We always have a busy Council agenda in November. It’s our second-last meeting of the calendar year, which means Councillors and staff are hard at work setting things in motion for 2025. From increasing our housing supply and protecting renters from renovictions, to overhauling our crossing guard program, let’s take a look at the most notable items from our meeting last week.
Many of us here in Don Valley North remember the constant stream of virtual development consultations that came our way in the early years of the pandemic. Now, years later, almost none of those approved developments are under construction. We are in a housing crisis, so we need to ensure that approved development projects start putting shovels in the ground to create much-needed homes for our growing population.
At Council, we adopted a plan to forgo certain fees and development charges for applications that will create at least 20% affordable rental housing. These incentives aim to work in tandem with existing supports from the Federal and Provincial governments, and will help create 7000 new units of rental housing across the city. The hope is that if our municipal program succeeds in getting these homes built, the Federal and Provincial governments will consider providing similar financial support for another 13,000 affordable rental units here in Toronto.
Toronto’s Auditor General released a damning report concerning the lack of accountability from some of our parks maintenance staff, who were logging hours on the job without actually doing the work. I have been very frustrated by the real dip in quality of grass cutting and overall maintenance in many of our parks here in Don Valley North, particularly over the past two summers. While I was happy to learn that my feelings were warranted and these issues are going to be addressed, I was deeply upset when I read the Auditor’s report.
While I’m not able to discuss personnel outcomes, I can assure you that proper supervision improvements are being made to ensure that all of our parks crews are getting the job done and clocking their hours properly. I will be popping up in our local parks again this summer to monitor for signs of vast improvement firsthand.
This item is a bit of a mouthful. Back in 2020, I took serious issue with a procurement process that took place at City Hall. At the time, I attended an Executive Committee meeting as an “observing non-member”. At that meeting, an item was presented asking Councillors to support an unsolicited proposal to spend $14 million on a payment portal technology for City services, called PayIt. When I asked questions about the lack of adherence to proper public procurement rules, I was shut down. That item passed at Executive Committee and later passed at City Council, where I voted against it.
Now, the Auditor General has released a report showing that the City did not properly follow the unsolicited proposal guidelines when considering PayIt’s proposal. The report found that the proper policy was not followed even after concerns were raised by senior staff, the proposal was not directed to the appropriate office, and most importantly, that the majority of expected benefits from implementing PayIt have not been realized.
The Auditor General has made a number of recommendations to strengthen this process and ensure better adherence going forward. It’s essential that we conduct open, fair, and transparent processes whenever we are sourcing products or services for the city. This not only ensures fairness for businesses, it ensures we get the best product for the best price, making the best use of your tax dollars.
The term “renovictions” may sound like something that only happens downtown, but our local legal aid clinic, Willowdale Legal, has told us that it is very much on the rise here in Don Valley North. Landlords are allowed to evict tenants to undertake major renovations to their properties, but bad-faith landlords are abusing this rule. They evict tenants under the guise of renovations in order to put the unit back on the market at a much higher rent. For many evicted tenants, especially those being evicted from rent-controlled units, this can mark the beginning of homelessness.
The City is proceeding with a new licensing program to help protect tenants from renovictions and ensure that they receive proper supports if they are evicted for legitimate renos. It will require landlords to prove the extent of their renovation and take some responsibility for de-stabilizing their tenant, such as helping cover the costs of moving. Staff are working to set up this new licensing program for implementation in summer 2025. In the meantime, if you’re a tenant and require support, check out my Housing Resources page:
This item contains a set of recommendations for how and why the City should respond to the Provincial government’s forthcoming bike lane legislation. While the topic is bike lanes, the item is really about municipal autonomy. I have always been a champion for local democracy and decision-making, whether that’s through participatory budgeting, making elections more accessible through measures like ranked ballots and fundraising reform, or through on-the-ground community engagement. Provincial governments have every right to pick up the phone and express concern over municipal decisions, but enacting legislation to take power away from cities is a very slippery slope.
If the bike lane legislation passes its third reading and becomes law, we will still have work to do here in Don Valley North. Bike lanes will still be permitted, but not where they would remove a lane of traffic on a major artery. As bike and e-scooter usage continue to grow across Toronto, we will have to work together to design good solutions for multi-modal mobility in our communities.
The City took over the management of school crossing guards in 2017 as part of de-tasking our police force. This was a smart financial move. When the police ran the program, full-fledged officers were often called to fill in vacancies at premium pay rates. However, the use of crossing guards has vastly increased since the program was taken over by the City, raising the cost from $8 million in 2017 to over $30 million in 2024.
I know how beloved crossing guards are in our neighbourhoods, and they do very important work. The aim of this item is not to take away any of our existing crossing guards, but to come up with a solid plan to accommodate the need for new crossing guards within our financial means.
My motion asks staff to explore successful but affordable crossing guard models in other jurisdictions. This could mean adjusting the criteria to warrant a new crossing guard, looking into Vision Zero physical traffic calming measures first, and even exploring the old youth leadership model where students act as crossing guards in certain locations. We will hear back from staff on this item next year.
As always, I will keep our community updated on these items and more as they progress in the months ahead.