Save Union Station

Bulletin

SAVE UNION STATION, Bulletin No. 14, March 16, 2003.

This newsletter updates activities and news concerning Union Station.

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In this issue:

1. Referral of the Union Station bidding process to a judge.

In early February, City Council decided to ask the provincial integrity commissioner, Mr. Justice Coulter Osborne, to review several matters concerning the bid process with respect to Union Station. Mr. Osborne has set up his office (3rd floor, Metro Hall) and has begun interviewing various people. (The precise decisions of City Council are found on the web site in the Background section)

The review is being conducted in private. However, Mr. Osborne seems amendable to meeting with all those who feel they have something to contribute.

Council requested that Mr. Osborne's report be within 60 days, but it remains unclear when he will report.

On March 11, the Toronto Star published the reconstructed score card. It showed (as has been rumoured for weeks) that Paula Dill, Commissioner for Urban Services and formerly the chief planner in North York under Mel Lastman, was the juror who gave Union Pearson the highest scores and LP Heritage the lowest. She scored the LP Heritage bid at zero for the three financial categories, but if she had awarded average scores for these three, LP Heritage would have won the bid rather than Union Pearson.

The city had appointed a six person jury, each voting on nine categories, for a total of 3000 points. Removing Dill's strange scores entirely and simply using the awards of the remaining five judges, results in LP Heritage having more points than Union Pearson.

Jurors had areas of expertise, but also voted on issues they knew little about. The city treasurer voted on the heritage aspects of the proposal, and the heritage architect voted on financial aspects. Stranger still is the category `overall quality', where LP Heritage scored the highest number of points on the ballots of all six jurors, including Ms Dill - yet it lost out to Union Pearson.

Mr. Osborne has lots to look at.

2. Status of the Office of Corporate Access and Privacy

Rita Reynolds, the Director of Corporate Access and Privacy has been under attack by senior staff ever since she determined in late January that she was required by law to announce that the original scoring sheets of the jurors on the Union Station bid had been destroyed. According to published reports, the Chief Administrative Officer and other senior city staff have set out on a course of reorganizing the Director's position to prevent her reporting independently to council. Instead, she would be required to report through Joan Anderton, the Commissioner of Corporate Services, the senior staff person responsible for the Union Station bid process.

Our Steering Committee wrote to the Administration Committee on March 10, complaining about this attack on the Officer of Corporate Access and Privacy, and asking to address the committee at its March 25 meeting. The letter stated:

"Because of its size and complexity, the City of Toronto is unlike virtually any other municipality in the country. In some aspects it functions more like a provincial government than a municipality, and accordingly, its Freedom of Information function is extremely important and requires the kind of independence seen at the provincial level. Only with significant independence in the role of the Director of Corporate Access and Privacy can the public be assured that nothing is being hidden and can a strong signal be sent to those in the organization that if they try to hide information, they will probably be found out."

The letter concluded:

"We request that the organizational structure be changed to provide that the Director of Corporate Access and Privacy and the related staff be given … the same independent powers provided the Auditor General in Section 169-29 of the Municipal Code ("The Auditor General is appointed by Council and is independent of the City administration") and Section 169-30 (providing "full carriage and control of the office"). The division should continue to receive, in the brilliant words of former Mayor David Crombie, "pay and rations" from the department in which it is now lodged, but there should be a specific structural statement of its operating independence. This will ensure the reports of the Director are not stifled, but become public as the public expects they would.

"We are very concerned with the style of management that tries to blur or hide independent opinions. We are concerned that the City Solicitor is not now permitted to report independently to Council, but must report through someone who is not a lawyer. We are concerned that the position of the City Clerk, a position that is intended to serve public needs, is subservient to the large civic organization and may not report independently to Council. These are related examples of the city staff organization serving its own ends, rather than public ends. They deserve to be addressed too, but at the moment the key change that should be made is to the status of the Director of Corporate Access and Privacy, who should specifically report directly to Council without an intermediary."

The chair of the committee, Councillor Doug Holyday has refused to put our letter on the agenda, saying that the report of Mr. Justice Osborne should first be made available. We have challenged this decision, noting that senior staff are already drafting the report that hopes to silence the Director. We are writing to all members of council asking them to intervene. Recipients of this Bulletin might call members of the Committee - see the Actions section of the web site.

3. Wider platforms and escalators for GO Transit?

Members of our steering committee attended at the GO Transit Board meeting on March 14 to ask that it authorize studies to ensure that within the next decade escalators are installed to link the concourse to the platforms and that the platforms be widened. (Our letter can be found in the Background section of the web site, http://www.saveunionstation.ca )

Two members of the Board expressed interest in these ideas - William Sears, former chair of Hamilton Wentworth, and Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion, but staff said there was no need for these changes within the next 30 years. The Board decided to do nothing, and simply received our letter.

Our impression is that the Board may respond more positively to these requests in the future if they have more information. One pleasant surprise was that staff said wider platforms and escalators would cost $70 million - in the past the figure of $400 million has been tossed around.

4. Redesigning the TTC subway station at Union Station

Several members of the Steering Committee made a presentation to the TTC Board on February 19, requesting that further study be done of the proposed configuration of the TTC station so that GO commuters would not be blocked by the new station while trying to walk from the concourse level of Union Station to the PATH system in the concourse level of the Royal Bank. With the support of Howard Moscoe and David Miller the Board agreed that staff should look at this again and report at a later date.

5. Addressing the larger issues

The Save Union Station Steering Committee wrote to all councillors on February asking them, now that the current bidding process is in hiatus, to think about the larger issues, including ideas such as:

*keeping the public areas of Union Station in public control and leasing out only the areas to be used for commercial purposes, as is done in Grand Central Station in New York. (The city proposal called for renting the whole building to private interests.)

* ensuring that transportation improvements (platforms, escalators, track alignment, roof over the tracks) are made as part of any redevelopment. (The current RFP specifically excludes such improvements.)

* reviewing the ability of the Station to generate revenue, given that there is almost 400,000 square feet of rentable space, which at an average rent of $50 per square foot, should generate upwards of $20 million a year. (The rent provided in the Union Pearson bid is $500,000 a year.)

A copy of this letter is found in the Background section of the web site.

We hope to call a public meeting in the last half of April to discuss these issues, as well as the question of how the city can move swiftly away from the faulty process it has been following, and embark on something that promises better result for the public, for Union Station, and for the downtown. Details of the meeting will be announced when they are available.

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