(Image: Christopher Drost)

The budget committee continued the city’s march toward reducing wasteful spending last week, approving a motion that will eliminate overflow-recycling pickup and dramatically reduce the number of Community Environment Days. (The proposed changes would mean residents could no longer leave their overflow for pickup in a bag alongside their bin.) The total savings involved? A whopping $622,000—or roughly enough money to finance three feet of the Sheppard subway.

The Globe and Mail has the details:

The proposed change, which will go before the city’s executive committee later this month, got the approval of the budget committee on Thursday, after members listened to the objections voiced by environmentalists.

The same committee also voted to slash the number of community environment days held each year to 11 from 44 for a cost savings of $122,000.

Emily Alfred with the Toronto Environmental Alliance predicted the new limits will result in more recyclable materials entering landfills as residents with extra bottles or boxes opt to put them in their garbage bin rather than storing them for the next recycling day two weeks later.

Many of the cuts proposed during Mayor Rob Ford’s tenure have been of the bean-counting variety, and this is certainly no exception. Sure, Ford ran his mayoral campaign based on the promise of curtailing spending, but we’re pretty sure his mantra revolved around cutting wasteful spending, not just spending in general. As a small-government ideologue, Ford likely identifies most government spending as wasteful, and KPMG’s core services review did target things like recycling and environment days. Still, these sorts of government programs are a serious stretch from the fancy retirement parties, swollen expense budgets and taxpayer-purchased perks for councillors that Ford railed against en route to the mayor’s office.

• Cuts to blue box program urged over environmentalists’ objections [Globe and Mail]

ADDRESS: 95 Ilford Road

NEIGHBOURHOOD: Wychwood

AGENT: Lorena Maria Romano, Royal LePage West, Brokerage

PRICE: $1,195,000

THE PLACE: This ultra-modern, green-minded home is in a different league than the rest of the traditional Arts and Crafts–style homes typical of the area. Built by Re-Vu Group Inc. (graduates of the Ryerson Architecture program), the house has clean lines and an open-concept layout that make the mere 23-foot-wide lot feel spacious.

BRAGGING RIGHTS: The home is currently registered with the Canadian Green Building Council and is pursuing LEED Certification—putting you decades ahead of your energy-sucking neighbours.

BIG SELLING POINT: Energy-efficient features—including Energy Star appliances, low-E windows, spray foam insulation, radiant heating and a heat recovery ventilator and ICF foundation will end up saving you thousands of dollars in utilities each year. Also, 80 per cent of the lot’s original bungalow was repurposed to build the backyard deck, shed and front walk in partnership with Turtle Island Recycling, a waste management company.

POSSIBLE DEAL BREAKER: Going green does have its drawbacks—you’ll have to sacrifice the selfish luxury of space for a sense of superiority and the smug satisfaction that you’re doing your part to build a better world.

BY THE NUMBERS:
• $1,195,000
• $3,023.28 in 2011 property taxes
• 5 vegetated green roofs
• 5 170 watt solar panels
• 5 rain barrels (storing up to 1,000 litres of rain water)
• 3 outdoor seating areas
• 3 bedrooms
• 3 bathrooms
• 2 instantaneous boilers
• 2 storeys

Services cuts loom over city hall (Image: Benson Kua)

When he was running for office in 2010, Mayor Rob Ford repeatedly assured voters that he could deliver his budget promises to the city’s taxpayers through increased efficiencies and not through service cuts. Take, for example, one of the good mayor’s favourite lines on the campaign trail: “We don’t have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem.” Then, again, just days before the election, he told the Toronto Star that he guaranteed services would not be cut. But this morning the city unveiled the first of several core service reviews, and the long and the short of it is that apparently by efficiencies, Ford really meant cuts.

Today’s report, from consultants at KPMG, suggests many, many things that the city budget should trim or cut outright, but here’s a list some of the key areas we’ll be keeping our eye on:

• Fluoride in the water: The report suggests that the city could save money by stopping the fluoridation of the city’s water supply. This will make the anti-fluoride crowd that were at so many debates last year, and maybe the most cynical of dentists, very happy, but we can’t help but wonder if yellow is really going to catch on as the new dental fashion.

• Green bins: The KPMG report states repeatedly that Toronto’s targets for keeping garbage out of landfills are too high to be practical—but glass, paper and plastic recycling (in the blue bin program) are legally required in Ontario. Presumably, then, the green bin program, which is more expensive, is being targeted here.

• Bike lanes: We thought that in axing the Jarvis Street bike lanes, council’s appetite for making city streets less bike-friendly would be satisfied. Apparently, we were wrong. According to today’s report, bike lanes are one of the few opportunities in the budget for “high” savings (meaning potential savings of 20 per cent or more). We’ll be waiting with bated breath to see what exactly that means for Denzil Minnan-Wong’s new bike plan.

