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Political Landscape of Toronto (including Ward Boundary Review)

edmundoconnor said:
Three in downtown, actually. The article mentions three wards in the west end would become two. A loss of one ward, an addition of four new wards, for a net gain of three additional wards.

I expect tooth-and-nail resistance to the plan from some the more regressive members of council, who will quickly see that the balance of power is shifting away from the suburbs, and not toward them. It should be an interesting vote.
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It's interesting, for some of these areas, as they are experiencing some of the biggest increases in population they've ever seen (in terms of % and #), like for example, Ward 6, yet their power at council would diminish. Why wouldn't they wait until numbers from the 2016 census become available to make these decisions. I wouldn't necessarily consider it regressive.
 
Skeezix said:
Apologize if this is a stupid thing of me to say, but wouldn't the simple solution (at least politically) be to divided each of the new federal/provincial wards in two? I know it doesn't necessarily achieve the same population distribution that the consultants were aiming for, but it strikes me as politically easier to achieve at Council and more easily defensible at the OMB.
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An even simpler solution would be to align the wards and federal boundaries one for one, but fat chance seeing that happen...
 
Soop said:
How do you figure? She won in every poll in the ward, including the exclusively Rosedale polls.

http://www1.toronto.ca/City Of Toronto/City Clerks/Elections/Library/Files/ward maps/2014 Ward Maps/2014_polling_27.pdf
http://www1.toronto.ca/City Of Toronto/City Clerks/Elections/Library/Files/Results PDFs/2014 Election/2014-Councillor.pdf
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Yes, and she repaid the favour by crapping all over us on Chorley Park. I'm only citing anecdotal evidence, but since she rammed the Chorley trail through, her negatives have gone through the roof north of Bloor.
 
Read back through the report and the biggest missing piece is the lack of attempt at a bottom-up analysis of optimal ward size. It gets mentioned briefly but says there's no consensus and moves on. There are three main functions of council:

- executive (the various chairs and executive committee)
- legislative (debating and passing bylaws)
- representative (constituency work)

Executive role means enough councillors to take on 'cabinet' positions, which is probably about a dozen or so. So that's the lower bound.

Legislative needs enough councillors to fill all the committees and debate in the round, though not so much that they get bogged down in a non-partisan environment. That probably means a minimum of two dozen or so, but almost certainly less than we have now.

Representative is the tricky one, because even at current sizes there's too much for a councillor to personally stay on top of. More relevant is the maximum span of control a councillor can manage with a team of effective assistants. My guess is you could reduce the number of councillors while redistributing the current staff and not see a degradation of service. Also, as services such as 311 expand (and Ford types kindly go away) there should be less routine work being inefficiently handled at the constituency offices. NYC has 51 districts averaging 165k each, but there are borough politicians as well. Applied to Toronto that would result in a council size of 16.

So unless you want to decouple the legislative and representative roles (say by adding a second tier of borough reps), or introducing party discipline, the best answer is probably around three dozen non-partisan councillors staffed with properly funded, professional and accountable offices. But I have no data to back that up...
 
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animatronic said:
An even simpler solution would be to align the wards and federal boundaries one for one, but fat chance seeing that happen...
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Everyone I talk with agrees that that just matching the federal system is best. There is ample discussion with locals when the federal ridings are drawn up. Every 10 years, the ridings are balanced for population by legislation.

The problem is that Councillors continue to do the work of 311 just to boost their re-election profile. MP's spend half their time in Ottawa, yet are still able to do their constituent work.

I like the idea of adding a mini-mayor for each Community Council. Their vote would be worth 3 and the actual Mayor would be worth 10. That's still 47 votes on Council. The strength of each position position thus is commensurate with their status, vote they received and likely press they received during the election to allow voters to make an informed decision.

I agree with the earlier comment, that if they really want to increase their numbers, just go with 50.
 
mjl08 said:
Hi Skeezix, I'm basing my observations on this map, with the proposed 47-ward council:
http://static1.squarespace.com/stat...5e4b01805cf868a81/1439318775994/?format=1000w
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WislaHD said:
Thank you. I was waiting for somebody to repost the map.

You would have thought the Toronto Star would post one alongside their article, but nope.
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@mjl08 - ah, that's not the map in the final report. That explains the disconnect. They appear to have refined various ward boundaries since that version was released. See the excerpt I posted above, or take a look at the full final map of the recommended wards here.
 
Skeezix said:
@mjl08 - ah, that's not the map in the final report. That explains the disconnect. They appear to have refined various ward boundaries since that version was released. See the excerpt I posted above, or take a look at the full final map of the recommended wards here.
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Oh this is terrible.

They moved me from Matlow's ward to Robinson's. I have no connection to 80% of her ward. They split the Yonge+Eglinton intersection even further! That is the opposite of what needed to happen.

Not liking these changes at all.
 
Skeezix said:
@mjl08 - ah, that's not the map in the final report. That explains the disconnect. They appear to have refined various ward boundaries since that version was released. See the excerpt I posted above, or take a look at the full final map of the recommended wards here.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the clarification!

Looking at it now, yes, it doesn't quiet look right. But then again, Rosedale would look like a rump regardless of where you put it. KWT was able to win most Rosedale polls, so it will be interesting to see if left-wing Fragedakis can win them too.
 
Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam won every poll in Rosedale (and every poll in Ward 27). Even the NIMBY Chorley Park poll (though it was her weakest):

2014-election-ward-27-cllr.jpg
 

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Ward 29 has a population of 45,000 - which I think is below the threshold.

If they had stuck with splitting ridings in half - they could have created a "silk stocking" district of the Annex and Rosedale from University-Rosedale riding.
 
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