There’s been a new twist in Toronto’s street furniture saga. Illegalsigns.ca, a local outdoor advertising watchdog, is accusing on their website that the project director of the City’s street furniture project, Robert Millward, worked for one of the outdoor advertising bidders. Millward, who is on contract with the City and is not a City of Toronto employee, is said to have worked on behalf of Kramer Design on two occasions. Kramer Design is working with Astral Media on one of the three street furniture bids. Millward is not on the jury that selects the eventual winning bid.
More from Illegalsigns.ca press release:
…[N]ine months after he was retained as Project Director of the RFP, Bob Millward worked on a variance application for Kramer Design’s video screen at the southeast corner of Bay/Dundas [shown at right]. Ten months before he was retained, he worked to develop a Kramer screen at 5000 Yonge Street, and made a deputation at Community Council in support of that screen….
“Street furniture staff have suggested to us that there is no conflict of interest because Mr. Millward was not hired directly by Kramer,” says Rami Torbello of Illegal Signs. “But landlords seeking to develop Kramer billboards repeatedly hired Mr. Millward. We think Staff’s conclusion is expedient and disingenuous — it flies in the face of established City of Toronto policy. We have asked Justice Coulter Osborne, who has been retained as Fairness Commissioner, to rule that fairness has been compromised.”
Please go and read the full post on Illegalsigns.ca.
image of Astral/Kramer newspaper box
5 comments
Nice, this is my favorite kind of scandal! Although it would be a lot juicier if somebody was literally sleeping around.
Wasn’t Coulter Osbourne the guy who jerked Rita Reynolds around. If it is the same, why should we expect anything positive. Seems to me it is more “city for sale”.
I salute illegalsigns.ca for the exhaustive work they do.
The bottom line is this, violate City sign laws and donate money to election campaigns and you too may win a fat 20 year City advertising contract.
This smells.
they got good coverage in today’s G&M, including a broadside from Barber.
Thank you for remembering me. Please also remember Lawrence David, the man who made the FOI request for Union Station evaluation records. He criticized the records destruction and the secrecy of the process, We went to court over 7 months (5 days) and argued for the privacy protection of citizens who make FOI requests or who criticize government policy. The records of Osborne’s review were also destroyed and we argued that the City should have protected them.
I admire the work being done by illegalsigns.ca and others but am concerned about the possible consequences. At Halloween 2006, the court agreed with the Information & Privacy Commissioner/Ontario that Ontario citizens don’t have a right to complain about invasion of privacy and she has no duty to investigate.
The Court agreed with the City and the Commissioner that the City can contract out of having to comply with access and privacy legislation by using independent contractors such as Coulter Osborne. Destruction of all the Union Station review records stored on a City computer was therefore not a problem.
My website at http://www.ritareynolds.ca describes the background facts and the arguments before the Court.