Booze in parks didn't bring about the apocalypse — what's next?
The week at Toronto City Hall for March 25 to 29, featuring parking authority woes, drinking in parks success, the end of City Hall's recycling program and more
Hey there! Another Council meeting is in the books. They made decisions about the World Cup and swapping parking lots for housing, but the debate on parking tickets will need to wait until next month’s meeting. But before we get to that, there’s other business to look at. Here’s a rundown of what’s on tap at City Hall next week, including a boozy debate about drinking in parks. — Matt Elliott
What happened this week
➡️ I covered the March Council meeting. You can read my full thread here.
Highlights:
Council heard about Mayor Olivia Chow’s plans to rein in spending on the 2026 World Cup, but concerns linger about the real cost — and how exactly the City ended up saddled with this deal.
After a 21-1 vote, City staff will review surface parking lots, transit stations and other public real estate as opportunities to build housing.
🔦 MAMMO ALERT! Today, the Compliance Audit Committee ordered an audit of the 2023 mayoral campaign of former councillor Giorgio Mammoliti.
The former councillor failed to submit an audited financial statement even though evidence suggests he spent more than the $10,000 minimum to trigger a requirement for one.
Mammoliti didn’t attend today’s meeting, but submitted a letter explaining:
I could not find an Auditor because most Auditors feel that it’s too complicated in Toronto, those that I did contact that have the specialty did not have the time to do my Audit.
Kevin Wiener, who applied for the audit, pointed to a social media post by author Vicki Essex showing evidence of robocalls funded by the Mammoliti campaign and Instagram posts showing a swanky-looking campaign launch event.
The Audit Committee noted that Mammoliti’s “failure to file and the lack of transparency in the Candidate’s campaign finances undermines the integrity of the electoral process.”
Because of his failure to file, Mammoliti is already banned from seeking municipal office until after the 2026 election. Still, the committee was convinced that “in the spirit of accountability, transparency, and upholding the public interest” an audit makes sense here.
Monday, March 25
🩺 The Board of Health meets at City Hall at 9:30 a.m. (👀 Watch Live: Committee Room 1, YouTube)MAYBE NOT SO MEASLY: The Board of Health will get a presentation from the Deputy Medical Officer of Health on the unwelcome return of an old enemy: Measles.
The City has identified two positive cases — and warned in a news release Wednesday that people who attended a Mom & Babies program at St. James Town Public Library could have been exposed too.
The City is playing on increased difficulty with this because childhood vaccination rates declined significantly during the pandemic. For the 2019-2020 school year, 80.2% of seven-year-olds in Toronto were up-to-date on their Measles vaccinations. For the 2020-2021 school year, the percentage fell to 51.8%. It fell further in 2021-2022, to 38.9%.
AND ALSO:
The Board will be asked to sign off on the creation of an Our Health, Our City (OHOC) Implementation Panel to oversee the implementation of the City’s mental health, substance use, harm reduction and treatment strategy. It’ll include six people who have experience with substance use and mental health challenges, and six reps from community agencies and healthcare providers, plus a Board of Health director.
📚 The Library Board meets at the Reference Library at 6 p.m. (👀 Watch Live: Reference Library Boardroom, WebEx)CHALLENGE THIS: The Library Board will hear about last year’s “Challenges to Intellectual Freedom,” which is a fancy way of saying attempts to get the library to remove books or cancel events that use library space.
Challenged books last year were:
Golden Girl by Reem Faruqi, on the premise that it “will teach the wrong concept of Islam.”
It Feels Good to Be Yourself by Theresa Thorn, with the argument that it “is confusing when it explains that it is possible to be wrong about a baby’s gender or sex at birth.”
Mysterious Misadventures of Foy Rin Jin by Jim Friedman, with the complaint that it “uses made up Chinese or East Asian style names for people and places.”
In all three cases, the library rejected the concern and opted to keep the book in their collection.
There were also three challenges to events held at library branches. Two related to the war in Ukraine, with opponents calling them Russian propaganda. The other was an event called “I’ll Burn that Bridge when I Get to It,” with opponents focusing on speaker Norm Finkelstein, accusing him of “hate speech against the state of Israel, anti-Semitism and homophobia.” The library allowed the events to proceed as planned in all three cases.
AND ALSO:
The Board will be asked to award contracts worth up to $34 million over five years to Cancom Security for security guard services.
