Now Cheng is the next to be like, are you saying other unions suck??? They don't deserve recognition?? I'm just asking questions!!!

Chow (who will have worked out this whole thing with the exact unions involved and is not inclined to rewrite it on the fly) is annoyed and is like, well, this is about building homes, if you know other unions doing this stuff you want to add, go ahead and suggest an amendment.

Holyday has another point of order. Nunziata (not recognizing his voice): "Perruzza has a point of order?"

Cllr Perruzza, speaking about himself in the third person: "Perruzza does not have a point of order. Perruzza wants to vote."

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"I hear these voices and I don't know who they're coming from," complains Nunziata. Admittedly, Cllr Holyday's mic is not of the best quality. Okay, now we're voting.

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Ah, finally the motions are up on the item page.

• Holyday's motion 1 fails, 2-24.
• Holyday's motion 1b fails, 7-19.
• Holyday's motion 1c fails, 5-21.
• Holyday's motion 1d carries 20-6? Uh, OK.
• Colle's motion on time limit for approved yet not commenced developments carries 19-6. Perks complains, "Every property in Toronto is zoned for 4 storeys!" (Does that mean they're "vacant"?) Colle is like, you know what I mean! Perks is like, there's no "use it or lose it" rule. They are still bickering even after vote is done.
• Chow's motion re: unions carries 22-4.
• Perks and Colle are still arguing.
• Parts 1-3 of the item carry unanimously. The rest (the actual money bits) carries 25-1 (no guesses who's against).

"Now you can wave your hands," Nunziata advises the union members.

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There is a ten-minute break while, I guess, press scrums and the LiUNA members leaving (note: it was LIUNA in the motion, I have mostly written it LiUNA, but taking a closer look at their vests it is "LiUNA!183"), which is not enough time to dash down for a cup of tea or anything, especially now that I would have to go through the metal detector again. Now straight through till 8:30 PM.

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(Re: what @GraphicMatt says about procedure, Nunziata probably should have put some more thought into that…but, as it turn out, she really is just one of those councillors who generally goes along with what the mayor wants, regardless of who the mayor is. Like I thought she had a conservative bias but it turns out that's because the previous mayors were conservative.)

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Back to business. Cllr Carroll answers Nunziata with her mouth full ("I found some chips in my desk, they've been there for years").

Cllr Malik's motion on whatever it is isn't ready yet. Carroll wanders to the back row of seating to offer a chip to Perks. "They're still edible! It says June 2, 2026!"

Perks, Matlow, and lobbyist Kim Wright are incredulous. "It's after June 2!"

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On to RAIN BARRELS. They are about to pass it with a show of hands when Holyday wants to speak. I groan.

He thinks that because they're so heavily subsidized, and they were taken so fast, the City should "improve upon the program" by charging more for them.

All I have to say is that this year I got my building's rain barrel fixed up and in working order again, and it has been pretty fun. Free water, what's not to like?

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Cllr Matlow held an item about the Dangerous Dog Tribunal. He recalls that by now there was supposed to be a report on improved enforcement of leash laws. Municipal Licensing & Standards is sheepish. "We just…didn't find an opportunity. We are always able to provide any data as requested."

Matlow, politely (paraphrased): Excuse me but what the fuck?

MLS: uhhhhh we'll do it next term.

Matlow: …okay fine I guess

Note: Did You Know? The Open Data Portal contains a log of Council-requested reports and progress thereon!

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Cllr Crisanti is asking a bunch of questions about dog bylaws which are already answered by this T-shirt could be answered by reading the report or just, like, the City website

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Matlow: "When Council decides that there's a priority that it is requesting staff to attend to, on behalf o the people of Toronto, it's not up to staff to decide whether or not it is a priority to be acted on. It's not how the system works, in a representative democracy. If it's something they don't want to act on, that's not good enough.

if the volume of work is overwhelming…it would be far better for them to just come and say that… (para.) There should be some tracker on reports and where they're supposed to be."

Me (wildly gesticulating and barely suppressing my cries) THERE IS!!!

He can't hear me, he has his AirPods in he has his back to me and also nobody looks at me ever

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Cllr Bravo credits Cllr Fletcher's "dogged" leadership (I groan) for making progress enforcing dog safety bylaws.

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"What are some of the new AI features in this 311 intake remodelling?" asks Cllr Myers.

Staff: "The first phase will be a simple chatbot—"

I am about to up and fucking leave when, to my surprise, I actually get Matlow's attention and tell him about the Report Request Log, and he is very nice when I cannot actually bring myself to say I am doing fine.

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Oh boy, if I were a councillor I would have SO MANY FUCKING QUESTIONS about this chatbot. Like: exactly what model are you going to use? Is it using RAG or what? What giant American company are you paying for this? How does it use/augment traditional search results? Would it be cheaper to just fucking reorganize your fucking website so people can find stuff, which they complain they can't?

Meanwhile Cheng is like, starry-eyed, could AI eventually triage 311 requests directly??? GIRL—

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Apparently they're not that far along yet, they're in the R&D stage, so there should be at least one more report on it. Will there be more answers? Probably not, but at least there is time for us to educate City Council about the matter so they ask the right questions.

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Carroll mentions humans "teach[ing] the language model"/"training the bot", staff: "1700 hours in customer engagement"…

Aside from the technical stuff, I think the most crucial question to ask is, when the bot gets something wrong, which it absolutely fucking will, who is responsible?

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Some city councillors are more tech-savvy than others, some quite tech-savvy, but I seriously doubt any of them know enough about LLMs and "AI" to be properly critical about this. Like at best they've seen a headline about the environmental costs of datacentres or whatever. (Prove me wrong, Council!) No shade to them, they don't really have time to learn this shit. That is why all of us have to reach out to them.

