Two city-owned ski hills will be spared closure and two monumental projects erected if Toronto city council follows advice from the final meeting of David Miller’s executive committee.
The committee voted Monday to restore nearly $600,000 in funding to keep open Centennial Park Ski and Snowboard Centre in Etobicoke and Earl Bales Ski and Snowboard Centre in North York, both of which were threatened with a one-season shutdown when the city’s bid to privatize them failed.
The committee also unanimously supported proposals for an $88-million, eight-storey arena in the Port Lands and the continent’s largest flagpole in North York.
The decision to open the slopes as usual this winter was a somewhat rare instance of committee members overruling city staff’s advice.
When not a single private company responded to the city’s call for bids in May, staff recommended the slopes be closed because their public operating subsidy of $149,174 in 2010 and $447,523 in 2011 had been axed from the budget.
“Privatization is not a panacea,” Councillor Janet Davis said. “Should we only allow skiing and snowboarding for rich kids? Absolutely not.”
Despite unanimous support for keeping the hills open, Shelley Carroll, the budget chief, warned her colleagues and the next mayor to rein in recreation spending.
“We have [Brenda] Patterson, [the general manager of Parks, Forestry and Recreation] tap-dancing in a body cast to deliver recreation.”
The sparkling new “stacked” four-pad arena for the Port Lands could be a drain on such funds.
With only $34-million in federal money, the city is $54-million short of the estimated $88-million cost of a glass-walled, stacked arena – an option that is $17-million more expensive than the ground-level, spread-out “snowflake” option the committee rejected.
City staff suggested using the arena’s future net operating revenues to debt-finance between $21-million and $25-million, leaving the final $29-million to $33-million unaccounted for.
Scott Oakman, the executive director of the Greater Toronto Hockey League, told the committee his organization supports the project, but with reservations.
“Those reservations, not surprisingly, will all come down to the cost and the cost of the ultimate expense that would be incurred by the players and their families.”
Meanwhile, the other major project that moved a step closer to fruition Monday is not supposed to cost taxpayers a cent.
The Emery Village Business Improvement Area, which represents about 2,500 business owners, has agreed to raise a special two-year levy to pay the $3.5-million cost of erecting the continent’s tallest flagpole on a vacant lot in an industrial area near Finch Avenue and Highway 400.
The 125-metre staff, which will support a steel-fibre Canadian flag the size of a football field, is intended to lure tourists to the blighted area.
All of this came as mayoral candidate George Smitherman called on Mr. Miller and council to resist “an orgy of last-minute activity” at the final council meeting before the election next week.
He singled out the TTC’s plans for an open-fare system and new headquarters, neither of which actually go to council, and a six-year effort to harmonize the city’s 43 pre-amalgamation zoning bylaws.
“[Mr. Smitherman] is an expert in not doing things. … This is the public business. Things like the zoning bylaw need to move ahead,” Mr. Miller said.
Committee members did agree to punt one controversial item to their successors: A proposed $16,000 raise for the mayor, which all major candidates for the job have said they would reject.
With a report from Anna Mehler Paperny