They’ll also consider a recommendation to sign off on a a $1.75 million deal with Rogers Communications for wifi hotspots and service.
Tuesday, March 26
⭐️ The provincial budget will be unveiled at Queen’s Park.
🗂️ The General Government Committee meets at City Hall at 9:30 a.m. (👀 Watch Live: Committee Room 1, YouTube)FLEET LESS WEAK: A report from Fleet Services offers some good news, at least relative to the old bad news. In 2021, it was reported that the City had 552 cars and trucks in its fleet that weren’t being used much.
That number declined to 259 by May 2023 and has now dropped further to 179.
One way the City has reduced the number of cars collecting dust is through a deal with Enterprise Car Share. Staff who only need access to a car occasionally can now get a carshare. They also conducted a pilot project where bikes and e-bikes were made available. The report doesn’t provide much detail, but it was successful enough that Fleet Services is now looking to expand the program.
AND ALSO:
After Council voted this week to tighten the rules for oversight and accountability on the FIFA World Cup deal, the General Government Committee will now receive a report seeking approval of a contract award for work related to temporarily expanding BMO Field. The contract is recommended for award to Arena Event Services and is worth $36.8 million.
Summerville Pool in the Beaches was closed all last summer for maintenance work. To get it open this year, staff are requesting authorization to award an additional $769,569 to the vendor doing the work. This is the third increase, as problems keep bubbling up. The original contract award was for $1.55 million. The latest figure is $2.76 million.
🚘 The Toronto Parking Authority meets via video conference at 9:30 a.m.
PICKING UP SPEED: A report on the Toronto Parking Authority’s 2023 financial performance points to continued high-gear growth of Bike Share use. Rides are up nearly 250% since 2019.
The system generated about $9 million in revenue last year, with direct expenses totalling $14.2 million. The $5 million subsidy is covered by other parking revenue. The TPA delivered $38.1 million in net income last year, returning 85% to City Hall as a dividend for other uses.
SLOWING DOWN FAST: But all is not well at the TPA. Another report says the agency is “at a crossroads, caught between it’s [sic] past and present.”
The problem, the agency says, is that their 85% dividend requirement leaves them short on cash and unable to pay for state-of-good-repair projects at their parking garages and cover the cost of necessary infrastructure like new pay-and-display parking machines.
They also point to City Hall’s plans — approved by Council this week — to convert parking lots to housing as something that will hurt their financial model.
TPA says they hoped to have a new income-sharing agreement in place as part of the 2024 budget process — with a less-demanding dividend requirement — but that didn’t happen. As a result, TPA has tabled a plan to cut $14.1 million in spending on capital projects planned for 2024. Projects will be delayed to future years, including $2.5 million in planned spending on Bike Share, $6 million on electric vehicle off-street chargers, and $800,000 in state-of-good-repair projects.
“The absence of a sustainable Net Income Sharing Agreement has been identified as the single biggest risk to the sustainability of the organization,” the TPA report says. “Without a new Agreement being reached in the near-term, Management will be forced to make material cuts over and above the reductions described herein from Toronto Parking Authority’s 2025 Operating and Capital programs.”
Previously, in City Hall Watcher
For paid subscribers of City Hall Watcher, this week’s issue has:
An in-depth look at a decade’s worth of budgets for Toronto’s planning division. Spending and staff are up, but approvals remain slow. With City Hall in the hunt for a new chief planner, the new person to get the gig will need a good plan.
Next week:
A look at the big Council votes from this week, and what they mean — including a data-driven analysis at the surface parking lots that lose money and could be good candidates for housing sites.
Subscribe today for ad-free access to weekly subscriber-exclusive issues.
Wednesday, March 27
🚧 The Infrastructure & Environment Committee meets at City Hall 9:30 a.m. (👀 Watch Live: Committee Room 1, YouTube)I HEAR THE BLUE BOX CALLING: Toronto City Hall will officially exit the blue box game starting January 1, 2026.
After a last-ditch effort to make a deal for the City to continue collecting recycling under the new provincial “Extended Producer Responsibility” program failed, Toronto’s contracted and in-house fleet of trucks will not be collecting your blue bin in 2026. Someone else will.
The new provider is still to be determined, but the move has serious logistical implications. The City, for example, may sell all of its blue bins to the new operator. Or, if the new provider isn’t interested in that, the bins could be planned for disposal.
Can you recycle a recycling bin? We’re getting kind of meta here.
