John Tory says residency is an issue in Ward 44 appointment battle
Mayor John Tory said it would be better for the new Scarborough East councillor to live in the ward. Former councillor David Soknacki lives outside the ward but aims to represent it.

Thestar.com
By DAVID RIDER
June 23, 2017

Mayor John Tory says it would be better if the new Scarborough East councillor reside within the ward’s boundaries, while acknowledging that, as an MPP, he, himself, represented a riding far from his Toronto home.

Tory’s comments came Friday after the Star quoted former councillor David Soknacki saying Tory aides, including chief of staff Chris Eby, gave his candidacy for the appointment a chilly reception in a city hall meeting Wednesday.

“Their questions were along the lines of why I was running, and mine were along the lines of, I’d like to think we have a fair bit in common,” said Soknacki, a fiscal conservative who ran against Tory for mayor in 2014, but later served on Tory’s transition team and on a policing task force struck by the mayor.

A “perplexed” Soknacki said he was initially greeted warmly by councillors while asking them to support him in a July vote to replace the late Ron Moeser until the 2018 election, but the reception chilled “as if I was dead.

“I was told how wonderful I was, how I would have been a great representative for the residents, but certain unnamed people had called them and told them that really they mustn’t (support me).”

Soknacki, who lives about five kilometres from the ward, said he is seeking the appointment to continue Moeser’s work until 2018, not to make waves.

The former budget chief could, however, potentially be a rare Tory critic on the political right as the mayor crafts an election-year budget.

And, while it seems unlikely the one-stop Scarborough subway extension, costing at least $3.35-billion and supported by Moeser, will come back to council before the election, Soknacki’s past criticism of it has helped galvanize councillor, Glenn De Baeremaeker, at least, against his candidacy.

Toronto civil servant Jim Hart, who lives in Ward 44 and helped run Moeser’s office while the veteran councillor was being treated for cancer.

Hart told the Star he talked to the mayor’s staff about his candidacy and “received positive feedback.”

In a statement Thursday, Tory spokesman Don Peat said the mayor’s preference is for “someone who knows and lives in the local community.”

Tory said Friday he will soon announce his preferred candidate, but stressed he is one vote on a 45-member council.

Asked if the new councillor should live in the ward, Tory called that the “preferred situation.”

He acknowledged that as an Ontario Progressive Conservative, he lived in Toronto while representing Orangeville-area riding Dufferin-Peel-Wellington-Grey, and later lost a race to represent Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock in cottage country.

Tory said his first race differed from the ward appointment, because, as PC leader, he was under pressure to run for the first seat available. He added that former constituents recently pointed out to him he spent “so much time up there and did a good job.”

Both Soknacki and Hart say they have no plans to run in the 2018 municipal election. Councillors usually seek such a pledge from potential council appointees so the job isn’t used as an unfair springboard at election time.

Soknacki, who first represented the area in 1994 and on amalgamated council from 1999 until 2006, said he is seeking the appointment to “provide stewardship and representation for Ward 44.”

Hart, a 30-year city staffer who helmed both the parks, forestry and recreation division and municipal licensing and standards, retiring in 2014, said he has a “real passion” for public service and the city and is “uniquely qualified for this job.”

At the time of the 2014 election, some 13 Toronto councillors lived outside their wards. Tory noted such representatives can do “a perfectly good job representing their constituents.”