Obviously, there’s much, much more in the report—we’ll also be looking to see if suburban residents finally have to start shovelling their own sidewalks—but the overarching story is pretty much what we expected: the vast majority of services the city delivers show little potential for cost savings. This isn’t a surprise, so we suspect it’ll mostly be ignored. For now, we’re looking forward to the unholy political firestorm that’s about to descend on city council, as even Ford’s allies start to ponder whether they’ll want to run for re-election as the people who gave their voters’ kids more cavities.

• PWIC Core Services Review [Toronto.ca]

A big ol' pile of e-waste (Image: Curtis Palmer)

Okay, we’re not going to go quite as far as the critic who equated the provincially mandated Ontario Electronic Stewardship to the U.S.S.R. We’re pretty sure nobody’s accused Dalton McGuinty of turning TVO in to Pravda yet—besides, Steve Paikin wouldn’t let him anyway. But this weekend the Toronto Star reported that the initiative the government of Ontario spearheaded in an attempt to make recycling environmentally dangerous e-waste more eco-friendly is basically a big, fat failure.

The trouble started last summer with the outrage over eco-fees, and now the program is basically dysfunctional. Adding insult to injury, the program is still collecting money—though the amount of the fees is getting slashed—and not doing much with it. And that means OES is sitting on a pile of money, $20 million high. Naturally, government officials and critics alike are wondering what exactly to do with the surplus.

Here’s how the system works: eco-fees go to OES, which is then supposed to spend the money on collecting and recycling old electronics. What’s frustrating about that is Ontario already has a well-proven and cheap way of getting people to return recyclable and reusable materials: it’s called deposit-return, and it’s familiar to anyone who’s ever bought a case of beer (that’s all of us, right?).

Fundamentally, there’s no reason the province couldn’t start a deposit-return system that pays people cash for bringing dead monitors and old cellphone chargers to collection places. According to the Economist, some manufacturers south of the border are looking at doing just that.

The problem with that is that if the government did it now, it would have to cope with people fishing all their dead electronics out of their basements and wanting to cash in. If only the people responsible for cleaning up this mess were already sitting on a pile of cash and wondering what to do with it.

• Ontario’s electronics recycling plan coming up short [Toronto Star]

ADDRESS: 118 Parkview Hills Crescent

NEIGHBOURHOOD: O’Connor-Parkview

AGENT: Raza Haider Naqi, Re/Max Vision Realty Inc., Brokerage.

PRICE: $1,749,000

THE PLACE: Designed by Toronto-based sustainable design firm Urbaneco, this open-concept home is the ultimate in eco-friendly modernism. Twelve-foot glass walls in the kitchen and living rooms retract to seamlessly integrate the interior living space with the professionally landscaped backyard, while the master bathroom overlooks the Don River ravine, creating the feeling of a pastoral oasis within the busy urban environment.

BRAGGING RIGHTS: Everything about this house is environmentally efficient. A grey-water system reuses shower water for toilet flushing (which can account for a whopping 27 per cent of a household’s water usage), and the steel-shingled roof is made of 56 per cent recycled materials. Heck, even the Bosch dishwasher is certified green friendly.

BIG SELLING POINT: The reclaimed staircase is made from a variety of different trees (pine, maple and walnut, to name a few), all felled by natural causes and repurposed by perennially cool furniture designers Urban Tree Salvage.

POSSIBLE DEAL BREAKER: If your friends are of the Hummer-driving variety (or, really, if they drive anything other than a bicycle or a Prius), they might be slightly intimidated by your tiny carbon footprint. Save them the embarrassment and invite some locavore vegans over instead.

BY THE NUMBERS:

• $1,749,000
• 12-foot by 24-foot glass walls
• 1 master bathroom overlooking a ravine
• 1 grey-water recycling system
• 1 EcoSmart ethanol-burning fireplace
• 1 steel roof with a 50-year warranty
• 1 custom kitchen with radiant heated floors
• 1 amazing staircase

Changing of the trash guard: the pedal operated bin (right) replaces an older model (Image: Neil Ta, from the Torontolife.com Flickr pool)

When the city started rolling out its new streetside garbage cans four years ago, we were taken with them in a “huh, that’s new” kind of way. It didn’t take long for us to find that many of the bins had broken foot pedals that had to be forced open by hand, making the foot pedals a waste. Astral Media, which is providing the bins to the city as part of an advertising contract, has finally admitted that, yes, the bins have some serious engineering problems.

