This week: printing costs. Next week: a $17 billion budget.
Place your bets on big budget battle royale. The Week at City Hall for February 12 through February 16, featuring a budget debate, a budget playbook, and overhousing at TCH.
Hey there! The end times are here. At least as far as Toronto’s 2024 budget is concerned, anyway. Here’s your free look at what’s coming up at Toronto City Hall next week, featuring a very special budget meeting.
Also, a look at what the Council spent their time debating at their February meeting. In addition to debates on the usual stuff like bus lanes and shelters, they also debated… printing costs? And travel expenses? Hey, municipal government is fun, isn’t it? — Matt Elliott
This issue of City Hall Watcher’s The Week at Toronto City Hall is sponsored by:
What Council Did: decisions on bus lanes, the noise bylaw, and… travel and tobogganing?
Toronto Council met this week! For once, I didn’t jinx things by suggesting they could wrap up this agenda in two days. With the budget debate looming next week, Mayor Olivia Chow and Council kept things relatively efficient.
Still, the meeting found time for some strange diversions.
Here’s how Council spent its time across two days, on February 6 and February 7.
For my play-by-play coverage — which also, of course, includes a bit of colour commentary and also a timely Simpsons reference — view my thread on Mastodon or Twitter.
I’ll have more details of some important votes in Monday’s issue, but rest assured that Toronto’s “tobogganing ban” is no more. With that handled, we just need Council to authorize an RFP for a weather machine so we can get some darn snow.
Monday, February 12
💨 The Board of Directors of the Toronto Atmospheric Fund meets at City Hall at 9:30 a.m.👀 Watch Live: WebEx, Committee Room 2ELECTRIFYING MEETING: City Hall’s investment fund established to fight climate change meets for the first time in 2024. They’ll look at their annual report for 2023 and their annual plan for 2024.
They’ll also see a presentation from one of their past grant recipients. In 2021, the Board approved giving $150,000 to Pembina to produce a report on a zero-emissions strategy for medium and heavy-duty vehicles like buses and trucks (including “big rigs”). The report is now done. These electric trucks are going to need a lot of electric vehicle chargers.
🩺 The Board of Health meets at City Hall at 9:30 a.m.👀 Watch Live: YouTube, Committee Room 1HEALTH STRATEGY: The public health board has a light agenda, headlined by a recommendation requesting the development of a new strategic plan covering the 2024-2028 period.
Tuesday, February 13
🩺 The General Government Committee meets at City Hall at 9:30 a.m.👀 Watch Live: YouTube, Committee Room 1FLEXING THOSE ZEBRA MUSSELS: The City needs a new control system at the R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plan to deal with zebra mussels, an invasive species in Lake Ontario that have a nasty habit of clogging up winter intake lines and spreading avian botulism.
Dealing with these pests isn’t cheap. After receiving just one bid, staff recommend awarding a $55.9 million contract to Alberici Constructors Limited for a new system to prevent the mussels from hanging out around the water intake system. This contract comes on top of about $23.3 million approved for spending on mussel-busting infrastructure at the R.L. Clark and F.J. Horgan Water plants in 2021.
AND ALSO: The committee will also consider a request to spend an additional $1.6 million on security guards at Union Station as part of “a multi-pronged approach to better respond to vulnerable people.”
Previously, in City Hall Watcher
For paid subscribers of City Hall Watcher, this week’s issue has:
LOBBYIST WATCH! Our monthly summary of lobbying activity at 100 Queen West, with a special look at Police Association lobbying, a surge of Uber lobbying and more.
A division-by-division comparison of Mayor Olivia Chow’s budget with the budget put forward by staff last month.
Next week:
One more budget preview, with a hyper-detailed look at the police budget over the last five years.
Subscribe today for ad-free access to Monday issues.
Wednesday, February 14
🏟️💘 City Council meets at City Hall at 9:30 a.m. for a Special Budget Meeting👀 Watch Live: YouTube, Council ChamberBUDGET BATTLE: Mayor Olivia Chow will officially present her first budget to Council on Valentine’s Day. Wear red.
