2016-11-16 City Hall Task Force: Meeting #1

Hackfoldr

http://beta.hackfoldr.org/cityhalltaskforce/

Agenda

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9-Pui7BcmuKUzZOejBlT1BMMFU/view

Minutes

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9-Pui7BcmuKNnkyRVdyLUl1MkU/view

Audio Recording

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4OcN4sqfA-Ia21ieFdrMlE2UTQ

Archival Transcript

The is auto-generated every so often from the draft transcript below. Still a work-in-progress.

http://vkanata.sayit.mysociety.org/2016-11-16-city-hall-task-force-meeting-1

Draft Transcript

Barry Goodwin:

I’d also like to apologize for sounding like this. I have a terrible cold. It started the morning after the election and I was trying to figure out if this was a cause or a correlation. We’ll see in a few days if my cold gets better, or [inaudible]
I’m really delighted that our panelists, task force members, and other guests are here today.
This is an important project for the university, and for those of us who live in Toronto.
Improving the governance and performance of the city of toronto is a shared and pretty well universal priority. And as Shirley Hoy, one of our task force members, just reminded me, it’s been almost 20 years since we formed the current configuration of this city. And it’s very timely to be looking at these issues.
The university is trying very much, as one of it’s strategic priorities, to increase it’s participation and it’s face into the community, and to engage in more municipal governance and more municipal-related issues. Dr. Gabriel Eidelman is a strong part of that for the School of Public Policy & Governance, given his research activities. So we’re very happy to convene this task force starting today and try to support the work of the task force over the coming months, to formulate recommendations that could assist the city of Toronto in improving upon its civic functioning, basically within it’s existing legislative and legal framework. That we can [inaudible] what could be done to make improvements. So certainly an important project for the university and for the School of Public Policy and Governance. Thank you very much for participating and agreeing to be members of the task force. Our students find this very interesting as well and we will, over the coming months, try and find ways to engage our students at this school further in this work and being involved in this work and being involved in the coordinations that you’ll be discussing.
And with that I will turn the floor over to Prof. Gabriel Eidelman.

Gabriel Eidelman:

Thank Barry.
I am tied to the podium here, so [inaudible] the members can speak so I’ll just bring up... Zack right now is on mute, so he’ll be doing a lot of thumbs up thumbs down

(Laughter)

