Development proposals a concern in mostly residential ward

Neither the numbers nor the faceless streets reveal the heart that beats within Ward 10 York Centre.

An outsider could conclude, based on the most recent census statistics, that the heavily residential ward – bounded generally by Dufferin and Bathurst Streets, from Steeles Avenue to Hwy. 401 – is a poor, transient community lacking the stability of single-family home neighbourhoods. And the fact there are no distinct, architecturally interesting main street strips along the ward’s suburban arterials might indicate “there’s no there there”.

Yet, locals living in the ward’s five neighbourhoods of Clanton Park, Armour Heights, Bathurst Manor, Westminster and Branson celebrate its community, green beauty, and opportunity.

“I really feel amost proud that I live where I live and how I live,” says Minnie Cohen, while waiting for her friend outside the Metro supermarket at a Bathurst/Sheppard plaza.

Cohen is a proud, active 89-year-old senior (“Still with a full brain, kid. I may not be blooming elsewhere but there I’m fine,” she assures.) who grew up in Toronto, moved to Israel for a dozen years and then returned to the city she calls “gorgeous.”

Since her return, Cohen has been a renter – like 54 per cent of those in her ward – and lives in a high-rise apartment, like half of Ward 10’s residents (only about a quarter live in single-family homes). Forty-three per cent of the ward’s households earned less than $40,000 in 2005, compared to 38 per cent in the whole of Toronto.

Cohen’s requests for Toronto’s new council, and whoever is ultimately elected in her ward from the dozen competing to take over for retiring councillor Mike Feldman, are minor.

She doesn’t want to see any cuts to the TTC’s Wheel Trans service. “I depend on them, they’re my lifeline,” she explains.

And she’d like to see a bit of money spent fixing up Earl Bales Community Centre. “We (seniors) go there so often and there’s so many little things that are wrong, that when they make them right, we’re grateful.”

At a playground at nearby Earl Bales Park, which sits on the western side of the magnificent West Don River valley and overlooks the high rises lining Yonge Street, Dmitri Urmam pushes his young daughter on the swings.

Like 60 per cent of the ward, Urmam, 36, is an immigrant, coming here from the Ukraine 15 years ago after spending time in other European cities. He was not alone in his arrival, as 61 per cent of the ward’s immigrants over the age of 15 arrived in Canada between 1991 and 2006, according to census data.

After owning a house before in Scarborough, Urmam now rents an apartment near Earl Bales with his wife and two children.

“I like it, it’s nice people around here,” he offers. While he has no complaints about the TTC – used by his wife and teenage son – he hopes to see a reduction in crime in the area. Like others, he references the murdered body found near the Bathurst/Sheppard plaza three years ago.

Urmam currently works construction (his kids are his second shift everyday, he jokes) and simply shrugs at mayoral candidate Rob Ford’s comments that Toronto can’t afford to take in any more immigrants.

“Everybody has different opinion,” he says.

Ronda Castro received Ford’s comments with similar equanimity but feels, “the government earns money from immigrants,” an assertion agred with by 70 per cent of Ontarians, according to a recent Nanos poll.

The 42-year-old has owned a homemade food restaurant in a small plaza on Bathurst in the south end of the ward for the past year-and-a-half, primarily serving the area’s growing Filipino community. Like many of her customers, the Filipina caregivers working in nearby households, Castro was a nanny when she first came to Canada 20 years ago, before moving on to become an employee in a life insurance company and finally a small business owner.

“It’s hard, but I’m here, (and) no turning back,” she says of her fledgling business. “I like Toronto – the opportunities, you can do everything you want here. Back home you work hard, you can’t see the results.”

And while she says Toronto’s politics are definitely cleaner than in her homeland, she’s hoping local politicos can help her out on her garbage. She pays $36.50 to the city to pick up her restaurant’s one small garbage bin every two weeks, and she hopes the price might drop in future.

Though it’s an immigrant-heavy ward where the Jewish are the top ethnic group, not one of the 10 council candidates interviewed by The Mirror raised any concern about Ford’s comments on immigration without being asked. However, that is likely a recognition of the reality that immigration control is a federal rather than municipal responsibility.

Perhaps more surprisingly, neither did any of the candidates mention any desire to speed up or deepen the targeted tax cuts the city has been phasing in since 2006 for businesses and apartments and older condominiums, in which the majority of the ward’s residents reside.

Currently, the commercial, industrial and multi-residential tax classes pay property taxes at a ratio more than three times that of single-family homeowners. The city’s approved plan is to reduce the tax ratio to 2.5, for small businesses by 2013 and the other classes by 2017.

