Public Commons

Part of Regulatory View: Ward 18 Conservancy

City of Toronto Act excerpts that might be helpful in creating a conservancy

Creating a conservancy: principles and goals

Winter Story Chapter 27 by Jutta Mason -- introducing the idea of a Ward 18 Parks Conservancy

Winter Story Chapter 28 -- Parks Conservancy workbook

City web information about Board of Management centres.

Documents from the City of Toronto Act

The city's new User Fee Policy

City of Toronto Unsolicited proposals Procedure

Historical precedents: Board of Management Community Centres

The following pdf documents concern Toronto’s Board of Management community centres, of which there are eight. These less centralized community centres go back to a popular revolt against the Parks and Recreation Department that heated up at the end of the 1970’s. The former Commissioner of Parks and Recreation, Herb Pirk, told me in an interview in 1994 that dissatisfaction with Parks and Recreation had already begun to bubble when he was hired right out of university in 1973. He said:

The Department of Parks and Recreation was very insular, city-hall controlled. They sent me out to meet with the community and be kind of the front person. And so I got hammered from the community and I’d come back here to City Hall, and they’d say, “well, you’ve got to hold the line” and I’d say, “wait a second, you can’t, this is not going to go well here.” My job was to represent the Department’s views. So when Scadding Court developed – they wanted an independent board of management – my job was to pull that back. Similarly with the 519 Church Centre. They wanted to be independent, less bureaucratic, more an expression of the community. In 1980-81 city council created a task force to review the neighbourhood social and recreational services of the city. This task force was to see if there were ways to remove some of the central control from City Hall and put it into communities. The intent of that was really to have most of the community centres run by boards of management.

There’s more to learn about that development, and what happened to it.

Original Board of management #1

Original Board of management #2

Original Board of management #3

Original Board of management #4

Rules affecting us

Setup: 29-Feb-2012 [1047]

-- Details --

Sorted by: ·custom order· (if any), title (asc). Page 1 of 1 (items 1-12 of 12)