A few notes about the process to keep in mind.
💪 Chow is not seeking Council’s approval of her budget. Under Premier Doug Ford’s strong mayor legislation, this meeting exists as an opportunity for Council to pass amendments. If they don’t pass any amendments, the budget will be deemed approved. It’s automatic. There was no vote last year to officially adopt former mayor John Tory’s budget, and I’d expect the same this year.
❌If amendments are passed, Chow has ten days to veto them. Council would then, in turn, have 15 days to meet to overrule that veto, with a two-thirds majority. Chow, though, has promised not to use her veto powers, so this part probably doesn’t matter.
✅ Chow does need Council approval for the tax rates, which are laid out in a separate agenda item. Here’s what a report on the strong mayor legislation published in December 2022 says on the matter:
While the budget approval process has been changed as described above, the adoption of revenue sources, including the tax levy, user fees, and direct taxes remains within the authority of Council.
That’s important because it creates opportunity for a scenario where Council, though largely powerless to reject Chow’s budget, votes to reject the 9.5% residential tax increase she’s proposed to fund her budget.
It’s not entirely clear to me what would happen if the budget is passed but not properly funded with tax increases — procedural confusion, presumably — but that’s seemingly what a gaggle of former right-leaning councillors and past mayoral candidate Anthony Furey have urged Council to do in an open letter released this week.
There’s also the possibility of Council voting for other changes to the tax rate. Councillor Brad Bradford announced yesterday his intention to reduce the property tax increase for small businesses, for example.
🏈 Under Tory and former mayor Rob Ford, the budget playbook was to constrain Council’s ability to increase budget spending by requiring a vote on the property tax rates first. Once the rates are locked in, it becomes much harder to identify offsets for increased spending, as is required to maintain a balanced budget.
I’ll be interested to see if Chow uses the same strategy. However, it probably won’t matter as much if her opposition generally advocates reducing rather than increasing taxes.
⁉️ One strategy Chow has taken from Tory is identifying a relatively small pile of cash that Council can put wherever they want. Last year, Tory put up $6 million. Chow has put up $8 million.
Potential amendments that could come up that could use this money — and maybe more — include:
Restoring the $12.6 million the police board approved in the police budget.
The $4.1 million needed to restore windrow clearing for the remainder of 2024. ($16 million annually will be needed to continue the service beyond this year.)
➡️ Other notes from the reports attached to the budget:
Despite some recent progress on intergovernmental relations, the City is still shouldering a huge portion of its capital infrastructure needs over the next decade.
Mayor Olivia Chow’s budget requires CreateTO — City Hall’s real estate corporation — to issue a $30 million one-time dividend. Council will be asked to approve this as part of their debate on the tax rates.
The household income threshold at which seniors and people with disabilities can apply for relief on this year’s property tax increases is set to increase from $55,000 to $57,112. In another notable change, Council will be asked to approve a strategy to increase this threshold in line with CPI each year. About 8,600 households were in the tax relief program in 2023.
For the first time this year — subject to Council approval — the tax relief program will also be extended to seniors and disabled people living in housing co-ops.
Some preliminary analysis of a graduated property tax system — where people who own homes worth more than $3 million would pay a higher rate — estimates additional revenue of between $30 million and $50 million each year. But alas, the City would need provincial approval first.
I’ll have live coverage of the special budget meeting on Mastodon and BlueSky.
🏆 The Bid Award Panel meets via video conference at 2 p.m.CONTRACT AWARD OF THE WEEK: Up to $6 million for outdoor fitness equipment.
Thursday, February 15
🏢 The Toronto Community Housing Board meets at City Hall at 9 a.m. 👀 Watch Live: Committee Room 1, YouTubeOVERHOUSED: Newly-minted TCH CEO Sean Baird will attend his first board meeting. The agenda includes a notable item about the subsidized housing provider’s new effort to tackle the problem of ‘overhoused households.”