But if not top of mind to the candidates, business taxes are important to Ben Rafael, the 46-year-old owner of Kivas Bagels, an institution near Bathurst and Steeles since 1979, However, the former business journalist said taxes are not the be-all and end-all of municipal policy. He’s looking for long-term planning from city hall and the commitment of city councillors to stick to a vision, even if it costs them an election.

“Cities that are truly planned, somebody has (to have) the guts to stick to the plan,” said Rafael.

That short term pain for long term gain might have served the ward decades ago when the Spadina subway line was built. Though some suggested Bathurst, lined by apartment buildings and businesses, or Dufferin should get the subway, politicians on the former Metropolitan Toronto council voted to route the subway along the Allen Expressway as it was the cheapest option, notes transit history website www.transit.toronto.on.ca

Now, improving transit, by bettering bus scheduling or extending the Sheppard subway west from Yonge to Downsview Station, is a theme among all Ward 10 council candidates, as is fiscal restraint. Many also suggested opening a constituency office in the area. Feldman kept his office at North York Civic Centre, a couple kilometres from his ward, a decision that allowed him to save taxpayers money by only paying $4,000 of his expense budget on rent rather than the $1,500 monthly rent paid by some other councillors with ward offices.

The majority of candidates are also marching in lockstep in their opposition to three proposed developments, including:

- The removal of the ramps to Allen Road from Wilson Heights Boulevard, which is included in Toronto’s proposed update to its Downsview Area Secondary Plan.
- The redevelopment of Wilmington Plaza in Bathurst Manor, a project first brought forward in 2006. The latest concept put forward this summer would see the plaza replaced with a couple condominium buildings of up to six stories, 44 townhouses and some ground level retail, but candidates said residents are worried about increased traffic on Wilmington Avenue, a minor arterial road, and the loss of retail services like banks, barber shops and drug stores.
- Sanofi Pasteur’s proposed addition of three new buildings, up to four storeys, at the south end of their 22 hectare property on Steeles Avenue just east of Dufferin Avenue. Though the vaccine manufacturer, one of Toronto’s largest companies with 1,100 employees, already has 31 low-rise buildings on the site, the candidates stated local residents are concerned the new buildings would be going on land zoned 30 years ago for a residential subdivisions, the development might require demolition of an historic building, and the expansion could encroach on an environmentally significant area north of G. Ross Lord Park.

For the latter two developments, whoever is elected in ward 10 will likely have to either find a compromise solution with the property owners that will satisfy ward residents or hope the majority of city council will vote to reject the developments and commit taxpayers money to fight them at the Ontario Municipal Board if that’s where the fight is taken.

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WARD 10 CANDIDATES

Magda Gondor Berkovits (www.votemagda.ca)
Berkovits wants to allow seniors to ride the TTC free all day, minimize the amount of residential and employment lands slated for Downsview Park, and increase police patrols. She also wants to simplify garbage pick-up and isn’t averse to the city using an incinerator, though she didn’t state if such a facility would be in her ward.

James Pasternak (www.jamespasternak.com)
Pasternak wants to restore trust and openness by improving communication between city hall and local residents, address the reasons why the city has been spending over budget on its capital projects, and improve the quality of city services such as garbage pick-up and snow clearing. He also wants more resources put into capital projects in the ward.

Edward Zaretsky (www.voteforedz.webs.com)
Zaretsky is a member of the Toronto Party, a group of affiliated councillor candidates supporting a common platform, including tunneling underneath GO Transit’s train corridor to extend the Black Creek Expressway to Liberty Village. For his ward, Zaretsky wants simpler changes, such as more Wheel Trans services for seniors, more activities to keep kids off the street, and improving the synchornization of traffic lights. He also wants Toronto to enact a “no overtime” policy for city workers and said it’s preferable to hire more staff than pay double or triple-time to existing workers. This would be a reversal of the philiosophy used in some municipalities, which prefer paying overtime than hiring more unionized staff, because they are not easily dismissed and require long-term pension commitments.

Robert Freedland (www.robertfreedland.com)
The self-described and quite blunt transit advocate is running on a one-point platform of improving the TTC’s service – which he said “sucks” and suffers from “retarded” decisions – and eliminating expensive mistakes he said the agency has made in its capital projects. He places the blame on the fact city councillors, like the 82-year-old Feldman, don’t use the TTC and therefore don’t understand how to manage transit systems. He said his narrow focus is important because the TTC’s budget makes up such a large share of city expenditures that it impacts the budget for other city services. (14.5 per cent of the city’s property tax dollars go to the TTC, behind the 37 per cent allotted to police, fire amd ambulance services).