According to the Toronto Star:

Astral Media is asking the manufacturer of the containers to rework the foot pedal and fix the tension cable that opens the recycling and garbage flaps.

“There were a handful of scenarios where the pedal—just from the sheer abuse in the downtown core—actually broke on one side,” said Kyp Perikleous, who manages the street furniture program for Toronto. “And we’ve had a number of locations where the tension cord gets overstretched and the flaps either remain open or don’t fully open for garbage when the foot pedal is pressed down,” he says.

The problem has occurred in about 40 of 4,000 bins. “But it’s enough that, because it’s early in the program, Astral brought it to our attention,” Perikleous said.

Only one per cent? Either we’re unlucky or the numbers are fishy. In either case, it’s nice to see that Astral is working on getting better bins made. It’s worth pointing out that despite what we’ll delicately call “design criticisms,” the overall deal has been lucrative for the city: Toronto is guaranteed $428 million over the life of the contract, and Astral actually paid the city extra last year because advertising had been more profitable than anticipated. So it’s really a good news story—or will be, once Astral gets the advanced technology of “foot pedal” figured out. Maybe subcontract to Honda?

• Putting mettle to the pedal [Toronto Star]

(Image: Quinn Dumbrowski)

Starbucks has finally proven that its paper cups are recyclable. Turns out that most paper drinking receptacles from Starbucks end up in the garbage—recyclers usually don’t accept them. The coffee behemoth wanted to demonstrate that recycling its paper cups is feasible, so it looked to the GTA, of all places, where it collected 6,000 pounds of used paper cups and sent them to a pulp mill in Mississippi as part of a six-week pilot project. We always knew Torontonian latte sippers were good for something.

Apparently, the project was a success. Old paper cups were turned into new ones without any special kind of wizardry, although the Mississippi paper mill that successfully recycled them is the only mill in the U.S. that produces recycled paper fibre that’s sufficiently high quality to be used for eating and drinking purposes.  The whole thing was part of Starbucks’ latest commitment to ensure that 100 per cent of its cups are reusable or recyclable by 2015. Still, it seems to us this whole thing should have been looked into a while ago. Like 1991, maybe.

• Where Does That Starbucks Cup Go? [New York Times]
• Starbucks and International Paper Demonstrate Viability of Recycling Used Cups into New Cups [Businesswire]

For the humourless, the city goes to great lengths to explain why these commercials are funny:

This hilarious video is a spoof of the hard sell ‘bring us your gold jewellery’ ads. Two very enthusiastic collectors, Chuck and Vince mug for the camera exclaiming “We want your unwanted electronics!!! It’s easy, just put them out on garbage day.”

It’s funny, though it would have worked better as a 30-second spot (which they also have), because the minute-and-a-half one reminds us of an SNL skit that’s gone on for too long.

What other awful commercials will the city spoof next? The Snazzy Napper to drum up support for fashion week? The Neckline Slimmer to promote tolerance? The Shake Weight to promote safe sex?

• City collects electronics for recycling [City of Toronto]

(Image: by Frank Gunn/CP; photo-illustration by Gluekit)

Unless Joe Pantalone, the unrepentant David Miller acolyte, mounts a surprise surge, our next mayor will arrive at city hall on an explicit promise to do things profoundly differently than his (or her) predecessor. George Smitherman promises to do things differently with a degree of sobriety; Rob Ford promises to do things differently with a flame-thrower and a manic glint in his eye.

It’s timely, then, to recall Miller’s own rise to power. He was elected because he thought it was a bad idea to build a bridge across the western gap of Toronto Harbour, which is only 121 metres wide. Remember the fixed link? It was a burning issue in 2003. It was incompatible with a revitalized waterfront, Miller insisted. Much smarter would be to pressure Ottawa to deliver a rail link to Pearson airport.

Yes, well, seven years later, we still need rubber tires to get to Pearson, and the waterfront, despite some progress, still eagerly awaits revitalization. Porter Airlines hurtles dozens of quiet turboprops skyward every day from a gleaming new terminal that smells like free cappuccino. The Port Authority is planning for more than 200 flights a day in the coming years. It will start construction on a pedestrian tunnel in early 2011—some people have sarcastically suggested naming it after Miller. An Ipsos Reid poll conducted for the Port Authority in the spring found a majority of Torontonians now support a fixed link. Sixty-three per cent are in favour of an airport on the Island, and just 12 per cent are opposed to it. And why not? It’s one of the few things left in this town that works like it’s supposed to.

