Northern Light said:
A small portion of the 'wish list' is funded in the Capital Budget:

View attachment 532738

The above is 11.1M over the next 5 years; There is additional money thereafter for phases 2 and 3

The 10-year total allocation is just over 18M

That's real money, but far less than what is needed for the DTAH assembled wish list.
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18M? It sounds inadequate even as a maintenance budget. Clearly they aren't serious.

AoD
 
The Final version of the Master Plan heads to the next meeting of Infrastructure and Environment Ctte:

Report:


Plan Part 1: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2024/ie/bgrd/backgroundfile-246911.pdf

Plan Part 2: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2024/ie/bgrd/backgroundfile-247007.pdf

The substance, such as it is, can be found in Part 2, which includes 'implementation' and demonstrations.

That substance begins at p.139 of the Consultant Enrichment Program produced document.

****

First a note on what's in the plan, such as it is............. a fair bit of good stuff actually.......... though only a small fraction is likely to be delivered in the next decade. The list so far exceeds budget, laughable isn't even the word.

I won't even bother doing the math, except to say, the wish list, done properly far exceeds 500M (new Ferry Terminal, expansion of Harbour Square Park, New Gateway at the Centre Island Ferry Dock and a lot more)

If you remove money from the Ferry project, and essential state-of-good-repair............you get 23.2M for the Masterplan over the next decade.

At that pace, you would spend up to ~60M in today's money over the 25-year life of the plan, which would deliver, at most 15% of the wish list. A futile exercise without vastly more funding.

*****

FWIW.........here's my first move, nix Rees Park for now........take the entire budget and move it to Harbour Square Park and the Ferry Terminal, do those projects (including Park Expansion, and do them properly, no VE'ing).

Sadly, I think we'll do a VE'd effort over at Rees, and not much at all elsewhere....

Holy @#$#, I feel like I'm channeling @allengeorge
 
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Northern Light said:
Sadly, I think we'll do a VE'd effort over at Rees, and not much at all elsewhere....

Holy @#$#, I feel like I'm channeling @allengeorge
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I felt a great disturbance. Can it be that you too are being worn down? :)

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Northern Light said:
The Final version of the Master Plan heads to the next meeting of Infrastructure and Environment Ctte:

Report:


Plan Part 1: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2024/ie/bgrd/backgroundfile-246911.pdf

Plan Part 2: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2024/ie/bgrd/backgroundfile-247007.pdf

The substance, such as it is, can be found in Part 2, which includes 'implementation' and demonstrations.

That substance begins at p.139 of the Consultant Enrichment Program produced document.

****

First a note on what's in the plan, such as it is............. a fair bit of good stuff actually.......... though only a small fraction is likely to be delivered in the next decade. The list so far exceeds budget, laughable isn't even the word.

I won't even bother doing the math, except to say, the wish list, done properly far exceeds 500M (new Ferry Terminal, expansion of Harbour Square Park, New Gateway at the Centre Island Ferry Dock and a lot more)

If you remove money from the Ferry project, and essential state-of-good-repair............you get 23.2M for the Masterplan over the next decade.

At that pace, you would spend up to ~60M in today's money over the 25-year life of the plan, which would deliver, at most 15% of the wish list. A futile exercise without vastly more funding.

*****

FWIW.........here's my first move, nix Rees Park for now........take the entire budget and move it to Harbour Square Park and the Ferry Terminal, do those projects (including Park Expansion, and do them properly, no VE'ing).

Sadly, I think we'll do a VE'd effort over at Rees, and not much at all elsewhere....

Holy @#$#, I feel like I'm channeling @allengeorge
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Jokes aside, I think it’s sad that the city isn’t looking like it’s going to spend here. I ‘get’ it given the budget pressures - but if there was ever a special place that you should go all-out on, it’s the Islands. It’s uniquely Toronto; it should be celebrated, and we certainly shouldn’t half-ass it.

Why not spend some of the S.37 dollars on it? Better value for money than the vaporous Rail Deck Park IMO.
 
allengeorge said:
Jokes aside, I think it’s sad that the city isn’t looking like it’s going to spend here. I ‘get’ it given the budget pressures - but if there was ever a special place that you should go all-out on, it’s the Islands. It’s uniquely Toronto; it should be celebrated, and we certainly shouldn’t half-ass it.

Why not spend some of the S.37 dollars on it? Better value for money than the vaporous Rail Deck Park IMO.
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While we could certainly discuss an appropriate taxation level etc...........

I can easily find, 20M that's allocated in Parks Capital that can and should be reallocated.

That's in addition to unallocated S.37/S.42 and Community Benefits dollars where there's no way I can't scrape up another 20M.

There would never have been enough to do the never-ending list in this plan if we raised taxes and otherwise cut into bone..........which is why I profoundly object to this unnecessary consultant enrichment scheme which wasted a valuable amount of money assembling an unachievable wish list.

Still, we can achieve good stuff, but we have to stop wasting money on dumb stuff.

The money flushed down the toilet by switching the Ferries to full electric at the last minute would have gone a long way to rebuild the Ferry Terminal.

Sigh.
 
Northern Light said:
There would never have been enough to do the never-ending list in this plan if we raised taxes and otherwise cut into bone..........which is why I profoundly object to this unnecessary consultant enrichment scheme which wasted a valuable amount of money assembling an unachievable wish list.
Click to expand...

“Those who can’t do, plan.”
 
Underwhelming - waste of time and money on a report, such as it is, that will get nowhere. Not only do we have to spend what little we have on vapourware reports and plans - what plans we got for that was so pedestrian.

allengeorge said:
“Those who can’t do, plan.”
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The anti-thesis of Daniel Burnham - Make small plans, precisely because they have no magic to stir the blood and thankfully will not have to be realized.

They can probably use the money budgeted for this report for better garbage bins.

AoD
 
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The Masterplan was adopted at Committee with some minor tweaks.

Two motions from Cllr Saxe:

1720024282705.png


Also one made by Chair McKelvie on behalf of the Deputy Mayor:

1720024323376.png


***

No harm in any of the above, firming up the targets on naturalization/restoration component and looking for more near-term action and a moving the date of a progress report up by 2 years is fine as far as it goes.

@AlvinofDiaspar noted Edward Keenan's piece which was a bit questioning on the degree of nature-related investment (we'll disagree on that), as 70% of the Island will remain recreation focused, no one is nixing the theme park, the food, the picnic areas or the restos.

That said, I'd like to see motion at Council to have Parks allocated additional funds to to the project within 5 years, with priority given to the Ferry Terminal, the Ferry Docks, Bikeshare on the Islands, Improved Food options, and a grand Avenue of the Islands.

The target should suggest that the total proposed spending on the plan should allow for at least 2/3 of the proposed projects to be completed over 20 years.
 
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