Toronto mayor wants city garbage bins taken over, pay snow shovellers
· Toronto Sun
Mayor Olivia Chow’s efforts to overhaul the city’s garbage bins and employ snow shovellers was among many agenda items at Tuesday’s executive committee meeting.
Here is a rundown of what the mayor, councillors and the public discussed during the meeting :
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Garbage bins
Walk along any major street in Toronto and you will eventually come across a busted garbage bin. Mayor Chow and Coun. Paula Fletcher want to change that.
The city entered into an agreement with Astral Media in 2007 to supply, install, and maintain 25,000 pieces of street furniture including transit shelters, garbage and recycling bins, benches, postering structures, and information pillars at no cost to the city.
In exchange for the infrastructure, the agreement allows Astral to display advertising on a number of transit shelters and information pillars.
However, that contract ends next year and the mayor wants the city to take back ownership and maintenance of garbage bins.
Chow and Fletcher recommend that the city separate garbage bins from street furniture contracts, arguing it is the current industry approach.
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“Over the life of the current contract there have been five different designs for the litter bins with varying levels of functionality as well as issues regarding maintenance and installation,” they wrote .
“With the contract ending, the City can now step in to ensure our litter bins are well designed, well-maintained, well-placed, responsive to community needs and end the persistent problem of broken and overflowing litter bins that make our main streets less livable.”
They are seeking from solid waste and transportation managers the estimated costs to the city for installing and maintaining garbage bins.
Snow shovelling
This winter saw large amounts of snow fall on the city.
Following thousands of complaints of roads and sidewalks not being cleared in a timely fashion, the mayor has proposed an idea from a counterpart south of the border: paid snow shovellers .
Chow recommends that council direct city managers “to develop a paid surge capacity sidewalk shovelling program modelled on the successful approach in New York City, for implementation as soon as possible and no later than the 2026-2027 winter season.”
Back in 2021, councillors voted to expand sidewalk snow plowing to include all sidewalks. Previously, residents were responsible for clearing sidewalks in front of their homes.
Chow said the city has “encountered challenges with our sidewalk plows,” which has left residents frustrated.
At the beginning of the year, the mayor asked city staff to look at paying people who are interested in clearing snow, but legal liability and how that program would operate posed challenges.
Other items addressed
Councillors on the committee heard an update about the Weston Foundation’s $20-million donation to revitalize the public green space north of the Queen’s Park building as well as comments from community members on protecting the park’s ecosystem.
In addition, an update was heard about flood protection measures for the Port Lands, which includes the “installation of final finishes and plantings that can only be done in the spring” for the western portion of Biidaasige Park.
Chow would also like to see the city crack down on bad landlords by creating a database to track properties that have multiple complaints .