Photo by torontocitylife.
Transit shelters require concrete pads (bases) underneath them. Astral pays for those. The garbage bins they’ve designed also need concrete pads, when they’re not being installed directly onto a standard sidewalk. Astral — as per their contract with the City — is supposed to pay for those, too. But perhaps due to the fact that a bottoming-out ad market has harmed the profitability of the overall deal, they’ve taken an attitude of “yeah…. no.”
Just so there’s no doubt, here’s what the contract [PDF] says:
4.13 The Company agrees, where required by the General Manager [of Transportation Services] and subject to obtaining all necessary Permits, to install and maintain, at its sole expense, concrete pads satisfactory to the General Manager when required and in accordance with the specifications attached as Schedule “A” to this Agreement as a base for Elements installed under this Agreement and to apply for all necessary Permits required to do so.
(Schedule A is the first appendix to the contract and contains the diagrams and specifications for all the street furniture elements; Astral has fought against public disclosure of this and other sections, and I am expecting a decision from the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner/Ontario by the end of the month.)
The cost of all the pads for Astral’s bins comes out to “no more than” $6 million. Yesterday, Council’s Government Management Committee adopted a report [PDF] recommending that the City settle with Astral for an undisclosed amount. The Star‘s Paul Moloney discovered that this amount is $3 million.
Today should have been a happy day, as yesterday — Wednesday, October 14, 2009 — also marked the conclusion of the ten-year SilverBox contract that the Lastman administration bound the City into with OMG/Eucan/EcoMedia: companies that, respectively, had ties with the mob, rigged public consultations, and shook down arts groups. The City has given EcoMedia, the current and final company, until December 31st to get the SilverBoxes off the streets.
This deadline has, however, put the City in yet another hostage situation, as they’re once again too frightened to say no to a contractor who could potentially withdraw their services. That is, Astral won’t install any more bins until the City ponies up for the pads, and the City is anxious to resolve this “dispute” quickly, lest there be a gap between EcoMedia removing the SilverBoxes and Astral replacing them.
Over the past decade, the City chose to let OMG/Eucan/EcoMedia repeatedly renegotiate the SilverBox contract for less and less money each time (and even more than once had to pay the companies millions of dollars due to supposed damage caused by City snow plows) so as not to risk the companies suddenly ripping out all the bins. Similarly, Astral has now opted to get 3 million bucks out of the City by, uh, asking for it.
The Star got some great quotes:
– “Astral thought it was additional work; the city felt it was included in the original contract. But we made an agreement that we would split the cost.” — Gary Welsh, General Manager of Transportation Services
– Councillor Mike Del Grande, a committee member, said the settlement was sold as a small price to pay to maintain a good relationship with Astral.
– “You can certainly conclude that there was a disagreement and there’s a proposed settlement, so obviously there was a difference of opinion.” — Alain Bergeron, Astral Media’s Chief Marketing Officer
Now keep in mind that a large part of the argument for having privatized street furniture in the first place was that the City couldn’t come up with the few hundred thousand dollars necessary to purchase their own garbage bins once the OMG contract ran out.
How many more times do we have to go through this? Denzil Minnan-Wong was right, and Mayor Miller was wrong.
Jonathan Goldsbie is a campaigner with the Toronto Public Space Committee, which he assures you is no longer a group “wrapped up in [its] own bureaucracy.”
16 comments
A couple more points that couldn’t easily be worked into the post:
1) The original street furniture Request for Proposals [PDF] was also pretty clear about whose responsibility the pads would be:
“Where the City has identified the need for a concrete pad/base for the installation of any street furniture element, the Successful Vendor will undertake the installation and all associated work at its sole expense.”
And which elements need pads? All of them, potentially. “All street furniture elements should be… able to be securely fastened to the sidewalk or concrete pad using minimal attachments”
2) While I appreciate that Now published an article about this in the new issue, I’m afraid that they’re calling out the City for precisely the wrong thing. That is, the City did not screw up by forgetting to factor in the cost of the concrete pads; the contract actually seems to have been properly written in this regard. Rather, the City screwed up by being reluctant to enforce the terms of its own contract.
It appears it is cheaper to deal with the Mob than large corporations.
“Denzil Minnan-Wong was right, and Mayor Miller was wrong.”
Good quote for DMW’s next mail-out I suppose.
The question is – why did City Council buckle in the face of the “confidential legal advice”?
What’s the use of caving in — especially to the tune of $3m — in order to “maintain a good relationship with” an abusive contractor? This only validates Astral’s gambit, providing no incentive whatsoever for them to act differently in the future.
Mark: I’m obviously not actually a fan of DMW (nor is he a fan of me  he blocked me from following him on Twitter), but it absolutely kills me that these are issues on which the Mayor has consistently placed himself on the wrong side. Everything that DMW said in that old Star article should have also been coming from Council’s supposed left  you know, the people who are usually the first to explain why privatization is a problematic proposition.
Have you guys ever actually tried to administer complex contracts like this in a large urban development? It’s not all that easy, even when the legal language is clear.
Maybe the vendor and the city disagree as to what constitutes an acceptable pad — 6″ deep to avoid frost heave in the opinion of Toronto staff instead of 3″ in, say, Atlanta? Maybe other unrelated items like new curb cuts pushed more bins onto dirt instead of sidewalk? Who knows.
Or maybe the program just became unworkable and the parties have to now cooperate for the greater good even if not strictly required. Look at what happened with the celebrated Velib program in Paris — the contract clearly called for the advertising firm to pay all replacement costs for lost or damaged bikes. However, vandalism exceeded expectations, so even though the contract did not require it the City of Paris is now paying $500 towards each replacement bike to keep the program running smoothly.
I’ll wait to hear more information from all sides before passing judgment.
I suspect Del Grande’s comments will come back to haunt him next time he comes out against progressive initiatives that….cost money.
Not even installed a year and here we go. We all knew we were going to get screwed and we are. I guess we get to say “We told us so”.
Honestly, I’m not sure it would be so bad if they did pull everything out.
The City definitely needs to send a message. If they roll over here, I imagine it won’t be long until Astral finds some other cost they’d really rather not pay. The last company that owned our bus shelters refused to put street names on them for the same reason, but they didn’t have the balls to ask Toronto to foot the bill. Eventually Viacom gave in. Hopefully Astral will follow their example.
It’s a shame that new fundraising rules prohibit corporate donations as it will be much harder to see whose campaign Astral makes contributions to.
Fore!
Shawn what will come to haunt me? I was the only guy that held the item and the quote as usual is selective. I was explaining the staff’s reasoning not mine.I was not pleased with the attitude that it was a small price to pay for a large return. Read the full Star story. Too bad private sesssion cannot be made public but I was not a happy camper.
If you ever attended any meetings that I have been at I just don’t let reports go by without questions and bring forward to the public eye what needs to be known.
“Have you guys ever actually tried to administer complex contracts like this in a large urban development? It’s not all that easy, even when the legal language is clear.”
All the more reason not to give 20 year concessions when your contracts are unenforceable.
By the way Jonathan I don’t think anyone would mistake you for a DMW supporter. My point was merely that it was a great isolated quote for writers of election literature (similar skill to movie advertising)
I included the “sold as a small price to pay” line not for what it said about Del Grande but for what it said about staff and their rationale for recommending the settlement.
Here’s the full paragraph:
Del Grande is indeed one of the most reliable councillors when it comes to casting a critical eye on staff reports, and I don’t doubt that he asked good questions at the in camera session.