Trash bin inspectors, Rogue RVs and additional avenues

The Week at Toronto City Hall for September 2 to 6, featuring a quick Council meeting, a crackdown on RVs taking up on-street parking spaces, and trashy tales of better bins

Hey there! Next week, City Hall will start to stir from its August slumber. Here’s a look at what’s on the calendar, with notes about rogue RVs using accessible parking passes, Toronto’s new (and improved?) on-street garbage bins, and what looks to be a very short and not-that-special special meeting of Toronto Council. — Matt Elliott

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Monday, September 2

🥾 It’s Labour Day. 

A Labour Day parade will travel along Queen Street from University Ave, then turn along Dufferin before ending at the CNE. I’d expect some members of Council to make the walk.

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Tuesday, September 3

No meetings scheduled.

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Wednesday, September 4

✊🏾 The Confronting Anti-Black Racism Advisory Committee meets at City Hall at 9:30 a.m.

Via staff presentation

The committee will see a presentation touting the work of the City’s Social Procurement Policy. The percentage of invitational solicitation awarded to “diverse supplies” has increased from less than 2% in 2017 to more than 5% last year.

AND ALSO:

• A presentation from Toronto Fire Services reveals that 34% of their operational staff hires in 2024 self-identify as “a member of an equity-deserving group.” That’s down from 37% in 2023.

Map of Toronto’s designated “Avenues.” Potential new “Avenues” are also highlighted. Via planning staff presentation.

• The Planning Department will also be in attendance to give an update on their work to review Avenues — the city’s long and skinny streets. The process will see new corridors designated as “avenues,” allowing for more dense housing. A final report is due this winter.

🏆 The Bid Award Panel meets via videoconference at 2 p.m.

CONTRACT AWARD OF THE WEEK: $918,357 to fix the tennis courts at Scarlett Mills.

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Previously, in City Hall Watcher

For paid subscribers of City Hall Watcher, this week’s issue has:

• Guest contributor Hana Suckstorff flexes her historian muscles to answer some questions about City Hall’s Committee of Adjustment. Why does it exist? What does it adjust, exactly? Does it need to adjust the things it adjusts?

• Plus: charts chronicling 20+ years of CoA decisions.

Next week:

• LOBBYIST WATCH returns with a look at City Hall’s top lobbyists and what they were up to in August.

Subscribe today for ad-free access to weekly subscriber-exclusive issues.

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Thursday, September 5

🏟️ Council meets at City Hall at 9:30 a.m.

It’s a special meeting to consider some urgent business that must be dealt with before various deadlines. Most items are related to Ontario Land Tribunal appeals.

But Council will also vote on a recommendation to install Thomas Azouz as the Interim Deputy City Manager for Community & Social Services following the retirement of Paul Raftis in July.

Meanwhile, a proposal for a 50-storey development at 6355 Yonge in Councillor Lily Cheng’s ward has seen the local councillor call for additional visitor parking and affordable housing.

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Friday, September 6

🎖️ The Service Excellence Committee meets at City Hall at 9:30 a.m.

BIN BETTER: GM of Solid Waste Management Services Matt Keliher will be in attendance to deliver a presentation focusing in part on the City’s much-maligned on-street litter bins.

Via staff presentation

The committee will hear that the new bins with larger openings and also “various improvements to the door mechanism to ensure that doors remain closed after collection” are performing pretty well. About 1,100 new-look bins are planned to be installed by this October.

To prevent trash overflows, the waste department has added some temporary bin inspectors to inspect bins over the next six months and capture data.

Here’s a photo of a bin inspector in action:

Bin: inspected. Via staff presentation.

Early inspection data reveals that maybe… some bins are being emptied too often?

“Preliminary data shows that some bins are underutilized and may not require the frequency of service they are currently receiving,” the presentation says. “This may allow us to modify routes to focus on bins which require more frequent service or redeploy bins.”

The City has also rolled out electronic bin sensors on about 150 bins that can relay information about when bins are reaching capacity. It’s a pilot project, so the results will determine whether these sensors get added to more bins.

My request: if that happens, make the real-time data public.

AND ALSO:

• Councillor Paul Ainslie sounds pretty darn frustrated with some City services. He’s added a trio of items to this agenda. First, he wants staff to streamline their tree removal and replacement process. Currently, it’s six (!) steps and it takes as long as two years to replace a single tree. He also wants a review of the dysfunctional relationship between Municipal Licensing & Standards and 311. And a solution to the “convoluted process” of passing service requests from 311 to Transportation Services.

• Staff from Municipal Licensing & Standards will also present about their work to improve response times on requests related to animals, like dead raccoon pick-up. The presentation was not available at press time.

🪧 The Sign Variance Committee meets via videoconference at 9:30 a.m.

JOLT TO THE SYSTEM: Three applications for advertising billboards attached to electric car chargers installed by JOLT Charge are again on the agenda after they were deferred from the earlier meeting in May and again in June.

But there was, apparently, some drama at the May meeting.

There’s no YouTube video recording, but Guy D’Onofrio, President of D’Onofrio Holdings, has written a letter to the committee offering his “sincere and deepest apologies” on behalf of his organization and Bader Group — both co-proponents of the applications, along with JOLT — for what happened in May:

This letter serves to share with you that these events, in no way, reflect on the professional behaviour and conduct of Bader Group Inc., including its’ Principal, Robert Bader. The irregularities respecting the legal standing of the applications before the Committee, as presented by Mr. Brown, was completely unknown to Bader Group Inc. and D’Onofrio Holdings Inc. and we desire that the professional integrity and credibility of Mr. Bader and his firm remains unharmed. To be sure, we direct full responsibility to JOLT Canada Inc. and its representative, Ryan McKeown, for the misinformation and miscommunication that was presented and on display at the Sign Variance Committee meeting on the morning of May 10, 2024.

After the unspecified unpleasantness, JOLT has dropped their applications for the three sites: 1380 Don Mills, 1139-1141 Kennedy, and 746 Warden. The committee will need to approve the withdrawal at next week’s meeting.

I’ll be following up to see if anyone can offer more detail on what happened here.

♿️ The Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee meets at City Hall at 9:30 a.m.

Via staff presentation

PARKING PARAMETERS: After the Toronto Star’s Jack Lakey reported earlier this year about a massive motor home with an accessibility parking permit that had taken up a long-term residence near Gerrard East & Mutual Street, planning staff will appear at the accessibility committee to present a new proposal designed to prevent rogue RV-related parking abuses.

The proposed rules would apply length and width restrictions to “ensure only appropriate vehicles are exempt” from no-parking signs when displaying accessibility permits. This should make for an easier path to enforcement, as bylaw officers will be able to lay tickets based on a quick measurement of the vehicle.

The presentation includes photos of several oversized vehicles parked on-street with accessibility permits, including a commercial junk removal truck, a school bus and a motor home with a rooftop gasoline generator.

AND ALSO:

• Councillor Jamaal Myers, the chair of the committee, has brought forward a thoughtful letter from Corina McCoy asking the committee to consider a request for “Accessibility Protection Zones” around construction sites.

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The Week After Next

• The Board of Health meets on Monday, September 9.

• The CreateTO Board meets on Tuesday, September 10.

• The Board of Governors of Exhibition Place meets on Friday the 13. Spooky.

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The Far-Flung Future

• The next regular Council meeting is set to kick off on October 9.

• The by-election to fill the vacancy in Ward 15 is on Monday, November 4.

Feedback? Tip? Email Matt Elliott. For advertising inquiries, email Sean Hansel.