Council scorecard goes for gold
City Hall Watcher #290: Who owns the podium in the summer update to the Council Scorecard? Plus: the first-ever categorized Council Scorecard
Hey there! Welcome to the 290th issue of City Hall Watcher — the newsletter that just keeps going.
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Today, I’ve got the summertime update to the COUNCIL SCORECARD — my periodic and pretty nerdy look at how often councillors are voting with Mayor Olivia Chow on major items.
For the first time, I’ve also produced a categorized scorecard. Now that we have a year of votes on Chow’s record, I thought it might be interesting to look specifically at how often councillors vote with the mayor on items related to issues like transportation, finances, and climate change. It turns out it is interesting—I think so, anyway.
For subscribers, upcoming issues will include:
A new edition of LOBBYIST WATCH, looking at lobbying activity in July,
The first COUNCIL POWER RANKINGS of the Chow era, ranking every member of Council by power and influence.
Guest contributions from experts on issues like renovictions, the history of the committee of adjustment, and quick wins for road safety infrastructure.
But first, my giant colourful spreadsheet. Let’s get into it.
— Matt Elliott
graphicmatt@gmail.com / CityHallWatcher.com
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Council Scorecard: How have councillors voted on issues like city finances, transportation, and housing?
The Council Scorecard is my ongoing tracker of how often members of Council vote with the mayor on significant items.
Three or four times a year, I add votes I deem significant to the spreadsheet. Votes are considered significant if they’ve attracted a lot of public interest or are particularly indicative of a major ideological or political split amongst members of Council.
In this update, I have added ten votes from the regular Council meetings held in June and July 2024.
Big issues considered at those meetings:
🏢 Mayor Olivia Chow’s rental housing supply plan
❌ The development of a renoviction bylaw
🏕️ The new encampment strategy
🚲 The Bike Plan for 2025-2027 and retaining the Bloor West bike lanes
🚥 Renaming Sankofa Square
🛣️ Speeding up Gardiner Expressway construction
⛴️ Buying a couple of new ferries
🌊 Flood mitigation and a stormwater charge
After the votes were fed into a 1960s-looking computer mainframe that then made a bunch of sounds like beep-beep-boop-boop, here are the results:
You can view the full Council Scorecard with all vote results on Google Sheets.
Six councillors saw their Team Chow Score — a measure of how often they vote with the mayor on major items — slide downward with this update. Eighteen saw an increase. Mayor Olivia Chow has yet to lose a significant vote at Council. Things are still going pretty well for her.
🍂 BIGGEST FALL: After a few updates in which he either stayed flat or saw an increase in his Team Chow score, Councillor Brad Bradford falls back into opposition mode with this update, dropping below the 60% threshold. He opposed Chow on several items in this update—notably on the cycling network plan and the Bloor West bike lanes, but also on the renovictions bylaw, Sankofa Square, and the stormwater charge.
🥇🥈🥉 PODIUM POSITIONS: At the other end of the table, Councillor Chris Moise moves into the top spot, taking the gold, while Councillor Paul Ainslie moves into the silver spot, and Councillor Shelley Carroll falls to bronze. It’s a matter of inches, really—their scores all fall within a quarter-point range.
🎙️ SPEAKER SECOND GUESSING: More interesting to me, however, is Councillor Frances Nunizata’s continued slow decline. Chow’s decision last year to stick with Nunziata as speaker raised a few eyebrows. Nunziata has always been one of the more right-leaning members of Council, and, at times, that ideology has influenced some of the decisions she’s made as speaker—particularly when it comes to ruling items out of order or limiting debate.
Nunziata’s Team Chow score dropped less than a percentage point in this update, as she opposed Chow on the Sankofa renaming and the Etobicoke bike lanes, but a year in, her support for Chow is just 80.85%. That’s a lower level of support than she had while serving as speaker under Rob Ford (84.82%) and well below her support for John Tory over two full terms and his brief third one. (90.15%, 91.95%, 100%, respectively.)
