TTC OVERHAUL
Only one councillor who sat on TTC board last term is returning to city hall,
Monday’s election not only reshaped city council, it also ensured a nearly wholesale change to the makeup of the board that oversees Toronto’s transit system.
Just one of seven councillors who sat on the TTC board at its last meeting of the term in July survived the election.
Deputy Mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong, who won Don Valley East with 46.3 per cent support, is the last one standing. Josh Colle, who was appointed board chair since 2014, opted not to run for council again, as did board member and Scarborough Centre councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker. Fellow board members John Campbell, Vince Crisanti, Mary Fra- gedakis and Joe Mihevc did run for re-election, but all four went down to defeat in incumbentversus-incumbent races set up by Premier Doug Ford’s decision to combine voting districts and cut the size of council from 44 to 25 wards midway through the campaign. In an interview Tuesday, Minnan-Wong said it was too early to say whether he plans to return to the board or seek the chair’s job.
“That’s a hypothetical question that I’m not prepared to entertain at this time,” he said in an interview. “I enjoyed my time on the TTC … But I haven’t really put my mind to what are the things that I’d be interested in doing.”
A fiscal conservative, while on the board this term MinnanWong criticized the Presto fare card system as an expensive “lemon,” and pushed the agency to seek out other suppliers after Bombardier struggled to deliver new streetcars on time.
Council is responsible for appointing members of the board, but the mayor can have significant influence over who is selected, particularly for the job of chair. A spokesperson for Mayor John Tory, who decisively won re-election Monday, declined to comment Tuesday about who he wants on the board.
The board is responsible for setting fares and service levels, approving the transit agency’s multibillion-dollar annual budgets, and overseeing transit operations. It’s not unusual for the board to undergo significant turnover after elections, but the departure of so many experienced members comes ahead of what could be a particularly important four years for the TTC. The organization is in the midst of planning major capital projects like the Scarborough subway extension and the relief line, and is also trying to reverse a troubling decline in transit ridership while bracing for Ford’s Progressive Conservative government to follow through on its contentious plan to take ownership of the subway system.
In a statement, the head of the largest TTC workers union said council should only appoint councillors to the board who are willing to fight the province’s plans to take over the subway. “Toronto’s 11,000 transit workers expect the new TTC board to keep our city’s transit system in Toronto’s hands,” said Frank Grimaldi, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113.
The results of Monday’s election raise the prospect of a return to the board for Mike Colle, the father of outgoing chair Josh Colle.