And I’ll just bring up some slides here.
Excellent. So before we get started, my coorganizer, Brian Kelcey and I wanted to take a few minutes to clarify what we’re hoping to accomplish here, both in terms of today’s meeting and the larger project. So Barry mentioned it’s been around 20 years since the current configuration of the city of Toronto has been created. It’s been about 10 years since the City of Toronto Act came into effect. And in that time a lot has happened at City Hall as we know. We don’t need to go through all the details.
The impetus for this project is that over that time, I think it’s fair to say that most of the discourse around how Toronto is governed, has revolved around fiscal powers: Whether the city should establish new revenue tools, ask for greater taxing authority. But very little on the processes and procedures by which decisions are made in City Hall.
So the language that we use in some of our promotional materials -- that Council is a mess, that City Hall is dysfunctional -- might be overly provocative for some. For some the system appears to work fairly well. Some might even take offence -- we’ve had a few people take offence at those statements..
For many others though, and we would argue, I would say, for most people the reality is that the system isn’t working as well as it could or should. And I am quite confident in saying that there is ample room for improvement. And that is why we are here today.
So the overall goal of the task force, as most of you are aware, is to propose tactical reforms that city council can act on quickly and without provincial intervention or legislative changes, using powers that the City already enjoys.
The fact that we’re only searching for improvements that the city can accomplish on its own is a signal.
First, that there is no need to completely overhaul the system and start from scratch. What is needed in our estimation is sensible incremental reform.
And second, that it is up to [inaudible] council to take change of its own affairs and make an effort to update its own policies and procedures in order to make deliberation and decision-making more effective, more efficient, more transparent, more inclusive.
So by bringing together this distinguished panel, this task force, the group that collectively has decades of experience working in, or closely studying, City Hall, our hope is to kickstart a larger discussion about how the city is governed and how this governance can be improved.
So I should pause here to point out that this is no ordinary task force -- I alluded to the briefly -- in the sense that the group has been convened without any official direction or support from the city, whether from the Mayor’s Office, nor the accounts of the City Manager’s office. Nor have we sought any official endorsement from these officials. We have in some sense tasked ourselves at looking at these issues.
So this is a wholly independent, volunteer base exercise, one that we hope will spark an important conversation about how City Council conducts its business, and inspires other groups of citizens hopefully to come up with their own ideas and suggestions in any number of creative ways.
That’s why these meetings are open and public. We don’t wish to give the impression that these debates can or should only happen behind closed doors. And these are really conversations that should be happening everywhere. So hopefully some of your in the audience will leave today’s meeting to organize your own initiatives to continue that conversation.
So I want to be clear that while what we will discuss today may not represent the full spectrum of perspectives of all Torontonians, what we strive for as organizers was about [inaudible] both in terms of professional experience, and to some degree political perspectives, not necessarily full representation. So I want to put that out there for people to understand.
So what’s in store? Well, today is the first of three formal meetings we have planned over the next five months or so. Today our focus is on "the problems", quote-unquote. Issues that the group feels is impeding the quality of city council deliberation and decision-making. And Brian will say a little bit more about that in a few moments.
Meeting #2, scheduled for January 27th, will focus on potential solutions to these problems. As John Parker was mentioning, that’s going to be the real difficult one. It’s easy to come up with things that you think could be improved. Now let’s figure out how we can improve them.
And finally at meeting #3, scheduled for March 31st, the group will debate a preliminary package of recommendations. Brian and I will do a lot of leg-work in between these meetings, in terms of research support. With the help of some experienced [inaudible] we have people taking notes. And [inaudible] a package of recommendations which the group can discuss and debate.
So when all is said and done, we’ll compile a summary report that the school will publish, hopefully in late April.
So Brian, I’ll ask you to come up and speak to today’s agenda and the objectives for today

Brian Kelcey:

Thanks, Gabriel. And I’ve got maybe couple minutes to stay on schedule and so I will be brief.
First, I just want to make an overall comment, a couple of overall comments, to add to what Gabriel said in terms of our broader objectives.
First I, having been active in politics and public policy for I think close to 25 years maybe more now. I have a saying that you can’t save the world in every press release. I think it’s important to understand we’d like positive recommendations and then perhaps positive change to come out of this process. Whether it’s out of this room or the kinds of spin-off discussions that Gabriel was describing.
But we also have a broad area for discussion and some constraint on expectations is useful. We’re not going to fix everything. There are ongoing debates at city hall even now about some very large and broad issues. About how to fix the process, that may be beyond our scope. And it’s a useful decision to put some of those aside in a box and focus on more achievable things.
But the second I just want to touch on is political balance in the sense that, as you’ll here hinted in my presentation later -- where I’ll introduce myself more properly as well -- that one of the challenges that has prevented reform to rules and processes at city hall, has been the issue of political balance. That if a councillor with a particulalr faction, if I’m the mayor’s office, if I’m the clerks office, and i bring forth proposals, the rules are the rules and there’s a perception, rightly, that if one group is coming forward with a set of ideas there may be some risk that they are stacking the rules in their favour to represent their particular interests.
Part of our [unintelligible] in this discussion, and I think it’s as important to keep this in mind whether we’re discussion problems as well as solutions is to be cognizant of political balance. That rules that you may like from one particular political perspectives, when one particular individual or mayor or councillor is in office, may seem repugnant to you if another mayor or councillor or individual is in office.
And for this process to work and actually come up ideas that are actionable, we need to be looking over our shoulder to say "what can help city hall work as a system regardless of who the personalities and players may be in there?" And I say that in part from my own personal experiences. I served as a senior advisor to a mayor in Winnipeg where they have probably the closest thing to a legal strong-mayor system in the country. And the strong-mayor authority that was given. The [unintelligible] and the charter was very useful for the first few years where we got a lot of great things done.
And then I resigned and became one of the mayors harshest critics because of what I described as too much greasy politics on his part, and too much tolerance for it. And those same strong-mayor powers that I thought we magnificent for getting things done were being used increasingly to shift the focus from decision-making from city council into the back rooms.
So be cognizant of that balance. Be cognizant of the fact that civil servants, of whom we have two legendary examples represented in this room today, amongst others I’m sure. We need to be working with administrations of different political backgrounds when they’re performing their duties through these rules.
And on that note, I’ll close by saying again, our objective today is really to focus on a discussion of what is a legitimate problem? What’s a problem worth fixing at city hall, so we can then take our research resources that we’ve got here to focus on those more priority and flush out what other jurisdictions are doing or what others in this room and outside this room have suggested, to fix these problems at our second meeting in January.
Thank you.

