The next meeting of the Works Committee is on this coming Tuesday, January 22nd at 10:00 am. At this meeting they will hear deputations and make final decisions on the budget submission of Works and Emergency Services (WES). Included budget submission is the money for building the Bikeway Network. This includes on street bike lanes, on street signed routes and paths on boulevards or in hydro corridors on in rail corridors which will fall under the responsibility of WES. The total proposed was $1.5 million. The Executive Management Team only recommended approving $710,000, which is the same amount spent last year. At the January 22nd meeting the Works Committee can make a change to that recommendation so that the full amount of $1.5 million will be in the budget come March 2002.

If the full amount is not approved it means that many of the projects planned for this year would have to be deferred. The $790,000 worth of deferred projects would be primarily the more expensive boulevard or off-road corridor paths that were planned for construction this year. Also deferred would be the planning for other major corridor projects which could then be built in the second and third years of the ten year plan. If the planning for these does not happen this year then that pushes back the start of construction and the ultimate completion of these projects. The 10 year plan for the construction of the Bikeway network was intended to be rolled out in a gradual fashion with the pace of construction accelerating in future years. Not getting the full funding this year will have a compounding effect and could put the completion of the whole plan back several years.

What could be done with the reduced funding, would be on street bike lanes and on street signed bike routes as they are cheaper and easier to implement and for which the planning has already been done.

Now is the time to make your views known. You can do it either by making a deputation to the Works Committee either written or in person, or by contacting the Councillors on the committee.

To make a deputation you can call Works Committee Clerk, Trudy Perrin, at 416-392-8027.

If one of these Councillors is the Councillor from your ward let them know. The opinion of their constituents carries more weight than that of someone from outside their ward.

If you want to find who is the Councillor for your ward and their contact info the go to this page and type in your street address.

I have listed the Councillors on the Works Committee below. Click on their names to get their Contact information such as Phone, Fax or mailing address or click on their email addresses to send them an email.

Works Committee

Betty Disero (chair) councillor_disero@city.toronto.on.ca

Jane Pitfield (vice chair) councillor_pitfield@city.toronto.on.ca

Bas Balkissoon councillor_balkissoon@city.toronto.on.ca

Frank Di Giorgio councillor_digiorgio@city.toronto.on.ca

Irene Jones councillor_jones@city.toronto.on.ca

Jack Layton councillor_layton@city.toronto.on.ca

Gloria Lindsay Luby councillor_lindsay_luby@city.toronto.on.ca

Peter Li Preti councillor_lipreti@city.toronto.on.ca

If the $790,000 is not restored at this stage there will be opportunities to have it put in the budget during the meetings of the Budget Advisory Committee in February. It will be more difficult at that stage. Hopefully we can convince the Councillors to make the change now.

I will keep you posted.

Martin Koob
tcc-rep@tbn.ca