City Hall's not-so-wild spring break
The Week at Toronto City Hall for March 11 through March 15 fills the March Break lull with charts on emissions and ferry tickets, plus tidbits about a waterfront pool barge and bad landlords
Hey there! Things sure are quiet around these parts. City Hall standing committees were at a standstill this week to make way for the FCM Board of Directors meeting. And March Break looms next week, shutting down pretty much everything. Except the Energizer Bunny-like Bid Award Panel.
Still, City Hall Watcher’s watch continues. In this special bonus issue, I’ve got a look at the news from this week, a rundown of some tidbits from stories and reports I missed during a busy City Hall budget season, plus a special chart about emissions. — Matt Elliott
What happened this week
👉 A vote to appoint a still-confidential name to the PortsToronto Board of Directors as a City rep got a bit contentious. Councillor Jamaal Myers opposed the nomination and ended up on the losing end of a 4-1 recorded vote. We’ll find out the name of the mystery appointee after Council approves the item in a couple of weeks.
Charted: Toronto’s emissions targets could be at risk of evaporation
A reader asked if I could make an updated chart about Toronto’s emissions, both up-to-date annual greenhouse gas actuals and future targets, as City Hall strives to hit net zero by 2040.
Request granted.
In 2021 — the last full year of data reported by City Hall’s sector-based emissions inventory — Toronto moved backwards. Reductions driven by COVID looked to be a blip rather than the start of a trend. The annual increase was nearly entirely attributable to emissions from transportation, as work-from-home habits kept emissions from office buildings well below the pre-pandemic baseline.
City Hall hasn’t reported for 2022 yet, but greenhouse gas emissions data reported by The Atmospheric Fund provide a pretty solid base for projections. TAF uses a different methodology than City staff, but both sources have reported similar year-over-year swings in past years.
TAF found Toronto’s emissions were up another 8% in 2022 over 2021. Assuming similar category trends will be reported via the City’s inventory — and, again, this is an assumption — that results in another step backward and really starts to make the City’s 2025 target look in doubt. The clock is ticking.
⁉️ Got a request for a chart or data analysis? My inbox is open. Let me know.
Wednesday, March 13
🏆 The Bid Award Panel meets at 2 p.m. via videoconferenceCONTRACT AWARD OF THE WEEK: $913,184 for beds for firefighters.
Previously, in City Hall Watcher
For paid subscribers of City Hall Watcher, this week’s issue has:
LOBBYIST WATCH returns with a look at a former top John Tory staffer’s foray into the world of parking politics. And one GTA company that seems to offer a way for property owners to skip out on the vacant home tax. Plus, there is the latest on lobbying from the Toronto Police Association, Uber, and more.
Next week:
A March Break lull means it’s time to go back to the request lines and do some INTERSECTION INSPECTIONS. We’ll look at the latest traffic data from key intersections in midtown and Liberty Village.
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In other news
Watch your back, Therme. A presentation from the most recent meeting of Waterfront Toronto’s Design Review Panel showcases a revised plan for the waterfront area at the bottom of Parliament Street. New to the plan by architects West 8 + DTAH and co is a “Floating Pool Barge” featuring a sauna, therapy pool and 25-metre lap and leisure pool. The whole presentation is worth a look.
Over at The Local, don’t miss Jay Cockburn’s deep dive into the “revolutionary new business model” for landlords, which has tenants protesting poor conditions and shady practices. The unit that has been converted so there’s a bedroom that be accessed through the bathroom is one hell of a design choice.
“Harrington’s business model is to subdivide apartments and then rent each room individually. They have a simple online portal, where you can book a room almost like you would a hotel. Harrington goes further and converts the shared space, such as the living room, into another bedroom which they refer to as the ‘flex room.’ That leaves tenants with no shared space other than the kitchen, and often paying more for the unit than they would have if they had secured their own rental.”
The Star’s Mahdis Habibinia has been doing good work keeping tabs on the call for more Scarborough bike lanes following the death of cyclist Bill Petropoulos in Scarborough last month, near St. Clair and Birchmount. Notably, Councillor Parthi Kandavel was photographed attending a memorial ride for Petropoulos. After he was elected in a by-election last fall, Kandavel told the Star’s Emily Fagan that he opposed projects like the Danforth-Kingston Complete Streets project that make space for other road users by converting car lanes. It’ll be interesting to see how he votes on future cycling items.
A late addition to last month’s TTC board meeting, this presentation on the TTC’s plans regarding fare enforcement and reducing fare evasion includes a revealing map of areas where you’re most likely to run into a fare inspector over the next few months. The primary focus is streetcar routes. The TTC says they will also be evaluating the impact on service of limiting all-door boarding, reviewing the use of child cards — popular with fraudsters — and potentially looking at phasing out cash payments. The TTC says the current fare evasion rate is 13%, which translates to about $130 million a year in lost fares. Transit expert Steve Munro says that figure seems like a stretch.
“Here’s what’s ludicrous: Parking enforcement is enabling Clinton, who parks her [RV] as close as possible to her condo building, on the southwest corner of Gerrard and Jarvis Streets, to use it as an extension of her personal living space.” You know, that does seem pretty ludicrous. The Star’s Jack Lakey has a recent report on an RV owner who is using a loophole involving an accessibility parking pass to park on a city street for weeks on end. Apparently, the relevant bylaw only requires holders of accessibility passes to move from their spot “to some degree” once every 24 hours, meaning the vehicle owner can comply by pulling forward or backward by a few feet. Lakey has even caught the owner having dinner with a pal in the RV while it was parked on-street for an extended period.
Open Data Alert! The Open Data Portal has posted a real treasure trove of a dataset with up-to-date Toronto Island ticket sales and redemptions since the spring of 2015. It’s real-time data, which is super cool. I made a quick chart showing just how spiky the ticket demand is, but I think there’s much more to delve into here. The busiest day in the dataset is July 1, 2018, when 25,748 people rode a ferry to celebrate Canada Day. The least busy? It’s a six-way tie, as all these days reported zero ticket redemptions down at the docks:
January 3, 2018
January 5, 2018
January 6, 2018
February 11, 2022
February 12, 2022
December 24, 2022
The Week After Next
City Council meets starting on March 20. We’ll hear debates on issues like increasing fines for blocking the box, dealing with dangerous dogs, hiking parking rates across the city and muffling vehicle noise.
The Far-Flung Future
Another Council meeting lurks a few weeks later, starting on April 17.
In the meantime, the provincial budget is set to drop on March 26, while the federal budget is coming on April 16. There’s hope that both will offer some funds for City Hall.
Feedback? Tip? Email Matt Elliott. For advertising inquiries, email Sean Hansel. Social media image via Toronto Archives.
Hey Matt, how about covering how arts orgs were let down by voting down the 2M that Mayor Chow had promised during her election campaign and only getting money to implement the culture plan in the fall? Bradford seemed to have a plan to fund it. Some orgs won't make it until then.