Gabriel Eidelman:

At this point, in the spirit of the group itself taking ownership of the conversation, rather than go through a whole list of bios -- I will mention a couple at the end, as there’s a couple members who weren’t able to make it today -- I’ll put Zack up on the screen here, and we can go around the table, virtual and otherwise.
And maybe a few minutes for each member of the group here to introduce themselves, the perspective they bring to the table, some issues that they’ve been thinking of, and some issues that they don’t really want as a group to talk too much about.
Who would like to kick things off?

John Parker:

Why don’t we give Zack a chance to introduce himself?

Gabriel Eidelman:

Sure. Zack, turn on your microphone.

Zack Taylor:

Alright, can you hear me?
Ok, yeah, I’m really sorry that I can’t be there today. I have to teach a 1:30 so this is really the only way to make this work

(Mic cuts. Laughter.)

(Silence.)

Gabriel Eidelman:

Start again, Zack. The cable just went loose.

(Silence.)

Gabriel Eidelman:

Did you touch something Brian.

(Fixing audio.)

How’s that, Zack?

(Silence.)

Bianca Wylie:

As the person representing technology, should I start the intros?

(Laughter.)

Can you hear me?
Zack, can you hear me? Nodding. Yeah? Good.
Hi Zack.
Don’t worry. It’s perfect.
Hi everybody. My name is Bianca Wylie. I’m the head of the Open Data Institute of Toronto.
What is open data? I won’t take you through those tracks.
So basically we’re a small non-profit, volunteer-run, and we look at using data, and open data particularly, in civic life. So in decision-making, for residents of Toronto to use data. That’s the capacity that I’m here in.
My background is, professionally two-fold: I’ve worked in technology for about 10 years, and I worked in public consultation for about 5 years. So those two things really come together in the work that I’m doing now.
In terms of issues that I’m really interested in talking about, there’s 3 of them. One of them is connecting council to public consultation processes. So where I might be a bit different from the others here. Everyone here might be thinking a lot about what happens at council and committee. I’m thinking a lot about what happens between council and committee, and processes that happen outside council and committee, and how they feed into decision-making.
Secondly, data and technology, clearly. There’s some changes to use technology in consultation and how things work at city hall, other ways for residents to use data and technology, which I’m thinking about.
And the last one is openness generally. As the Open Data Institute a big part of our mandate is to talk about keeping things open, accessible, transparent -- in ways that people can be engaged in process, so I think -- maybe both of you -- but Brian mentioned this: A lot of this discussion about broken broken -- things aren’t efficient. Sometimes those are hallmarks of open things, and open things are messy. So I’m probably going to provide a bit of push-back on trying to do anything that cleans things up too much in certain places.

