Meet the new TTC chair: Maria Augimeri

Toronto Star
Feb. 22, 2014
By Wendy Gillis

York University students who rode the Jane St. bus in the 1970s probably felt Caledon was closer than class. Their stop, at Shoreham Dr., was well over a kilometre from some campus buildings, and in winter months the hike became a frigid trudge through snow and wind.

Maria Augimeri, then a fresh-faced 18-year-old exasperated with a trek she says once caused her to faint during a blizzard, made herself a promise familiar to any frustrated, powerless teenager.

“I vowed at that time: ‘When I grow up, I’m going to change this,’” she said.

Nearly four decades later, construction is at last underway to connect York University to Toronto’s subway system - something she voted for more than 20 years ago.

But Augimeri, longtime councillor for York Centre, still sees much to be desired when it comes to the TTC. As she takes over as commission chair this weekend - replacing Karen Stintz, who is stepping down from the post to begin a mayoral election campaign - her goal remains true to the one she had at 18.

“I’m passionate about the riders’ ability to negotiate the system with as little discomfort as possible,” she said. “And that’s not the case today.”

Known as a measured and fair-minded politician, Augimeri was considered by some as a good candidate for a file that inspires heated debates and bitter disputes.

John Parker (Ward 26, Don Valley West) has witnessed Augimeri run meetings with a “fair and even hand” in her roles as chair of the North York Community Council and vice-chair of the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority.

“Meetings that are run by her are run effectively and cleanly, to the satisfaction of anyone who wants a good airing of the issues and a fair measure of opinion at the end of the process,” he said.

Nominated by Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong - she won the chair in a 23-21 vote against Stintz-endorsed Councillor Josh Colle - Augimeri believes her supporters see her as someone who can stand up to opposition.

“They want someone who is not pushed around by anybody, any mayor, or anybody in a position of power. And I’m that person,” Augimeri said.

That’s an attribute she’s displayed since the beginning of her political career. In 1986, as a young politician for the City of North York, she took on long-serving councillor Milton Berger during a charged debate about what council members should be called: “aldermen” or the gender-neutral “councillor.”

Frustrated with the hours-long discussion concerning whether “aldermen” excluded female council members, Berger yelled out: “Those members of council who are supposed to be women don’t act like women!”

Augimeri, six months pregnant, responded by patting her stomach.

“Do you want to see I’m a woman?” she shot back. Council shortly thereafter voted to adopt the term councillor.

That she was a participant in such debates is a testament to the ample experience Augimeri amped up in advance of Wednesday’s vote. After three decades on the job, it’s fair to say she’s got a lot of it.

A native of Italy - her family immigrated when she was 2 years old - Augimeri completed undergraduate and graduate degrees in English and anthropology at York University before becoming a school trustee in 1982. Three years later, she was elected to the North York council.

In 1987, she took a run at Queen’s Park, becoming an NDP candidate in the provincial riding of Downsview, which had been held for a decade by her husband, Odoardo Di Santo, until 1985. She lost to Liberal candidate Laureano Leone by less than 1 per cent.

She was elected to the Metro Toronto council the following year and has served as a North York councillor since. Meanwhile, she has raised two kids, now 27 and 29, and had her poetry and writing about the Italian-Canadian community published.

Her political experience will serve her well as chair, said TTC CEO Andy Byford, whose sole request for the chair was someone with a passion for transit and “who lets me manage.”

“It’s good to have a chair that doesn’t have a big learning curve,” Byford said. “She already knows the issues, she knows the constraints.”

She knows them too well, she says, and is tired of seeing the same problems discussed repeatedly, often stemming from budgetary limitations. She was in office when premier Mike Harris dealt what she called the “death blow to the TTC” in the mid-1990s, canceling the provincial payments that made up half of the transit commission’s operating subsidy.

Augimeri has lost no time in announcing her first order of business: a sit-down meeting with Premier Kathleen Wynne, demanding at least $214 million - half of this year’s $428 million subsidy.

Augimeri describes Wynne as razionale - using her Italian to call the premier a rational and logical person. She believes Wynne understands the TTC cannot improve if the province doesn’t dig deeper into its coffers.

“The Liberals have said repeatedly that they would undo the damage that Harris had done, and they haven’t up until now. I’m really counting on Kathleen Wynne. I really am. I am beseeching her,” she said.

Augimeri will have limited time to do so, however, and otherwise make her mark as chair. She does not intend to go after the job following this term, and there are just seven commission meetings left until October’s municipal election.

With the time she has left, Augimeri aims to ask each councillor for one transit-related problem from their ward, then go after a fix. First up is a trip to Etobicoke, after Councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby complained about a sub-par set of stairs at a stop in her ward.

“I said ‘OK, anything to make the ride more pleasurable.