Public Commons

Part of Municipal Strike 2009

July 31, 2009, 1 e-mail

Adam Giambrone wrote:

Dear resident,

Throughout this difficult strike over the past six weeks, the City of Toronto has been seeking to negotiate a new collective agreement with union Locals 79 and 416 that is responsible and affordable for Torontonians, is fair to employees, and which enables the City to provide quality services and programs in an efficient and effective manner. The collective agreement approved on Friday, July 31, 2009 achieves these goals and is consistent with the bargaining position that the Employee and Labour Relations Committee directed the City's negotiating team to take.

This agreement, while being fair to our employees, is nonetheless among the most, perhaps the most affordable collective agreements of any of the new contracts signed in the public sector since 2007, including other municipalities in the GTA as well as both the Provincial and Federal agreements. Its key provisions include:

-Salary increases of 6% over 3 years (net impact of 5.6% over 3 years when benefits are taken into account)

-No increases to medical or dental benefits

-Permanent phasing out of the sick bank benefit, to be replaced by a new short-term disability plan. Phasing out this benefit is consistent with the approach taken by other municipalities such as Mississauga and the former City of Etobicoke and former City of York.

As a result of this agreement, the estimated savings for the City of Toronto and for Toronto taxpayers is $42.5 million over three years on salaries and benefits. Furthermore, the estimated sick leave liability reduction over 5 years is $140.7 million. A presentation that provides more details about the new agreements, for those who are interested, can be found at background

I was proud to stand up today and vote yes to this agreement which will help ensure the long-term fiscal sustainability of the City of Toronto, will help us meet our responsibilities to our taxpayers, will help us maintain the quality of services that our residents expect, and which is fair to our employees and respect's the City's obligations to them. Had the City not ratified this deal, workers would be back out on strike right now further depriving people of the municipal services they count on. Furthermore, there would be an extremely high risk of the Province ordering people back to work with binding arbitration, which would have likely resulted in a more expensive agreement than this one.

Now that the strike is over, our focus is shifting to getting everyone back to work, cleaning up the city, and resuming the services that our residents count on. Today was the first day City staff were back at work and were available to help people with requests for most city services. Some services which require more start up time, for example because cleaning or maintenance is needed, will resume on Tuesday August 4th.

Cleanup of the temporary garbage sites and litter bins will begin immediately and will be completed by the end of the weekend. Regular garbage collection services will resume on Tuesday August 4th. For the next four weeks, no garbage tags will be needed, residents can put out as much garbage as they need to in bags next to their bins.

To further contain costs, the Mayor and the City Manager have directed that no overtime will be granted, except where it is required to address health and safety issues. The exception is overtime to get the city and the temporary garbage sites cleaned up as quickly as possible. It is significantly less expensive to grant overtime to get this work done than it would be to contract this work out.

Full details of the City's return-to-work plan can be found at Service Resumption Plan

I would like to thank the residents of Ward 18 and of the city as a whole for their amazing patience, understanding and support during this difficult process. I would also like to thank the non-union and management employees who worked tirelessly throughout the strike to keep our critical services running.

Sincerely,

Adam Giambrone
Toronto City Councillor
Ward 18 Davenport

Chair, Toronto Transit Commission (TTC)

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August 3, 2009, 4 e-mail

J. F. wrote:

Hi All, Sending you photos of Campbell, after the so called clean up. This is enough to make you sick. Please scroll down to few photos. in the beginning they are blank, scroll down to see photos. Do you want your children and pet around this.

R. S wrote:

Anyone get in touch with the city about this? That 'cleanup' seems shockingly half-assed. I wonder if they are coming back to actually finish the job.

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September 7, 2009

M. G. wrote:

This article was in the Globe and Mail for Monday September 7th. It states that Councillor Sandra Bussin (Ward 32 Beaches-East York) wants a policy restricting temporary dumpsites to commercial or industrial city properties...not parks. It also states that Councillor Joe Pantalone would support such a policy and has approached city managers to review such a policy. I know there are other Councillors out there who would support the same policy. There is also concern that City Managers didn't consult any Councillors or the Parks Department before choosing sites. I believe more communication between Managers, Councillors and Divisions is also required.

I would like to ask everyone to read the article and to support such a policy change. We need to let the City Managers know we do not want to see this ever happen again.

Please let your Councillor know you want them to support a motion to seek a ban on using parks as dumps.

G. K. wrote:

The heat that Joe took is not nearly what it should have been. He admits that he tried to stop the dumping in Christie Pits “after the fact.” We all know how effective he was in that effort. Question is--where was he BEFORE the fact, when his constituency really needed an advocate? His “one size may not fit all” rhetoric regarding parks as dumps seems already to be taking the teeth out of the proposed policy—and it demonstrates that he still just doesn’t get it.

We know all too well that the city managers are not above manipulating, equivocating, and circumventing existing ordinances in order to dump where they damn well please. The language needs to be emphatic and unmitigated: parks are not dumps—under any circumstances. Failing that, I’m afraid that again we’ll find ourselves up to our ankles in leachate, and hollow excuses.

Christie Pitts seems to be in better shape, though the area around the rink still smells pretty horrible.

E. K. wrote:

Anyone know if it was the city or contract workers that did this?

B. S. wrote:

City workers.

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September 8, 2009

K. H. wrote:

At times we must cut politicians some slack in learning about what is important. The health and vibrancy of city parks is certainly this and a top priority of the citizens of Toronto. Thanks to the dedication of the people of the Christie Pits neighbourhood and other neighbourhoods that spoke out on this issue, there has been a successful social-political lesson to city politicians. If they have learned this lesson well they will take action to make sure that there will be a very clear and well communicated mandate at the municipal level that cities cannot allow public parks to be used has dump sites. There are alternatives to be put in place before this is ever allowed to happen again. It should not happen again. The public is more and more environmentally educated and astute. Toronto's citizens will be watching with interest to see what politicians step up and create solutions and put public policy in place to cherish and nurture our beautiful ( but currently recovering) city parks. This past summer of using public parks has dumpsites was too painful to see and is too damaging to the health and wellness of our wonderful city to allow again. I think and sincerely hope the politicians got the message on this one. Toronto depends on it's healthy park systems for a healthy city. Lets give all the councillors who want to help this our support.

Rev. Karen Harrison, Torontonian park lover

p.s. Please put your ice cream containers in the recycling bins....recently I saved a little park squirrel from choking because his head was stuck. Parks are not only for the human species.

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