recommendations on which councillors get put on various committees on boards: Nunziata, Crawford, Robinson and Holyday.
Layton notes that all four are suburban and says he hopes that this isn’t a harbinger of things to come. Downtown councillors were largely shutout of key roles last term.
Council votes 24-2 to approve appointment of Nunziata, Crawford, Robinson & Holyday to the Striking Committee.
And we’re done. In 2010, council spent its first real meeting debating the vehicle registration tax. In 2014, they took up SmartTrack. This year: they talked about forced government reforms few wanted. Here’s my CBC column about that: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/matt-elliott-on-first-toronto-council-meeting-1.4932180?cmp=rss
Toronto Council is meeting today to consider a bunch of urgent matters including committee appointments. You can watch live here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnAeTjrbuV4
Council votes 25-0 to approve the slate of appointments for this term. (They also officially added Shelley Carroll to the TTC board.)
Gord Perks’ motion for staff to develop a business case for public/social ownership of affordable housing sites FAILS 9-16.
Council votes 25-0 to advance 11 city-owned sites toward use as affordable housing. Still a ways to go with these — report coming back in January.
This is kinda interesting. Councillor Mike Layton notes staff are recommending council meetings have a designated end time of 6 p.m. Councillors will have an option to extend their meetings.
Toronto Council now on to their debate over whether to allow marijuana retailers in the city. Again, stream is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnAeTjrbuV4
I love the detail that the province is giving $5,000 each to municipalities that opt out of pot shops. It’s such a hilariously small amount of money for even small towns. Why even bother? What will opt-out munis use it for? Office furniture? A “No Weed Here” sign?
Councillor Mike Colle seems very skeptical of staff advice that the city allow cannabis retail stores. If he’s against, this vote could get verrrry interesting.
Taking a break from their cannabis debate, council votes 19-3 to extend the King Street pilot until July 31, to allow time for staff to write their report on the data.
Council is back, and has turned to the subway upload. But there’s a problem: nobody even knows what the province wants to do. Coun. Robinson: “So you have no idea of what’s being proposed — completely short on details related to this issue?” TTC staff: “That is correct.”
Here’s correspondence to date between the city and province on the TTC subway upload. The bit that jumps out: province wants to know “the costs to operate the subways, disaggregated from the bus/streetcar network.” This is a hard thing to figure out. https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2019/cc/bgrd/backgroundfile-122444.pdf (PDF)
As I understand it, the principal benefit of the province owning the subway lines would be an accounting thing — they could borrow against the value of the asset to pay for construction, etc. This is why the prov will retain ownership of the Eglinton LRT (with TTC operating it)
So maybe there’s an argument for the DRL to be provincially-owned, but hard to see benefit of province owning other lines unless: 1) They plan to do a major maintenance program. 2) They want to build a bunch of suburban extensions. They’ve talked about (2). Not much about (1)
It’s also obvious that this discussion should include a long, hard look at the New York experience, where the MTA is run by the state government and everything is seemingly broken all the time. https://www.amny.com/transit/mta-subways-delays-1.24190439
TTC staff say 70% of trips involve a bus or a streetcar. TTC is a remarkably integrated system.
John Tory introduces a motion that reaffirms council support for keeping the subways city-owned. Also asks province to explain why they actually want the subways.
Newly-minted TTC board member Jim Karygiannis rises to ask Tory if he’d be cool with putting the Sheppard subway extension in his motion. Tory is NOT cool with that.
Karygiannis says the premier has made an “enthusiastic commitment” to the Sheppard subway extension. The relief line, he says, “does not exist.”
Councillor Cynthia Lai echoes Karygiannis’ concern that the Sheppard subway is being overlooked in Tory’s motion. This is totally going to be a thing this council term.
Councillor Josh Matlow, making an analogy about the province’s attempt to upload the subway: “If somebody wanted to steal your house, you don’t go to the table and say, ‘can I give you the numbers for the alarm and cut you a key?’”
And here’s Councillor Karygiannis’ motion to add the Sheppard Subway extension to the mayor’s motion. He says people living north of the 401 are treated as “second class citizens.”
Karygiannis says he talked to a downtown resident who lived four blocks from the nearest subway station. Don’t people who live in Scarborough-Agincourt also deserve to live four blocks away from a subway station, he asks. “Why are we ignoring these people?”
Councillor Layton wants the federal government to put together a summit with reps from all levels of government to talk about a strategy for Toronto transit. They should hold it on the platform at Bloor/Yonge Station at 8 a.m.
Councillor Anthony Perruzza on Doug Ford: “Take your subway? That he knows how to do. Save jobs in Oshawa? That he don’t know how to do.”
Perruzza says the way to fight this is to lower TTC fares, making the subway less valuable. That is… kind of clever, actually.
Voting time. First up: Matlow’s motion to not negotiate a terms of reference with the province on subway upload and instead wait to learn more about their plan FAILS 3-22.