Joe Pennachetti:

13-plus years in Toronto. 40 years in municipalities, including the 905, regions of Peele, York and Durham for 16 years. And also sometime at [inaudible]. So a number of municipalities, a number of [inaudible], councils and committees that I’ve worked with over the years. I guess that’s what I bring to the table.
I’ll just say that in terms of the specific issues that we hope to focus on, I really do believe that there are changes that can be made in council, committee, and community council in terms of realigning responsbility, that is still possible within the legislation. My personal thought is we start with that, and then build out from there. The processes within each of those various areas of council, community council, committees, can be refined. And that’s what we hear about all the time in terms of things taking too long.
So from my perspective those are almost more important to ensure that we define what the roles are for those three areas -- council, community council, committees -- before we get into the specific of each meeting and how it can be refined and more efficient. Needless to say, I’ll probably have some serious thoughts about what to process, and how that might be refined. Even then though, you get into a couple issues of being open for the public and accountable. But I think there are certainly possibilities there.
The last [inaudible] I’ll make is that we’re not supposed to talk to, I believe, legislative changes. I believe at the end of the panel discussion, we’ll end up probably saying "notwithstanding that, we believe there should be some changes made". I’ll just table that, because I think that we can make some changes within the current legislation but in order to make the changes that people really want, to be like a Winnipeg or whatever, we’re going to have to possibly complete it with some recommendations on legislation.

Adrienne Batra:

I’m Adrienne Batra, the Editor-in-Chief of the Toronto Sun. I’m very happy to be here, because I feel this is a very important topic, because I am one of those people that uses the language that city hall’s broken, and it’s ridiculous, and it’s inefficient. And I have lived that for a period of time when I worked for former mayor Ford, and there are so many issues that I think we can tackle at this table. But one of the areas that I found most troubling, and specifically to what you’re talking about Bianca as far as openness, is the agencies, boards and commissions. Tey are arguably the most unaccountable areas of government and many citizens probably do not know how much they influence actual public policy and what happens on the floor of council. so if there is one specific area that I am very interested in us tackling, it’s that. It’s the A, B’s and C’s.
And to broaden what Brian was saying -- because him and I were in Winnipeg for a period of same time during that mayoralty -- we should have a frank conversation about stronger mayor system in Toronto. There are examples all over the place where we could pull from. With balance of course. But I think it’s at the very least worthwhile for the conversations.
So I’m looking forward to this, and thank you.

Ange Valentini:

Hi everyone, I’m Ange Valentini, and I currently work for Airbnb as a public policy associate in Canada, but that’s not why I was invited here today.
My name card says that I was the former Chief of Staff to Councillor Adam Vaughn, which is true. And I spent about 7.5 years in the political side of the second floor of city hall.
But I really think that I come to this table as an activist. The first time that I walked into Toronto city hall, I think I was about 15, and I was worried about municipal solid waste. And I went back many times to Toronto city hall, to Scarborough city hall -- I grew up in Scarborough -- and to Metro Council I really advocated for young people as an advocate teenager to have a voice at the table in decision-making, cause I really see city hall and our local government as the most accessible form of government to the people that it serves, where there’s the greatest opportunity for flexibility and creative decision-making. And I think we make better decisions when we have more people and greater inclusion from our communities, at the table. And I think that in the messy of city hall and in the grey space, there is a tremendous amount of opportunity for engaging communities and voices that haven’t been heard, and really elevating the role that people play in governing our cities and community-building.
I have had the pleasure of serving as public servant under both Joe and Shirley, so it’s really exciting to be at the table with you under this context. I’ve also worked in some of the orders of government and other cities in the political process. I don’t think I have any magic solutions or magic bullets. I’ve been teased by a few city councillors about what I think I’m going to say at this table. But I think that there’s a whole lot that we can unpack and a whole lot of opportunity. And I’m encouraged to bring in other voices to our process.

