Update — The revised Terms of Reference have been deferred back to council. Their next meeting is late June. It would seem that the cycling community complained enough to the PGM committee members that they did not want to pass it, but sent it to the whole council to decide.
A couple of days ago I wrote about the proposed restructuring of the cycling committee, here on the Spacing Wire, and here at I Bike TO.
My I Bike TO colleague, Darren, asked Councillor Adrian Heaps some questions, and the councillor’s answers can be read here.
Here are Mr. Heaps’ responses:
How does reducing the number of citizen members on the committee “ensure that the committee assume a more active role in advocating the needs of the cycling community”?
There is no city committee that has 22 members which equals half of council. The new role of the TCC is to act as an “executive” committee tapping into the diverse expertise of cycling specialists and advocacy groups as dictated by the priorities which will be set by the committee. Under the new City of Toronto Act, committees have more authority to direct and utilize staff, however this means staff have more work to do and therefore we have to be more efficient on how we manage our ration of time and resources. Reducing the numbers does not reduce the responsibilities nor does it reduce the participation. It means that the committee will not be addressing every concern simultaneously which has been an impediment in the past.
I also wonder why you would like to reduce the roll of the organizational representatives to being simply being consultants? (We already function as external ‘consultants’ via advocacy work like this, for example. Formal meetings are the only way to harness volunteer expertise, in my experience anyway!)
We have no intention of reducing the role and this kind of view is premature until people see how the new committee structure works. Once again cycling is part of our transportation system, and we need to understand that it has to be woven into the overall transportation vision for the city. I would hope that everyone on the new committee will be an “advocate” for cycling and its role within the city. The committee as mentioned will be operated through delegation of activities and projects to specific members of the committee who will in turn coordinate and work with the relevant advocacy groups and interested parties on that specific project.
Would you not want TCC to meet at least the same number of times as the Planning and Growth Management Committee it reports to, in advance, of their general meetings? Just seems obvious to me.
Meeting 4 times per year does not mean we sit idle in the intervening months. Staff will require more than a month to report back and plan. The committee and the Chair reserve the right to increase the frequency of the meetings if the need arises. Secondly I expect informal meetings to take place between these periods as various projects progress.
Finally, even if the existing (or former) TCC meetings were unwieldy and reaching quorum was difficult, how does that really affect the City’s ability to implement safety programs and infrastructure? At the end of the day, it is council’s job — the TCC already serves as an official advisor, no?
It doesn’t, although safety programs may not be the Number 1 issue for the committee. Council decisions depend on the credibility of each issue and its supporting documentation. I firmly believe that the respect and profile of cycling being accepted and incorporated into the city is directly dependent on how we conduct ourselves internally and externally as a committee.
Thanks,
Adrian
Also, please note that the City will be holding a consultation or “Bike Forum” for citizens to give their input at Metro Hall (Rm 308-308) on July 7 from 9 AM – 2 PM. (I will post more details as they become available.) Of course, you can still offer up our ideas to the staff on an informal basis.
Nominations for the new Cycling Advisory Committee will start on June 1, and only run until June 20th.
Crossposted to I Bike TO
2 comments
It’s great to have a cycling chair from Scarborough and Mr. Heaps may mean well. Quite a few buts arise from what he says eg. no other city in Ontario has as many councillors therefore get rid of half of them, and you have one week to react and organize – oh sorry we’re talking about members of the bike cttee, those mere volunteers., not paid politicos.
Which leads to – it truly is Council’s fault that the Bike Plan, flawed as it is, isn’t proceeding! It’s a ? of political will and resource. Multiple motions from the TCC languish for years, as do road repairs. Volunteers can only help lay the liability trail, which is getting about as thick as the holes are deep now.
Mr. Heaps has gone on record as saying he wants a cttee which is small enough that he can remember the names of those on it. But if he’d been to a TCC mtg, he would have seen the name tags that we all had.
I worry about whether we should boycott the bogus consults and the flawed committee due to this crap (ironically being discussed at one of the worst days for crap in the air for a long time at the end of May), or be co-opted, or start a petition asking for Mr. Heaps to be replaced, or hold our own meet-ups.
And this all is with Miller’s support of cycling!
(I’ve only been on various TCCs for c. 10 years and had planned to avoid the new one, but the new one will not serve cyclists at all well(in my view) and it may further entrench divisions and inequities.
It’s good to have other people think and talk about all this – preferrably not we white males from the core that Dan Egan sees too much of on the TCC as it is.
However Mr. Heaps didn’t get what he wanted. Please check other sources and maybe vex or agree to your local councillors, and the full council can be addressed I think via the City Clerk clerk@toronto.ca Item 5.12 PG&M
I’m sure you mean well Hamish, but if you communicate the way you write I can see why Heaps wants less people.
Bringing it down from 22 to 12 (rather than the suggested 8 ) would not be such a bad thing. As long as sub-committees are not entirely ditched, how many you have on the cmmttee is almost meaningless. Sub-committees are where you get to interact with staff and everyone is a little more open than in a big public forum. I’ve seen on the odd occasion staff just get reamed by committee members, and quite unfairly (I’ve never ebeen to a cycling meeting, but with the any specialized group you get fundamentalists).