Does it matter that Nunziata isn’t an ardent supporter of Chow’s agenda? It hasn’t yet, and maybe it won’t. But I do wonder if there might come a time when Chow decides she wants someone who is more of a team player chairing Council meetings. It’s something to watch.
👇 HOW LOW CAN HE GO? Councillor Stephen Holyday’s score falls again with this update to 14.89%. He still has a way to go if he wants to challenge the lowest mark ever recorded on my Scorecard — the 1.72% posted by Councillor Gord Perks during Rob Ford’s term.
↕️ PASTERNAK POGO STICK: Councillor James Pasternak’s score is up nearly eight points in this update. Last update, he was down about nine points. The update before that, he was up 13 points. No other councillor has seen these kinds of wild swings.
Mapping the results
Bradford’s Ward 19 (Beaches-East York) turns red with this update as their councillor’s voting score falls below 60%. It’s the only notable change.
Don Valley West, until the untimely passing of Jaye Robinson, was teetering on the edge of the 60% threshold. I’d expect it to fall well below that mark if Anthony Furey wins the upcoming by-election to replace her.
Bringing the heat
Damien Moule has once again looked at the numbers and produced a graphical look at how often councillors are voting the same way on items included in the Scorecard. That Councillor Parthi Kandavel and Councillor Mike Colle square stands out. It’s early days for Kandavel — he was just elected in the Scarborough Southwest by-election late last year — but he’s showing some of Colle’s wildcard tendencies. You never quite know how he’s going to vote.
Break it down
With close to 50 votes in this Scorecard, there’s enough data now to start getting somewhat granular with councillor scores. I’ve divided the votes into nine major categories and stuck the remainder in a junk drawer of a category I’ve called “misc.”
Here’s how councillors stack up on the issues.
Viewing the interactive version is likely to be your best bet here. With it, you can sort by any category.
There are a few important caveats here. We’re still working with limited data—some categories have only two or three votes—so there is a real likelihood of big swings as more votes are added.
Still, there are some notable data points here. Other than the miscellaneous category — which includes all the Sankofa-related votes — Chow’s worst category is probably the most important one: city finances. She has an average of 77% support with finance-related items, with just 15 votes — including her own — that have consistently gone her way on finance items. That’s a pretty bare majority and could point to some trouble come budget time.
Councillors who have so far put up zeroes in the specific categories are:
Councillor Stephen Holyday: Parks, Climate, Finances, Housing, Cycling, Shelters
Councillor Vince Crisanti: Parks, Finances, Cycling
Councillor Brad Bradford: Cycling
I’m looking for feedback on my categorization efforts so far. It’s an inherently arbitrary process, so please feel free to write in with suggestions or criticisms. Too many categories? Too few? Have some items been miscategorized? Should I allow some items to fall under multiple categories? Should transportation be split up into transit and roads?
I’m all ears.
🗓 Past Council Scorecards
The 2023-2026 Council Scorecard is available on Google Sheets.
The Council Scorecard is updated quarterly. You can also compare this term’s Scorecard with my Scorecard for 2010-2014, 2014-2018, 2018-2022, and 2022-2023.
The next Council Scorecard will come this summer. If you notice a mistake or feel like I’ve left off a vote that should rightly be included as “significant,” please reach out.
More from Matt: on dousing the financial dumpster fire, and crossing out pedestrian crossovers
📰 For the Star last week, I wrote about the progress City Hall has made at snuffing out their dumpster fire financial situation. Things are a lot better now than they were last year. It turns out taxes can be useful.
🗞️ For the Star this week, I write about the city’s 488 pedestrian crossovers. They were installed with the idea that drivers would take responsibility for pedestrian safety. These days, that trust is shattered.
Look for it in your favourite newspaper.
The week at Toronto City Hall
➡️ For a full rundown of this week’s meeting — plus a recap of the July Council meeting — see Friday’s special bonus edition of City Hall Watcher.
City Hall Watcher #290
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I’ll be back next week to ring in August with a new LOBBYIST WATCH. Because of the long weekend, the issue will hit your inbox on Tuesday.