John Parker:

My name is John Parker and I confess off the top that the high-water mark of my career and my entire life is that I am a graduate of the University of Toronto. Everything I have done since then has been simply anti-climax. I’m not even kidding when I say it means great things to be here, and I’m flattered to be invited to be a part of a University of Toronto initiative.
I’m in real-life, I suppose I was a lawyer and there are times when I wonder why I left the sanctity of the pure, logic-driven, sensible world of the practice of law to get into the wild, wacky and murky life of political. But I take some comfort from the perspective of Bill Davis who’s quoted talking with Steve Paikin. His crumbiest day as a lawyer doesn’t come close to being as much fun as his worst day when he was in politics. I suppose those of us who followed this route feel much the same way.
I came to city hall by way of queen’s park, so I came with the perspective of a participant where the rules are altogether different and the game is played according to a different set of undestandings and expectations. Some of that coloured my approach to life at city hall and it was in some ways an encumberance to me. When I arrived at city hall where they don’t play the game the way they do in the parliamenetary system. Maybe I could expand on that later, if we run out of useful things to talk about in this exercise.
I arrived at city hall -- I was there for two terms -- I arrived there in effect as a member of the opposition to the regime of David Miller. And my perspecitve in that situation was -- by golly -- the mayor sitting in a majority government situation, which is what Miller had, really has a lot of clout and can push things through quite readily, in our system. And the opposition is powerless to mount any sort of really strong well-rsearched counter-balance to the power of a well-mobilized mayor. And then after the next election I found myself, for better or worse, on the government side of the equation. And there it wasn’t long before the question on my mind was -- oh my golly -- I’m really uncomfortable about some of the initiatives this government is engaged in. The best part about that government was that Adrienne was part of it, but she didn’t stick around nearly long enough. And then the question was now what do I do, and how do I navigate my role in this whole thing? Do I want to maintain my clout on the inside or just make a clean break of it and go rouge. And so that was something that I had to deal with in my second term. Which is altogether different from the experience of the discipline of the parliamentary system that you have at higher levels.
Apart from all of that, the other thing that really struck me at city hall was the sheer enerrmity of the work, the vastness of the issues, the volume of information that’s coming at you from all directions, and the requirement to come up with a yes or no decision on a timeline that is not of your choosing. I found that was something I never really got accustomed to and I see that as one of the challenges of the system that we have at present.

Shirley Hoy:

Hi, good morning everyone. My name is Shirley Hoy.
I find this configuration a little bit disconcerting cause [inaudible] back to you. But wonderful to see everybody and I welcome the opportunity Gabriel for serving on this task force.
I think it’ll be a lot of fun. If nothing else a number of us will just get to reminisce for awhile, about what has happened in this great city over the last 20 years almost since amalgamation.
So my background as I started in the former city of Toronto, after I graduated from this great university at U of T. Between the late 70s to 1980-81, I actually worked in the planning department in the former city of Toronto, and then I went and worked for the upper tier, metro government, in the community services department for a number of years. And then in the early 90s, I went up to the province for 5 years working in three ministries as assistant deputy minister during the Bob Rae government. And then I came back to amalgamation in 1997 and then I continued with the city, first with the community services portfolio, and then I was the city manager between 2001 and 2008. And then Joe Pennachetti took over.
I think what I bring to this conversation, knowing who’s here and the one’s that are still going to join us with David Soknacki and Sevaun Palvetzian as well, I think we will have some really interesting suggestions. And looking around the room and meeting a few of the people in the room, there’s a lot of experience in the room as well. So I just think it’s going to a fun fun few months, so thank you for creating this opportunity.
What I wanted to do and maybe I was a little too much of a student here, is I thought you asked two questions: One, what has worked? What have we seen work in this amalgamated city over the last 18 years, and what do we feel we could suggest to examine without huge legislative change. Though I do agree with Joe. We should park it as a B list that perhaps we may, at the end of the conversation, still suggest some [inaudible] changes to the provincial government.
And in particular, one area I’d really like us to think about are planning issues. Planning issues are huge for Toronto, for the GTA, for local neighbourhoods. And the timing is very good, as we know, and I know a number of people in this room are probably following it: the OMB reform that the provincial government has put out. There was a discussion paper, and depending on what they do with that -- huge huge implications for all the municipal governments [inaudible] and in the City of Toronto in the context of the City of Toronto Act.
So I’d like us to not be literally about no legislative changes if that’s possible.

