Councillor Rachel Chernos Lin moves to request (again) that the federal Transport Minister require all commercial vehicles to have sideguards. City has power to retrofit its own fleet, but needs feds to make regulations re: private vehicles.
Councillor Chernos Lin also moves for Transportation staff to look at speeding up the process of reducing local speed limits across the city. "The data is conclusive: slowing traffic down saves lives," she says.
Councillor Holyday has motions on Road Safety, but don't worry they're fine. He wants councillors to have access to the collision report database. He also wants to accelerate the implementation of speed limit reductions in the Eatonville Neighbourhood.
But alas, Councillor Nunziata rules Holyday's motion about reducing speed limits in Eatonville out of order. It's a local community council issue, so he needs to bring it up at one of those meetings.
Councillor Mike Colle shows off this chart of killed or seriously injured road users from 2000 through 2023. "These investments that we've made through Vision Zero — all these speed cameras, red light cameras, speed limit reductions — they have saved lives."
All remaining motions carry via show of hands. The updated Vision Zero plan is ADOPTED 21-0.
Council votes 22-0 to APPROVE policy of retrofitting city trucks with sideguards. Next step: finding $5.7 million in the budget to do the work.
https://secure.toronto.ca/council/agenda-item.do?item=2024.IE18.5Agenda Item History 2024.IE18.5
Agenda Item History 2024.IE18.5
Up now: a report on the continued effort to make Toronto a "public developer." No debate, but Councillor Holyday wants separate votes on some of the report recommendations.
https://secure.toronto.ca/council/agenda-item.do?item=2024.EX19.1Agenda Item History 2024.EX19.1
Agenda Item History 2024.EX19.1
Whoops, cancel the vote. Actually, Councillor Bradford has questions for staff, so it looks like we will get a bit of debate on the public developer item.
Bradford wants to know the salary range for the Executive Director of the new Housing Development Office that will be tasked with public development. Staff say it'd be similar to other executive positions but don't offer a number. Bradford seems concerned about adding bureaucracy
For handy reference, here's the new corporate/bureaucratic structure being planned for housing-related stuff at City Hall with this report.
Council has to press pause on their Housing Development Office debate, because it's class picture day at City Hall. They've got to take a group photo at 12:30. Nunziata says she hopes everyone got the memo re: formalwear. Some did, at least.
Before the break and the photo, Council takes a sec to approve the bill confirming Dr. Na-Koshie Lamptey as the Acting Medical Officer of Health, effective January 1. She's currently the Deputy Officer. The process for recruiting a permanent top doc continues.
And that takes us to the lunch break. Council will be back at 2 p.m. They're scheduled to debate the next steps of the rental housing incentive program. A new report says they received lots of applications.
See you in 90 minutes or so.
Council is back, finally. And look, I spy the Grey Cup in the chamber. They are set to celebrate the CFL Champion Toronto Argonauts for their football accomplishments.
Mayor Chow takes the lectern and yells "ARRRRRRGOS." Some councillors respond, saying, "Arrrrrgos."
Michael "Pinball" Clemons, GM of the Arrrrrgos, is here. "Tell us the magic - teach us how to win!" Chow asks as she invites him to take the lectern for a few comments.
Pinball tells Chow and Council the secret to winning is to have a great head AND a great heart. He doesn't say anything about other body parts but I think they're useful too.
"Losing is the fast track to winning — know that," says Pinball Clemons. "We learn more oftentimes from our losses than we do from our wins."
He closes by quoting MLK Jr: "Power, at its best, is love. The two are synonymous."
Councillors want to take a photo around the Grey Cup. Councillor Perruzza hoists it on his shoulder. "Don't drop it!" implores Councillor Chris Moise. He doesn't.
Everyone then says cheese or their customary equivalent.
The wins just keep coming. Councillor Matlow announces that Councillor Parthi Kandavel just welcomed a new baby to the family.