A household is considered overhoused when the number of bedrooms in a rent-geared-to-income household outnumbers the number of people living there.
There’s a long list of details that describe the particulars of this policy. For instance, a married couple is expected to share a bedroom. Kids can share a bedroom too. But the basic issue is that there are subsidized homes that could house a lot more people than they are now.
A typical overhoused scenario might occur when kids grow up and leave home, leaving their parents with empty bedrooms.
TCH says there are about 2,100 households in this category, while 17,000 families are on a waiting list for larger subsidized units. TCH would like to move the overhoused people to smaller units, freeing up space for those on the waiting list.
But progress is slow. The average length of time households have been considered overhoused is 3,170 days.
Another way to put that: almost nine years. And that’s the average.
A presentation to the Board says there will be a process this year to begin to transfer the overhoused to smaller units in the TCH portfolio.
🏚️ The Preservation Board meets via video conference at 9:30 a.m. 👀 Watch Live: YouTube
NEW STUFF FOR OLD TOWN: The Board responsible for heritage matters will consider a set of confidential recommendations related to a settlement offer received about a development planned for 179-185 King East.
Gupta Group is proposing a 33-storey building with 190 units, placed atop a row of storefronts constructed between 1833 and 1855. The project has been appealed to the Ontario Land Tribunal.
The settlement offer includes a few concessions, including adding some three-bedroom units, protecting trees and providing residents with a car-share membership for their first five years of occupancy. (No parking is proposed on the site.) A hotel component has also been removed from the plan.
AND ALSO: The Board will consider a plan for a development atop the heritage headquarters of the Girl Guides at 50 Merton Street. This is one of the relatively rare heritage-protected buildings that has interior elements deemed as heritage. Aspects of the lobby will be removed and stored during construction and reinstalled.
There’s also some batch processing on the agenda. The Board will consider heritage protections for ten two-storey storefronts near Main and Gerrard.
🎶 The Music Advisory Committee meets at City Hall at 10 a.m.👀 Watch Live: YouTube, Committee Room 2PLAYING BY EAR: The Music Committee will get verbal updates on things like the noise bylaw, zoning for outdoor patios and the night economy.
🎭 The Board of Directors of TO Live meets at Meridian Hall at 12:30 p.m.👀 Watch Live: Meridian Hall Executive BoardroomRAVE REVIEWS: The Board responsible for managing Toronto’s theatres will review a report from CEO Clyde Wagner. “There was magic at the end of 2023,” he writes, noting some recent performances at Toronto theatres and that TO Live posted a budget surplus for 2023. Take a bow.
Friday, February 16
🏗️ The CreateTO Board meets via video conference at 9:30 a.m.HOUSING NOW-ISH: A report on Housing Now says the project at 50 Wilson Heights now projects that construction will start this spring. Construction started on a Bloor-Kipling project on February 1. 140 Merton Street is set for construction in September.
🌳 Scarborough Community Council meets at 9:30 a.m. at Scarborough Civic Centre👀 Watch Live: YouTube, Scarborough Civic Centre Council ChamberSUBWAY VERSUS SIDEWALKS: In March 2022, Council approved a nearly two-year closure of the east sidewalk on McCowan Road between Sheppard East and Nugget Avenue to make way for Metrolinx to do construction related to the Scarborough Subway.
Two years are nearly up, and the relevant work isn’t done. Metrolinx is asking Scarborough Community Council and City Council to approve an extension for the sidewalk closure through December 31, 2025. Another two years, almost. There have been “challenges associated with the tunnel boring machine operation and maintenance.”
The Week After Next
It’s a short week after the Family Day long weekend. The Economic & Community Development Committee meets on Tuesday, and the TTC Board meets on Thursday.
The Far-Flung Future
Mayor Olivia Chow’s Executive Committee meeting on February 29 is tentatively set to include a report on implementing a commercial parking levy.
Council’s next meeting following the budget approval starts on March 20.
Feedback? Tip? Email Matt Elliott. For advertising inquiries, email Sean Hansel.