Gabriel Eidelman:

You’re going rogue.

Shirley Hoy:

The second thing I want to say before I get into my 3 things that I want to table as areas to examine: so what has worked in the amalgamated city. In my mind a big part of what has been a success is, as council -- I don’t know if John agrees with me, but -- as the city, rather than Metro and 6 local municipalities, we finally were able to have good conversation about economic, environmental, and social priorities for the city. Whereas before, again, because of the two-tier system, they were divided. We weren’t able to have good conversations, because as you know social was at the provincial level, and the planning and some of the environment and economic issues are divided between the two tiers. It was an even messier system, but also not as effective. Whereas if you look back now at some of the priorities of council, and what the public service was able to bring forward for the Toronto City Council to consider, it was much more of an integrative conversation on economic, social and environmental issues. And I think, if you look back also, there has been some good successes as well.
So moving forward, based on that, I think in order for Toronto to be successful in the 21st century, we have to take that kind of approach, so you have to find ways to build on that. So I agree with Bianca’s comment that I don’t think at the end of the day we really want to, it’s kinda of impossible anyway, to really make city council to be really really efficient. That’s not the nature of municipal government. And I know Zack will tell us about municipal governance issues, but I think part of the strength of local government is to be messy, to be open, to be transparent, to be able to create structures, to be publicly engaging citizens. And that is one failure of the amalgamated city in my mind. I think local neighbourhood issues, especially local planning issues, we haven’t had the kind of structure to enable more f that engagement of citizens. And again and again through a bunch of our attempts, a bunch of deliberations, a bunch of consultations over the last 15 years, right Joe? When we got into a call for kind of giving the budget out there. But still, too limiting.
So I think one area we really have to look at is: what is a better public engagement structure for the city? And it speaks to them, some of what’s already delegated to community councils, and what works and what not, and that’s part of that whole conversation.
The second part is, and I’m glad we have Bianca there and we have a lot of people who have IT expertise. For the 21st century, we have to find a [inaudible] way for local government in the city of Toronto to engage in a different way. Coming out of the recent America election, one of the complaint was that there is so much misinformation through the social media channels. How do you use it better to make sure that you get the correct information out to the citizens. At the same time, have a way to engage citizens better.
Finally my other comment about what we need to look at is, I do think we still need to look at the financial structure of the city. I know every year we talk about, is the financial house of the city in order, but I think without looking at the issue, that’s a big big question mark that needs some comment from this task force and some recommendations to city council as to how we could do that better, how they should look at this thing of matching the proper revenue tools with the services that they’re to provide. Those are [inaudible]

Gabriel Eidelman:

Zack we’ll try you again, so take yourself off mute, and hopefully this works.

(Silence.)

So I’m just going to call you right now again.

(Skype loading sound.)

Oh, that’s a good sign. If we can hear that, then that’s a god sign.

Zack Taylor:

