Mayor John Tory says revised Gardiner plan part of a ‘jam-packed’ fall agenda

Improvements to Gardiner East route among many debates coming up at city hall.

Thestar.com
Sept. 7, 2015
By Jennifer Pagliaro

As councillors prepare to deal with massive infrastructure and financial challenges on the agenda this fall, Mayor John Tory says the ongoing fight over the Gardiner East is being resolved behind the scenes, with input from his opponents.

In a sit-down interview Thursday about the “absolutely jam-packed” upcoming schedule that also includes transit, taxis and garbage collection, Tory said the newly designed “hybrid” option - updated from the original plan that barely passed with a 24-21 council vote - should satisfy both sides. It’s anticipated the new plan will be presented at the public works committee later this month.

“They’ve done a lot of work to make something, as I was confident they could, much better than what appeared in some of the diagrams that took place,” Tory said, adding that opponents will see it as a “very significant improvement.”

Deputy Mayor Pam McConnell, who represents the downtown Toronto Centre-Rosedale ward and who led opposition to the hybrid option in favour of replacing the 1.7-kilometre stretch with a surface boulevard, agreed there have been improvements.

It’s a redesign she and Tory both say more closely resembles an original hybrid pitch first put forward by developer First Gulf, who owns the nearby Unilever site slated for redevelopment.

“This is a lot better than what it was when it was brought to council, and it’s much closer to what the original one was when it was first conceived,” said McConnell, who would still like to see that section torn down. “Maybe it’s something everyone can live with.”

It includes realigning the eastern end of the expressway closer to the rail corridor - the essence of the First Gulf plan that was ditched earlier because of a too-tight turn radius. Though the curve is less extreme, the new plan would still require traffic to slow, McConnell said. But it would unlock additional valuable land for redevelopment and would allow for beautification between Cherry St. and Lower Jarvis St., she said.

Downtown Councillor Gord Perks, who also opposed the hybrid option at council, said the new plan is still unpalatable and far too expensive.

At council, the hybrid option was estimated to cost, over the long term, $919 million, compared with the $461 million boulevard alternative.

“It’s the difference between a 7.4 earthquake and a 7.3 earthquake,” Perks said of the redesigned hybrid plan. “They’re both devastating.”

With that and other price tags in mind, Tory also faces the challenge of financing all of the major capital investments shortlisted by the city. It includes his own plans, including the heavy-rail SmartTrack line.

Tory did not dispel rumours that he is looking at alternatives to fund those plans, including possibly selling off a sizeable minority stake in Toronto Hydro.

“The need for money to finance capital in the city goes beyond SmartTrack,” he said. “I’m exploring, you know, ways in which we can try to sort of have more of those things become a reality faster.”

But he said, there aren’t any specific proposals on the table yet.

“It’s fooling the taxpayers and the citizens of Toronto to have a long list of projects that we sort of seemingly endorsed, but sitting on this list that are totally unfunded.”

Tory highlighted where he stands on some other issues:

SmartTrack

Tory is still committed to building both a western spur of new track out to Mississauga’s Airport Corporate Centre, and to SmartTrack train service that would run along existing track every 15 minutes or better, stopping at newly built local stations.

As for raising the city’s share of the estimated $8 billion cost through “tax increment financing,” or TIFs - essentially borrowing against future development - Tory remains confident that plan can work.

“I’ve only heard - and this is only worth exactly the paper it’s not written on - that when the reports come back with respect to the tax increment financing idea, there’s reason to believe that there’s the kind of opportunity that we talked about to finance that,” he said.

Scarborough subway

Tory rebutted concerns about the proposed alignments for a Scarborough subway conflicting with his plans for SmartTrack by arguing they serve different purposes - despite ongoing questions over whether the subway plan created during his predecessor’s term was ill-conceived.

“I think both will serve their purpose,” he said of the two lines, pointing out that studies looking at that question have yet to be tabled. “We’ll see what the studies say, but I’m satisfied that this is going to be a wise investment.”

Privatizing garbage collection east of Yonge St.

Though he campaigned to privatize trash collection on the side of Yonge St. currently handled by city workers, Tory said he hasn’t made up his mind yet as to what’s in residents’ best interest.

“My discussion of contracting out of garbage was not motivated by ideology but rather by ... a desire to make sure the people of Toronto had not only the best service for the least amount of cost, ... but also had protection against some of the incidents we’d seen in the past where that service was withdrawn from people for extended periods of time and they were sort of held hostage,” Tory said. “I still believe, as a matter of practicality, that we should be exploring the notion of having that contracted out in districts 3 and/or 4, but the conclusion will come back the way it comes back, and we’ll see where we’ll go.”

New contracts for city workers

Contracts for several unions expire at the end of this year, putting negotiations on the table during the busy fall. Tory said he has a responsibility to achieve a “cost-effective” negotiated settlement. That’s not playing hardball, he says, but a statement of “common sense.”

“When you look at the city’s budgetary issues, it’s no commentary on any particular union or any particular group of people, but I mean the huge part of the budget of all the different aspects of city government is paying people and their benefits and their pensions,” he said. “I think I have an obligation ... to find the best way you possibly can to get those things done at a reasonable cost.”

Taxis vs. Uber

After calling on the city to bring in bylaws that would govern both the traditional taxi business and new technology like Uber, Tory said the process is proving harder than expected. There may not be a fully drafted bylaw when the topic returns to council this month.

“I think there will be plenty of points to debate and discuss,” Tory said. I had hoped, and it was probably an unrealistic hope, that we could have an actual bylaw.”

He promised there will still be a proposal for a “modernization” of the current bylaws.