Fletcher’s motion to look at financial sustainability of the transit system as part of this process PASSES 24-1.
Karygiannis’ motion to include the Sheppard subway extension in negotiations with province over upload FAILS 3-22.
Tory’s motion will be separated and items voted on separately. First: council votes 23-2 to reaffirm its support for continuing to own the subway system.
Council votes 25-0 in favour of asking the province to explain the benefits of subway uploading.
Council votes 24-1 (Matlow opposed) to talk to the province about this subway uploading plan.
Council votes 25-0 in favour of telling the province the Relief Line subway is a priority and needs to get done quick.
Council votes 23-2 in favour of Tory’s motion to have someone conduct of valuation of the transit system.
Layton’s motion to ask the feds to hold a Toronto transit summit with all governments CARRIES 21-4.
And the subway upload item as amended CARRIES 24-1. Still a long way to go before Doug Ford controls the subways, but the wheels are in motion.
Back to the marijuana store debate. Councillor Wong-Tam says she’s heard that the premier will make an announcement tomorrow changing the law, potentially capping the number of pot retailers. Anyone got any more info on this?
Councillor Frances Nunziata says she has personally raided an illegal cannabis store in her ward, with police help. “I don’t have a gun, but I raided!”
Councillor Josh Matlow asks if the City of Toronto could set up its own cannabis store and raise revenue that way. The head of Licensing & Standards seems to confirm it might be possible.
Councillor Gord Perks now rising on a point of privilege over a comment Nunziata made earlier about the proceeds from an illegal cannabis store going to Black Lives Matter. Perks asks her to withdraw the comment — she doesn’t.
Tory has a motion on pot shops. He wants the province to give the city the authority to further restrict where they can open.
Karygiannis asks if Tory would support his desire to allow wards to opt-out of cannabis retail stores. Tory says he will not support that.
Karygiannis has two motions: one that’d allow councillors to opt their ward out of cannabis retail stores, and one that would ask the province for the authority to do that.
Councillor Joe Cressy moves for a report on the potential for the city to own and run its own pot shops.
This could be a real one-stop shop model for city hall: pay a parking ticket, get a building permit, meet with your councillor, buy a gram.
Cressy says he has concerns about this plan, but supports council opting in to cannabis retail stores today. Really interested to see how this vote goes.
Councillor Lai has a motion to ask the province consider restricting cannabis stores so they can’t open within 500 metres of educational institutions, rec centres, etc. She also says she’ll vote to opt-out.
And here’s Councillor Mike Colle’s official motion to have Toronto opt-out of cannabis stores.
Councillor Stephen Holyday: “What about non-lit methods of consuming cannabis? I think you can vape it, according to the website.”
It ain’t over ’til it’s over, but it sure looks like Toronto Council will vote to opt-out of having cannabis stores today.
Councillor Josh Matlow has a motion to report on the possibility of asking the province to give the City of Toronto the exclusive right to sell cannabis within the city. Maybe they can repurpose the old Toronto a la cart food carts.
I wish I could send a tape of this meeting back in time and show it to people who sincerely advanced the belief that cutting the number of councillors would streamline city business.
Councillor Mike Colle’s motion that Toronto OPT-OUT of cannabis retail stores (for now) FAILS 10-14. Surprised!
But Tory voted the wrong way. So we’re redoing this vote.
Tory’s motion that city ask province to allow them to restrict location of cannabis shops carries 24-0.
Karygiannis motion that council ask province to allow wards to opt-out of cannabis stores FAILS 5-19.
Cressy motion for a report on the city owning and operating its own cannabis stores FAILS 10-14.
Councillor Lai motion asking the province to restrict cannabis stores from being within 500 metres of rec centres, etc FAILS on a tie, 12-12.
Councillor Colle motion requesting a report on banning the smoking of the pot in public places CARRIES 22-2.
Matlow motion for a report on making the City of Toronto the EXCLUSIVE retailer of cannabis within the city FAILS 11-13.
Fletcher motion requesting the province give cannabis revenue to municipalities CARRIES 23-1. Good luck with that one.
And by a vote of 20-4, the City of Toronto has opted in to allowing cannabis stores. They’re set to open on April 1, no fooling.
Lots of people have been saying this. @TorontoCouncil, any plans to address the vast expanse of yellow on the voting results screen? https://x.com/DaleBarbour/status/1073364657086390277
Pretty perfect vote result, really. https://x.com/sophiepaaslang/status/1073365298483482625
Ah, so that’s the announcement Councillor Wong-Tam was talking about. https://x.com/LaurenPelley/status/1073376262977191937
Council votes 23-0 to direct the budget committee to consider more accelerations of Vision Zero in the 2019 budget.
And council will end its meeting in private session, discussing the appointment of a Deputy City Manager. This is the end of this thread.