In addition, the report says, “There will be an impact on daytime curbside collections’ operations in Districts 3, 4 and locations on nighttime collection as these areas receive service through in-house forces.” The details of those impacts are spelled out in a confidential attachment to the report.
Another concern in the report is whether the new recycling scheme will provide enough bins in public spaces. Based on a population formula in the new regulations, the new operator will be responsible for installing and managing just 7,500 bins in Toronto’s public spaces—just half of the current 15,000 bins in parks and on city streets.
The report also examines the possibility of “in-sourcing” garbage collection in a part of the city where collection was contracted out under former mayor Rob Ford. Council directed staff to investigate this option following reports in 2021 that concluded the City wasn’t saving much money with private collection.
Alas, because the City dispensed much of its equipment when garbage was initially contracted out, it would take 5+ years to get the City back into a position where it could resume in-house collection. Since the City doesn’t have that kind of time, the report recommends against pursuing in-sourcing.
MORE BIKES: Proposed Q2 bike network installations include improvements around Ferrand Drive near Eglinton & Don Mills, including safety upgrades at the DVP & Eglinton interchange. There’s also a project on Portland Street, connecting down to the waterfront.
The item also includes some sidewalk installations, including a bunch in Scarborough. About 25% of Toronto streets still lack sidewalks.
AND ALSO:
In an item that may be relevant to today’s weather, Transportation Services has submitted a report outlining its strategy for dealing with “Major Snow Events.”
An annual accountability report on Toronto’s TransformTO Net Zero environmental plan brings bad news. “While the City continues to implement the Net Zero Strategy, and emissions temporarily decreased in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the rate of progress is not enough to put us on track to achieving our net zero goal,” the report says.
An update on the plan to pretty up the underside of the Gardiner has some really nice renderings of what could be, with the right funding and support.
🏆 The Bid Award Panel meets via video conference at 2 p.m.CONTRACT AWARD OF THE WEEK: $587,131 for a “physical records and warehouse management solution” for the Technology division.
Thursday, March 28
📉 The Economic & Community Development Committee meets at City Hall at 9:30 a.m. (👀 Watch Live: Committee Room 1, YouTube)DRINKING TO THAT: The results are in, and it turns out that allowing alcohol in some parks was not a harbinger of the apocalypse.
A new report says the Toronto Police reported no issues related to the program. The City’s bylaw officers made 405 proactive visits to booze-permitting parks and observed no alcohol-related disturbances. The only major negative identified is a slight increase in requests for litter pick-up.
A poll by Strategic Counsel found no significant change in overall public support for drinking in parks. Before the pilot, 44% supported, while 34% opposed. After the pilot, 46% supported while 30% opposed. But notably, support is much higher amongst people who visited the parks, with 59% of people who experienced a pilot park first-hand supporting the program.
The worst thing you can say about the program is that City Hall overspent on unnecessarily giant signs advertising the pilot. Of the about $61,000 spent on the program, nearly half went to paying for signage.
Even with these results, staff are not recommending a city-wide program expansion. Instead, they’ve laid out a scenario where they’ll identify parks that could allow alcohol. The local councillor will need to agree before those parks are added to the program.
🐕 The Dangerous Dog Review Tribunal meets via video conference at 9:30 a.m.The panel will consider an appeal to a muzzle order issued to Mastiff / Labrador Retriever Max.
🏚️ The Preservation Board meets via videoconference at 9:30 a.m.The Preservation Board will consider extending heritage protections to buildings on the Toronto French School campus. They’ll also receive a presentation on the continuing impacts of Bill 23.
🐍 The Board of Management of the Toronto Zoo meets at the Toronto Zoo at 2 p.m. (👀 Watch Live: Toronto Zoo Boardroom, videoconference)The Zoo Board will hear more good news about attendance. For the first two months of the year, revenues are beating budget by 15%. A “Blue’s Clues” meet-and-greet brought 760 people to the zoo, while 916 runners participated in a charity run to support the polar bears.
Friday, March 29
Good Friday. City Hall is closed.
The Week After Next
City Hall remains closed for Easter Monday on Monday, April 1. No fooling.
The Planning & Housing Committee meets on Friday, April 5.
The Far-Flung Future
The federal budget is coming on April 16.
Council’s next meeting starts on April 17.
Feedback? Tip? Email Matt Elliott. For advertising inquiries, email Sean Hansel.
As always just great! Thanks