Old City Hall council chambers, 1951 The independent fiscal review panel that Mayor David Miller put together to provide the city with advice on how to balance its books has recommended a stronger mayor system, and ever since, newspapers and blogs have been all aflutter debating the pros and cons of such a change. Yesterday, Eye Weekly, in its editorial, came out in support of giving Toronto's mayor more power. On its side is Mayor Miller himself, Premier Dalton McGuinty, some of Miller's critics (including Denzil Minnan-Wong), and, of course, the panel ...

John and Bridget were living together in a part of town called Riverdale. David had educated them (whether they wanted to be or not) in the history of their neighbourhood. He explained to them that at the turn of the century, when the land to the east of the Don River and its deep, almost impassable valley was first developed, the acres of thick forest gave themselves up reluctantly to cutters and road-layers. Access south to the lake was not as direct here as it was from the middle of town, and the promontories not as pleasant. A road had been cut in the valley, but if you wished to live in Riverdale, your horses had to be strong for the uphill slogs to and from town. It was said that if you stood at Yonge and King Streets at nightfall you could hear the curses of the tanners and the coopers and the housewifes beating their way back into the dark part of town. I first read this passage on the streetcar heading east. Looking up from my book, I realized we would soon effortlessly cross the Don River valley. I couldn't help but laugh, and not just because of the coincidence, or because in the past my neighbourhood might have been known as the “dark part of town.” I chuckled because despite the ease with which people on the west side of the Don can now travel to the east side, the valley still seems to act as a hurdle, even if it's more of a psychological hurdle than anything else. In the maps of Toronto that many of us draw up in our minds, Riverdale is often situated much further east than it is in real life. Back in the 1800s, the Don Valley marked Toronto's eastern edge. Spacing editor Anna Bowness pointed this out in her One Book post on the Necropolis graveyard, which sprawls down the west side of the valley near Riverdale farm and was at one time situated on the outskirts of the city. There are other clues that also betray the river's days as the city's eastern border. Take the Don Jail, which sits near Broadview Avenue and Gerrard Street. “When the Don Jail was built in 1865, it existed at the far Eastern edge of a fledgling city,” wrote Joe Wilson in Spacing's Water issue. “The river provided a natural Eastern boundary, which law enforcement officials rarely crossed. North of the Jail was a notorious squatter camp known as Brook's Bush, populated with escaped convicts and people wishing to remain outside the law.” It must have made people feel safer to know that Toronto's convicts were on the other side of an “almost impassable valley.”

Cross-posted from Eye Weekly. OK, so maybe not everyone has gotten the message, but over the past 15 years or so (or perhaps more, depending on your social circle and reading habits) scientists, environmentalists and a host of other forward-thinking advocates have been telling us: we have to fight climate change; the consequences will be disastrous; we must do everything we can to stop it. After too many years of too little to late, the message has changed somewhat. We still have to fight climate change, but we also have to recognize that global warming is already upon us. And while we need to work to prevent it from getting worse (or more optimistically, reverse its effects), we also have to work to ensure we are prepared to deal with the consequences of a warmer climate. Is the City of Toronto ready to adapt to a new normal of increased floods and droughts, new pests and vector-borne illnesses, and a possible influx of environmental refugees? After sitting in on a series of presentations on climate change adaptation given to the Parks and Environment Committee yesterday, I can tell you that the answer to this question is a resounding "no." Toronto may have a plan to help mitigate climate change, but there's no plan for how the city will adapt to it, and the consequences of that could mean severe economic, social and health problems in the years to come. “Adaptation should be the new buzzword that defines how we move forward with standards,” Councillor Adam Vaughan insisted after listening to the speakers. One of the biggest and perhaps most expensive hurdles that the city will have to overcome is how to update its infrastructure, which, climate change aside, has already received its fair share of time in the spotlight in recent months thanks to a nationwide $123 billion backlog in state of good repair. On top of replacing our aging roads, pipes and bridges and making sure they are well-maintained, the city will also have to make sure they are solid enough to handle things such as more severe floods. Add this to the already long list of stressors on Toronto's budget. “We need to be ready for more severe weather more frequently, which means greater risks due to weather-related events than we have ever faced before,” said Mark Yakabuski, president of the Insurance Bureau of Canada. Yakabuski may seem like an unlikely spokesperson for the struggle over climate change, until you realize that his whole job deals with assessing risks. The ice storm that took place in Ontario and Quebec in 1998 consumed 20 per cent of all premiums paid for by property insurance in Canada for that year, he told the committee. Overall, he said, 93 per cent of all major catastrophes are weather-related. “It is not good enough to simply say we'll maintain pieces of infrastructure at the standard for which they were built. It's not going to be adequate,” argued Yakabuski. “We need to rebuild our infrastructure at a significantly higher standard in order to try to deal with a threat that's higher than we've ever faced before. We have to review building codes and be as strict as possible in enforcing land use decisions. We don't have the luxury to take our time to get it done. We need to find innovative ways to fund these investments now.”