Hi everybody. Can you hear me? Yaaay!
Wow! Sorry, that was very disconcerting.
So I’m Zack Taylor. I’m a professor at Western University, and unfortunately I can’t be with you today because I have to teach at 1:30pm. There was just no way to square that circle. But I will be in-person at the next meetings.
Before I came here a year ago, I taught at University of Tornto Scarborough for 3 years, and taught local government, public administration, public policy. I was very happy to have Shirley Hoy and David Soknacki at that time, and share their ideas.
My perspective I guess as the token academic today is to focus on governability. I’m wondering if that is really the overarching issue. Toronto is such a large, by North American standards, large municipality by population. It has an enormous public service. The city is growing by leaps and bounds and putting all kinds of pressure on infrastructure and service systems. It’s the fast-moving tiger to ride. So are we able to get ahead of the pressing issues? Are we able to anticipate problems before they happen?
So I’m concerned about whether the institutions we have enable the city to not just listen but hear its residents. Is the city able to arrive at concrete evidence-based policy direction to its staff, so that we can pursue the kinds of long-term strategies that we need to pursue.
So if we go back to amalgamation -- this morning I pulled this off my shelf. Some of you will remember this document: The amalgamation transition [inaudible]. And I just wanted to look again at what they thought they wanted when they designed the city of Toronto in 1997. And the themes that come of that I think are very familiar to us today. There’s a desire to have both sttrategic long-term decision-making, and also accessibility and accountability. To be both sensitive to the small things but able to do the big things. And I think this is sort of the test that we need to apply when we evaluate where we’re at today, nearly 20 years after amalgamation and 10 years after the City of Toronto Act, and the various reforms to the functioning of the city that were done around that time.
I think part of what we struggled with, certainly in the first 10 years and beyond, is this fear of decentralization. I mean, one of the points of amalgamated was to centralize, right? To amalgamate and then turn around and then have decentralized institutions within the amalgamated city, I think was seen in the earliest stages as a retrograde move. And that’s part of the reason why we have the community council system that we have. So I think that’s something that we need to think about. Does council need to do everything that they’ve done, or is there room for delegated authority? Is the standing committee system doing what it needs to do? Is it functioning well? Is the aggregation of that into the Executive Committee providing the kind of strategic leadership that the city needs?
On a separate theme, I have been concerned for a long time about the adversarial relationship, at least in public, between council and staff on the council floor. There have been a number of really quite unfortunate incidents where it just seems like a cross-examination. And I’ve seen similar dynamics at work in public hearings, deputations, and that sort of thing -- observing standing committee processes, observing Executive Committee processes, making deputations myself -- where no citizen needs to stand there and be sullenly cross-examined by councillors who are going in and out of the room. What kind of message does that send to the people? And if we’re [inaudible] and interacting with people in the wrong way, in a way that doesn’t serve anyone’s interest, then how should we do it? So I think these are important questions.
Finally, I think I agree with what Bianca and Shirley had to say, that democracy is supposed to be messy. We [inaudible] institutions to provide a structure for us to accomplish what we need to accomplish, but we shouldn’t expect things to be too clean. What we should expect is the ability to make strategic decisions, but also be accessible and accountable at the same time. And we need to figure out how to get there. And this truly has been the basic issue, not just back to the creation of the city of Toronto, but you can find these kinds of debates going all the way back to the formation of Metro back in 1953. These are perennial debates and returning to them every decade or so is well worth doing. So thanks.

Brian Kelcey:

Thank you, Zack. And I’m just supposed to cut in at this point for the audience’s purposes, since everybody else on the panel has seen this by email, to extend regrets for today only from David Soknacki and Sevaun Palvetzian.
David, many will know, was a councillor for 3 terms, serving both -- to John Parker’s point -- as a critic of one administration and then a key part of another, as its budget chief and then later as a mayoral candidate.
Sevaun has considerable experience in public policy in the States before coming up here, and is now the head of Civic Action, as many of you will know.
Ironically, we had some issues scheduling the whole group for this first round in one place, and both of those individuals are attending the Police Reform Task Force meeting that’s apparently taking place today. And so they aren’t able to be here, but they will be tracking the process all the way through, and their contributions are [inaudible]. Thanks.

Gabriel Eidelman:

To kind of kickstart the conversation here, Brian and I will spend a few minutes separately -- basically, establishing the ground rules here. So we’ll say what would involve provincial intervention. I’ll spend a few minutes goes through that. And in preparation for this meeting, we conducted a confidential survey of various different groups -- current city councillors and their staff, some city staff, and some outside perspectives as well -- and Brian will run through some of those

(Presentation: What Can Council Do on its Own?)

https://www.slideshare.net/vkanata/city-hall-task-force-setup-74128032#4

(Presentation: Issues for Debate)