July 1st, 2006
Taking it to the street (furniture)
By Matthew Blackett // 3 Comments
Two bits of interesting information have emerged from this week's City Council meetings regarding the street furniture contract and the death of the MegaBins.
The first one involves a motion by Councillor David Shiner, which passed 16-15, where he wants language inserted into the RFP to allow for other companies to provide street furniture if the major supplier cannot. This could open the door to any outdoor advertiser to approach the City (or for the City to approach an outdoor ad company) with a silly idea and have it implemented. One of the positive aspects of the street furniture harmonization process was it brought all the elements that appear on our sidewalks under the jurisdiction of the Urban Planning and Transportation departments. Shiner's motion could possibly hinder this move. The info pillars, for example, are a project of the Parks department and Astral Media -- the pillars are placed just off the sidewalk (which means out of the hands of the Planning and Transportation departments) and just inside the jurisdiction of Parks. Though the pillars are obviously street furniture and should be handled by Urban Planning, the City's chaotic mess of a bureaucracy allows for competing interests to be battled out on our sidewalks (sounds more dangerous than it really is).
Councillor Karen Stintz also tried to pass a motion to allow any company (not awarded the street furniture contract) to approach the City and propose advertising/street furniture pilot projects. It was soundly defeated by a vote of 11-20.
Shiner's motion is quite similar in spirit but is much more vague in language and open to interpretation. City Hall staff have not yet returned our calls for clarification on this matter, so we're not really sure if we're being paranoid or have really good researchers.
The second tidbit comes from the agenda of the upcoming Works Committee on July 5th. It looks like EUCAN is going to sue the City. The discussion is going to happen "in camera" (without the public or media present). As the Spacing Wire reported earlier this week, Councillor Janet Davis passed a motion that allows councillors to ask for the removal of the MegaBins in their respective wards. Could EUCAN be asking for some sort of injunction just to keep the bins on the street? Or do they think they have been wronged during the development of the street furniture debate?
If EUCAN really is going to sue the City, does this mean that every time a project isn't passed by council the supplier will take the matter to court? The likelihood of litigation highlights another weakness in the argument for private companies to take over public infrastructure projects that are tied to revenue generation. If the City had not ceded control of its own infrastructure, we would not be going through this ongoing fiasco with EUCAN -- we'd also have functioning garbage bins on our street corners, too.
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Neither the author nor Spacing necessarily agree with the comments posted below. Spacing reserves the right to edit or delete comments entirely. See our Comment Policy.
It is encouraging that when enough citizens vocally oppose something as boneheaded as the EUCAN bins, councillors may actually listen. When I complained to the mayor's office last year about the bins, I got a very encouraging reply saying that the bins were under review and the lack of capacity was an issue they were well aware of.
But it's too bad Karen Stintz isn't such a NIMBY when it comes to advertising as, after all, she was elected on an anti-highrise agenda for Yonge-Eglinton.
I wish Christopher Hume had seen Shiner's amendment before filing his story endorsing the Coordinated Street Furniture Program in the Star today.
Thanks for posting this.
I love the image you chose. It's a picture of Councillors Grimes and Carroll inspecting Toronto's very first Megabin, when it was unveiled on Tuesday, June 28, 2005, at a press event in the former's ward (the latter is the chair of the Works Committee). It's especially appropriate because it was exactly one year later, on Tuesday, June 27, 2006, that Council finally voted to turn them down.
Comment by Jonathan
July 1, 2006 | 9:13 pm