Cross posted from Eye Weekly. Big cities are notorious for their smog, but aside from car exhaust, do we really know what's in our air? Figuring out how to improve our air quality and advocating for those improvements is difficult if you don't know what harmful chemicals you're breathing in and where they come from. To help members of the public overcome this problem, the city is considering a new Environmental Reporting and Disclosure Program, also known as a Community Right to Know Bylaw (CRTK). Under the new bylaw — which hasn't been officially written up yet ...

Cross-posted from Eye Weekly. Today's top story: the city has a plan to raise user fees for recreation programs. The intent of the plan is to invest the extra funds that would roll in (around $25 million) back into recreation to improve programs and boost participation, particularly among low-income families. As it stands now, 30 per cent of recreation costs are funded by user fees. If this plan, which the city has called “Everybody gets to play,” gets council approval, user fees would cover 50 per cent of recreation costs by 2014. Championed by Community Development and ...

During all the hullabaloo over bringing in the land transfer and vehicle registration taxes — not to mention the outrage that ensued when Mayor David Miller ordered cutbacks after the taxes were deferred — a number of right-wing councillors complained about their inability to access information and play an active role in the decision making process at city hall. In December, I surveyed councillors from across the political spectrum to try to get a sense of what the problem was. On one hand, council's right wing had just succeeded in providing Miller with his biggest challenge ...

Cross-posted from Eye Weekly. Without a doubt, the defining issues at city hall for 2007 were the new taxes and the city's faltering finances. These issues even dwarfed climate change, the topic that many predicted would characterize city hall in 2007 a year ago. So what will be the number one issue in 2008? Certainly the state of city hall's budget will continue to capture the spotlight, but a growing concern that I hope to see council tackle on many fronts over the coming year is Toronto's increasing income disparity. According to a recent report ...

Cross-posted from Eye Daily. In Toronto, raccoons and squirrels are par for the course, but as I learned this summer, just because they've adapted to urban life doesn't mean they aren't affected by the changes we make to our built environment — the squirrels in Allan Gardens can attest to that. Here in T.O., city-living animals and us humans often clash over issues such as bird poop (which blemishes our fine architecture and pollutes beaches where we might like to swim) and green bins (designing those suckers to be raccoon-proof has been a lot harder ...

Cross-posted from Eye Daily. Last week, the Government Management Committee (usually one of the more boring committees of council) approved a strategy to get more solar panels in the city. The idea is to put out a Request For Proposals for an energy firm to install solar thermal systems (i.e. solar panels that use the sun's energy to heat water) on up to 20 city buildings. The city will simply provide the buildings, while the firm pays for the cost of installation. Once installed, the city will purchase the energy generated from the firm at a ...

Cross-posted from Eye Daily. Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion is ready to take on federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Prime Minister Stephen Harper. "They're doing everything to put money in people's pockets to win the next election, using the taxpayers' money to win a majority," McCallion said, refering to the recently announced sales tax cut. "I take real exception to that, I tell you. We are fighting. I'm in a fighting mood. ... We are going to get a real campaign going across this country." What's got McCallion up in arms? Well, first of all, it's because ...