Up now: the results are in from the initial application intake for the rental housing incentive program approved at the last Council meeting. Staff are recommending awarding about $458 million worth of incentives for these 17 projects, with 7,175 rentals.
https://secure.toronto.ca/council/agenda-item.do?item=2024.CC24.16Agenda Item History 2024.CC24.16
Agenda Item History 2024.CC24.16
With provincial and federal money and financing support, the city says it could approve another 58 submitted applications under the rental incentive program to create 24,450 more homes.
Councillor Bradford when trying to ask questions of housing staff is frustrated after Nunziata shuts off his microphone after his time runs out.
"I gave you an extra minute — and you were not allowing the staff to answer, and you were being very rude," explains Nunziata.
Staff clarify that council already approved, via delegated authority, these applications to the rental incentive program when they approved this program in November. This report is really an FYI plus approval of an extra 528 rentals beyond the original scope.
"Members, congratulations — this is literally the fastest and most successful affordable housing project in the City of Toronto in living memory, if not ever," says Councillor Gord Perks. He congratulates the mayor and staff on a "job well done."
Continuing his victory lap, Perks says groups RESCON & BILD said this program wouldn't work. He says RESCON claimed no one would apply because of requirement to include 20% affordable units.
"A key lesson there - don't believe the industry when they say they need more subsidy."
"The claims from the development industry should be taken not just with a grain of salt, or a lick of salt, but a whole steamboat full of salt," Perks says, arguing city hall housing staff are better at offering real numbers about the cost of building new housing.
In her speech, Deputy Mayor Ausma Malik points out that one of the successful applicants to this rental housing incentive program is phase one of Quayside — the waterfront land formerly eyed for the Sidewalk Toronto "Smart City" scheme. The saga continues.
Councillor Stephen Holyday decries the almost half-billion dollar cost of this rental housing incentive program, arguing this is just subsidizing "selected" developers, some of whom would be building anyway. He calls it an "income redistribution scheme."
Councillor Bradford says Toronto is in the middle of a "housing starts crisis."
"Folks are pretty happy to take a victory lap but I can't square that with the numbers or the lack of progress," he says.
Bradford says with the tight timeline and short application window, he doesn't have confidence the city has identified the best applications that are most likely to actually get built. He's frustrated this report was only published six hours ago.
Bradford says he'd prefer a simpler policy, where the city would simply "waive development charges on a time-limited period for any applicant that wants to come forward and build purpose-built rental."
"Yes, the housing starts have stopped, why? It's because interest rates are too high. It's not because we didn't approve them on time," says Chow. "Financially, it's difficult right now for rental buildings to get started." She says this program "leads the way" to address that.
Chow points out this half-billion in incentives isn't money the city has right now -- it's money the city would theoretically get if these projects all went forward, but, well, they're not going forward. This project encourages them to go forward, by waiving fees.
Bradford asks Chow why this incentive program is better than just providing general relief to development charges and other fees for builders.
"We don't have the financial capacity to do so," Chow says.
Holyday asks Chow about how the city is going to pay for infrastructure needs if we're letting these developers off the hook from development charges and reducing their property taxes.
"Ah, I thought you're from a school of thought that believes in 'axing the tax!'" Chow says.
The update to the rental housing incentive program, which we now know has approved 17 applications with 7,175 rental units, is APPROVED 22-3.
Council has jumped back to the earlier item about the city setting up a housing development office.
Holyday has concerns. "If the for-profit development industry is struggling so much, how are we supposed to give it a go ourselves as a public entity?"
Councillor Mike Colle has a long five-part motion. Among other things, it asks the mayor to look at whether there's any opportunity to use her 'strong mayor' powers to expedite the delivery of housing.
Councillor Gord Perks lauds this report and public developer process. He says previously the city was "frustrated and unable to move on affordable housing", but now it's moving toward being "quite possibly, itself, the biggest developer in the country."
"Government isn't slow. Government is fast and effective," says Perks. "By relying on the private market, as we did for the last 20 years, we built too much of the wrong thing and not enough of what Torontonians actually need."
Matt Elliott