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Holyday's question starts off very well, "do I understand it's a computer with natural language capabilities…" (me: okay, so far, so good…) "…that is very smart, and" (paraphrased) can search through all the data really fast and find stuff, and the quality of its responses depends on the accuracy of the stuff on the website.

Like I see where he's coming from but that is not at all how that works

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I suddenly have the utterly perverse and disgusting idea that maybe Holyday could actually be receptive on this.

He's not unintelligent, he's just evil. He dislikes the City spending more money than it absolutely has to, and if he thinks, like, school lunches are too much, an unreliable and resource-hungry LLM that cannot replace humans, that must continually be checked by humans, could well be too much as well.

God it's such a filthy thought. Ughgh.

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Cllr Carroll has a story about a potentially rabid raccoon "moosing around on [her] property" for a few days and then being informed the 311 ticket was closed.

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"This is going to build trust in our democracy," rhapsodizes Cllr Cheng. kill me

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Well thank fuck that one's done. I would feel like a coward if I had to flee screaming from the Council chamber less than an hour before the end.

Cllr Myers says everyone is "very excited" about the upcoming long-term care home on Finch East with culturally appropriate care for Black, Caribbean, African & diaspora seniors.

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Cllr Myers says the community wants to name the new LTC home after Bernice Redmon, Canada's first Black nurse.

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After an old campaign war story from Thompson involving an angry mob of Greek-Canadians, the item passes via show of hands. We have time for only a few more items!!

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We are just whipping through quick releases. Okay, back tomorrow at 9:30 AM. Will I be back? Quite possibly as I may need to do some shopping in the area.

Thanks everyone for following along with my increasingly unhinged updates!

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…Well I just walked out feeling my default "absolute rock bottom" to find Nathan Phillips Square full of victorious Brazilians, which instantly improved the day (sorry, uh hastily searches Scots)

#fifa2026

The victorious Brazilians are giving way to optimistic Mexicans (vs. Czechia at 9).

Okay, I do have to admit World Cup time in Toronto is kind of fun. Because despite everything wrong with this place, we're still one of the most multicultural cities on the planet, dammit, and that means no matter who's playing, somewhere, there. Is. A. PARTY.

One year when Italy won, I was living near Little Italy, it was off the hook.

#fifa2026

Welp, made it back to City Hall finally.

• Agenda (text-only version)
• Livestream

ONWARD

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Cllr Cheng proudly announces the Willowdale Pigeon Impact Photo Contest, for residents of Willowdale and beyond to join the "pooparazzi" and document the impact of pigeon feeding.

Note: even pigeon advocates (they exist!) advise that people should not feed pigeons; there are plenty of other ways to improve urban pigeons' welfare. Here's where I would put a link but the wifi is ass.

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Now lots of member motions, which mostly have to do with local affairs, or are non-binding symbolic kinds of things, so they typically pass with a show of hands.

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See e.g. MM42.16 which is just a request for the Province to fund Toronto Public Health more and which will go nowhere.

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Despite being entirely occupied by grown adults the Council floor frequently has the air of a high school classroom presided over by a bored and grumpy substitute teacher, complete with OAC/Grade 13s making wisecracks at the back.

(Children, back in the day there was a Grade 13.)

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Members' motions first require a ⅔ majority vote to be put on the agenda, so when an MM is really unpopular or controversial (like this one on pedestrian streets), someone may want a recorded vote.

(If the vote fails the item gets put on the next agenda of the relevant committee.)

Perks: "I say close all the streets."

Holyday: "I think that's what they're trying to do."

Perks (I think): "I say we close all the streets around Stephen Holyday's house, so he can't drive home."

Carroll: "I say we all chip in to send Holyday to Germany for a couple of weeks."

Perks: "I'll chip in for a one-way ticket."

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Nunziata scolds the area for chattering. They blame Burnside. She blames Burnside and Holyday.

(You don't pick up any of this off-mic banter on the livestream, which is why it's worth coming in in person, if you can.)

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Now back to Vision Zero updates. Councillors are very mad about the Province's speed camera ban. (See the report (PDF) on the effects.)

Matlow "hopes the Premier comes back to his senses", though I'm sure he knows perfectly well this is the Premier's normal senses.

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My informed opinion is that the most quintessentially Torontonian movie is not anything actually about Toronto, but David Cronenberg's Crash (1996), for capturing our self-destructive obsession with, apparently, creating conditions for as many, and as lethal, car crashes as possible.

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We are "sacrificing our kids to the ideology of a premier who doesn't care about our city," says Cllr Saxe.

Cllr Colle proposes looking into installing rumble strips, which I actually think is a good idea. Why the fuck not, right?

(No one is really paying attention at this point.)

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Former police officer Burnside notes that over a 10-year period, the number of traffic tickets went down 90%.

Some background: Since 2013, the number of traffic tickets has plunged. At the time, Cllr Thompson argued it was a low-key "work-to-rule" thing in retaliation for Council cutting the police budget. See also this 2017 report for the numbers.

While Burnside naturally thinks "funding the police" (which he thanks the mayor for) is the answer, hiring more police will obviously not help if the police refuse to enforce the traffic laws. (Note: Council also cannot tell the police how to operate.)

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Chow has a motion to send the damning report to the provincial government. I can think of far more effective ways to get Doug Ford's attention, but I don't think they are the kind of thing you can do via Council motion, or are wise to discuss in advance, or are perhaps strictly legal.

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Pasternak (I think) asked Colle to amend his motion to not have rumble strips in residential areas, which I think is counterproductive. Like yeah it'll make noise, yeah people will complain. Do it anyway! Explain this is what we have to do because of Doug Ford banning speed cameras! Maybe they'll complain to Doug Ford.

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