In any case, little airports, short bridges and other ideological indulgences are a thousand miles off the radar this election season. We don’t just have bigger fish to fry; the kitchen’s on fire. And while Miller didn’t light the match, he didn’t pick up a hose, either. Since Miller came into office, Toronto has drifted far from the ideals its citizens hold dear: cleanliness, efficiency, competent governance, a degree of fiscal solvency, traffic that isn’t as bad as L.A.’s. Only the most determined utopians, innumerates and CUPE members still think this is a model of a high-functioning city. Toronto’s net debt is more than a billion dollars greater than it was in 2004. The 2010 operating budget projects 43 per cent more spending than in 2003, much of it on salaries and benefits to Miller’s purported friends in the unions. (Who, in 2003, would have predicted Miller would ultimately be undone by a garbage strike?) Toronto suffers from an alarming structural deficit and can only scrape by with emergency budget cuts, tax hikes and user fee increases for so long before no one wants to live here anymore.

That said, Miller’s tenure was not a calamity of historic proportions, as some Torontonians believe. For starters, he’s not Mel Lastman. He never made jokes about Kenyans and cannibalism or threatened to kill a reporter. Miller is a decent gent with honourable intentions. And he’s indisputably clean: he was a key figure in busting open the MFP computer leasing scandal. He championed the municipal lobbyist registry, which was launched in 2008. He leaves city hall with an integrity commissioner and an ombudsman it didn’t have before. Seven years ago, municipal politics emitted a strong whiff of corruption and ineptitude. The whiff of corruption, at least, is gone.

Other than that, what will he leave behind? Mostly incremental improvements and works-in-progress. Miller often boasts of environmental accomplishments, such as recycling and green roofs, but we keep learning that many of the dirty diapers and fish heads we separate from our used tinfoil wind up in landfills. When Miller announced his retirement, a Star editorial listed the five-cent tax on plastic bags as one of his accomplishments, but that’s hardly a legacy. The Pan Am Games? Maybe. We’re spending $1.4 billion in the hopes that the games will improve our city, but the Pan Ams aren’t exactly the Olympics; previous hosts include Winnipeg, Indian­apolis and Santo Domingo. It almost seems unbecoming of the GTA, which has a population of five million, to care about such an inconsequential event, successful or not.

True to form, the ever-candid Atwood didn’t mince words in her conclusion:

[The decision] is also dumb as a stump and stupid as a box of hair and also a sack of hammers, and those who thought it up have their lights on but nobody home, and aren’t playing with a full deck. Follow them, and you’ll soon be up an aptly-named excrement-filled creek without a paddle.

Well, there you go.

• Save Our Prison Farms Rally, Kingston, Ontario, June 6 [Year of the Flood blog]
• Margaret Atwood to join prison farm march [Kingston Arts Council blog]

Pile it on: A mountain garbage continues to grow at the Christie Pits dumping site (Photo by Martin Reis)

Restaurant owners aren’t exactly singing “Solidarity Forever” these days. With such services as garbage collection and permit processing halted during the city worker strike, restaurateurs are getting increasingly frustrated. Carmine Accogli, chef-owner of The Big Ragu, is fuming after contending with lineups at temporary garbage transfer stations. “Other than the city worker’s contentious behaviour regarding what’s right for them and disregarding the rights of everyone else, they’re not offering us much—except filth in the streets,” he says. “Summerlicious this year is going to stink.” And he means that literally.

Big players, such as the Royal York Hotel and the Oliver and Bonacini restaurants, regularly use private garbage contractors, and are thus untouched by the strike. However, it’s affecting small business operators like Greg Bolton of Pantry. “It’s a lot of extra work to do this myself, and if I’m not mistaken, I’ve already paid for it,” he says. “Or wait, are we getting a rebate on our taxes for the duration of the strike?”

Garbage collection isn’t the only issue. New restaurant permits aren’t being processed, which has delayed the opening of a few establishments. Michael Sangregorio was hoping his new Local Kitchen and Wine Bar in Parkdale would be up and running, but he filed his application the day of the walkout. “The strike is hindering small business,” he says. “Our city is already broke, we’re knee-deep in a recession, property taxes are rising, and thousands of Torontonians have lost their jobs. At a time like this, our city should be encouraging small businesses to open.”

Not all small businesses are suffering. As in any crisis, there are those who have found a silver lining. Bill Hennessey sees opportunity amid the trash. “When I heard of the strike, I asked: how can I capitalize off this? I had recently looked at acquiring a recycling business, so I had a bit of background on how disposal works,” explains Hennessey. He and his brother Bobby got to work and rapidly opened Strike Garbage, offering restaurant owners and residents same-day garbage pickup for $10 a bag (with a $50 minimum). “We legally dispose of all garbage,” he says, pointing out that “customers could choose the other option: wait hours at a transfer station where they let one customer dispose a maximum of four bags every 15 minutes.”

• Question from Alice Abbott in The Beach

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