Jarred Friedman (www.jarredfriedman.ca)
Friedman wants the TTC to put in place more buses in peak hours before building new rapid transit lines. He also wants to see more traffic calming on side streets. He doesn’t want to see bike lanes on major roads, though he didn’t know what’s proposed for his ward (for ward 10, the city’s 2001 bike plan, availabe on toronto.ca, only envisions a 600 metre stretch of bikes on Wilson Avenue east of Allen Road). He would like to see more police patrols, including police on bicycles in the summer months. He would like to see major streets and avenues rejuvenated and suggests the creation of a pan-Jewish street festival to assist local businesses.

Nancy Oomen (www.nancyoomen.ca)
Oomen wants to ensure the city is using the full amount it collects from water rates to resolve ongoing basement flooding in her ward and not putting money into reserves. (In 2006, the city enacted an eight-year plan to raise water rates 9 per cent a year – or about $50 annually – to undertake a massive capital program to eliminate lead water pipes, improve very old and crumbling infrastructure and provide basement flooding relief in 32 areas of the city by 2013.) She also wants the city to extend traffic light times so seniors have enough time to cross arterial roads,and would like to beautify boulevards. She wants the city to build an additional gym at Earl Bales Community Centre, noting the ward has a third of the community space of nearby wards. (The city will complete the new Edithvale Community Centre on Finch this year, a kilometre outside of the ward but closer than Earl Bales for ward 10’s north end residents.)

Eric Plant (www.ericplant.com)
Plant wants to be a praoctive rather than reactive councillor and said he has been compiling a list of all the small things local residents have said they would like the city to resolve. He said the list will give him a headstart as a councillor, and can help him keep residents up to date on the status of the projects they want to see completed. He acknowledged there might be concern with councillors pushing city staff to complete local projects immeidately rather than based on where they stand in a list of priorities. However, he said some projects could be completed without staff resources, such as by organizing volunteers to clean up a park.

Brian Shifman (www.voteshifman.ca)
Shifman wants to see the city connect the Yonge and Spadina subway lines, either on Finch or Steeles Avenues, to create a more efficient loop system (with occassional trains running up to Vaughan). Connecting the two lines via Sheppard Avenue would not allow such interlining, he explained. He supports the removal of the city’s $60 vehicle registration fee, suggesting the $40-48 million in lost revenues could be made up through eliminating waste. He supports looking at the removal of the land transfer tax but wants to know first what the city would do to make up for the $200 million in lost revenues. He wants the city to ask the province to expand the required 120 metre notice area for developments. He also wants more stop signs on local streets and more police patrols at stop signs in the community.

Konstantin Toubis (www.toubis2010.com)
Toubis wants more random police patrols in the community to improve safety and he wants the city to provide more programs for local youth. Long term, he wants all three levels of government to build more subsidized housing, (something the United Jewish Appeal Federation has said is needed in the ward), but in the short term he wants the city to create a special fund to help seniors pay their rents, something to which he said private entities would contribute. He wants the city to widen Dufferin and let carpooling vehicles use the bus lanes on Dufferin south of Steeles. Instead of allowing supermarkets to keep the five cent bag tax, which is generally charged throughout Ontario, he wants the city to collect the money and use it for environmental programs.

Igor Toutchinski (www.voteigor.com)
Toutchinski wants the city to abolish the vehicle registration fee and the land transfer tax. To make up for the lost $250 million in revenues, he said the city should simply give responsibility for maintaining the Don Valley Parkway and Gardiner Expressway to the province, which will save the city $100 million a year. When pointed out it was Toutchinski’s own Progressive Conservative party that downloaded those highways to the city during the Mike Harris years, he said it’s time for the current Liberal provincial government to take them back. He wants the TTC to subcontract to another company to provide bus service using smaller jitney-style buses in off-peak hours to reduce the operating expenses of running full-sized buses. Currently, the TTC has about 1,700 buses for its 140 bus routes. Toutchinski didn’t state which company might have that amount of smaller buses to take over off-peak hour bus service. He would also like to see the city build subways up to Major Mackenzie Drive in York region and more looped subways in the city serving major roads such as Queen Street and Eglinton Avenue. To attract tourists to the waterfront, he thinks the city could attract private investors to run a fast boat to Buffalo and Rochester. (A previous ferry service to Rochester ceased operation in 2006 after losing millions of dollars).

Candidates Drago Banovic and Joseph Cohen could not be reached for comment.

- Tim Foran

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