Contentious council meeting leaves business unfinished

Council voted to fund Pride, appoint a replacement councillor and ban a construction company from bidding on city contracts for three years, and punted other items to a July meeting.

Thestar.com
May 26, 2017
By Jennifer Pagliaro

After a drawn-out, three-day meeting that frequently stalled on contentious issues, council has punted leftover agenda items to the next regular session in July.

A third day of meeting Friday saw an almost seven-hour debate on whether to defund the Pride parade after controversy over whether police would be allowed to march in uniform.
In the end, council rejected a motion to make $260,000 in grant funding conditional on organizers allowing police to march as usual.

Earlier this week, council agreed to push ahead with planning for a downtown subway relief line , even though there’s no funding available from any levels of government to build it.
And council agreed to a budget-freeze target for next year before killing plans for a stormwater charge on a rainy day-two of the meeting.

On Friday, council voted to appoint a candidate, instead of holding a by-election to fill a vacancy in Ward 44, following the death of long-time councillor Ron Moeser in April.

A special council meeting to consider nominees for appointment will be held June 28. The successful candidate will hold the seat until a general election next fall.

Anyone interested in the appointment must submit the necessary forms to the city clerk by June 19 at 4:30 p.m. A list of applicants will be published ahead of the meeting.

City clerk Ulli Watkiss noted tight timelines for holding another by-election could jeopardize preparations for the general election.

“I’m very worried about that,” she said.

Although he noted the clerk’s concerns, Councillor Gord Perks moved that a by-election be held anyways.

“We should never tell the electorate who represents them; they should always tell us,” Perks said. “The only reason any of us is here is because we have a fundamental system in place for how we govern and that’s through elections.”

The decision to appoint was made in a 24-13 vote.

Council also banned a Brampton-based construction firm bidding on future city contracts until February 2020, following a 32-3 vote.

The move to penalize Four Seasons Site Development follows continued delays on a privately-funded, $3.45-million sidewalk reconstruction project the city was managing on College St. between Havelock and Shaw Sts.

City staff had recommended the punishment was warranted after documenting the firm’s failings and following Star reports of complaints from locals that their businesses were suffering.

“If we want contractors to actually do the right job, we got to make damn sure we hold them to account to the contracts that they sign. In this particular case, they fell way short,” local Councillor Mike Layton said ahead of the vote.

Councillor Paul Ainslie, who chairs the government management committee, urged his colleagues to support the earlier unanimous decision of that committee to level the three-year punishment.

“This is not something that I take lightly,” he said.

Items that have been deferred until a July meeting include a lauded plan for climate action, for which $6.7 million in funding for next year has been requested.

And a decision on whether to approve a highrise tower on Eglinton Ave. that has drawn the ire of local residents and councillors has also been delayed.