Accelerating work on the Gardiner Expressway, addressing last week’s flooding and drawing up a rat reduction plan are all on Toronto city council’s agenda this week.
Council will tackle the issues at a session that starts Wednesday morning and could stretch until Friday. This is the last council meeting of the summer before a break until October, with councillors set to meet only once in early September to discuss important matters.
Here’s what to watch for during the session:
Will council hit the gas on accelerated Gardiner plan?
Councillors are set to consider a plan from city staff to speed up work on the Gardiner Expressway. That will come hours after a joint announcement by Ontario Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria and Mayor Olivia Chow.
“A lot of work to make the situation a lot faster (is happening),” Chow said earlier this month. “So that is traffic management, plus a technological approach so we could do the construction faster and rebuild it faster. It’s coming.”
Work started in March to refurbish the 60-year-old highway and portions of its elevated structure that run through the city’s downtown core. The $300-million construction project is part of a larger multi-billion dollar effort to save the aging structure and will require lane closures over next three years to complete, snarling traffic for commuters.
It’s not immediately clear how the province will help the city speed up the project, but Ontario agreed last fall to upload the highway as part of the “new deal” negotiated with the city. The Gardiner upload will relieve billions of dollars from the city’s books, something council will look at re-allocating in its capital budget at the meeting this week.
Coun. Brad Bradford was critical of how the city has approached the latest phase of the project, stressing that it involves a busy western portion of the expressway between Dufferin Street and Strachan Avenue. That should have necessitated a different plan, he said.
“You can’t have a cookie-cutter off-the-shelf approach and do the same thing you did on other sections that didn’t have the same type of traffic volume,” he said.
Bradford said he expects the province will help the city speed up construction, but it shouldn’t have had to.
“At the end of the day, what I expect is the province is going to bail the City of Toronto (and) the mayor out on this one because they recognize how important the Gardiner is,” he said. “It’s a key artery not just for the city, but the entire region.”
Rat action plan on agenda as complaints rise
Some councillors are also pushing the city to adopt a rodent reduction strategy, saying major construction projects and climate change are contributing to a growing pest problem.
Councillors on the city’s infrastructure committee earlier this month asked a broad swath of city department heads to create the strategy. Coun. Alejandra Bravo said that the large volume of construction projects around the city are disturbing rats, causing them to emerge from underground tunnels and burrows.
“Let’s get ahead of it and have a construction plan that actually deals with rats before they come into our neighbourhoods and into our communities,” Bravo said.
The committee is directing the city manager and medical officer of health, among other top civil servants, to report back by next summer with a rat action plan. Councillors are also asking the city manager to consult with other North American cities on their approach to rat reduction.
Bravo said Peel Region and the City of Ottawa have created rat reduction strategies. So too have cities like New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C. She said Toronto can learn from all of them as it creates its own unique approach.
The city says 311 calls about rodent issues left unaddressed by property owners or landlords have been increasing.
There were nearly 940 property standards-related rodent service requests to the city in 2019. Those numbers dipped during the pandemic, but jumped back up to over 1,400 complaints in 2022. They increased again in 2023 to nearly 1,600 calls.
Up to the end of June this year, 311 has received almost 780 calls.
Chow asks staff for storm water flooding solutions
Chow and Deputy Mayor Jennifer McKelvie have asked city staff to report back on storm water mitigation programs in light of the impacts of last week’s storm. City council is also set to debate that motion this week, with an eye to helping identify more ways to help homeowners and businesses avoid flooding.
Chow said earlier this week she wouldn’t rule out the city taking additional steps to help those affected by the severe storms, including food banks which have suffered damages and the unhoused who have been impacted by the storm.
“The flood is hard on everyone, especially those that don’t have a home, especially those that need to find food in a food bank,” she said. “So, we’ll see what we can do to assist that.”