2018 Municipal Election: Toronto Council Races

[Northern Light]

This is a common theme in the beaches area. Woodbine is hell with the bike lanes and hardly anyone uses them. I know people who live just north of Woodbine Station (and work at the Canada Post plant), they hate the traffic associated with the lanes. Even senior TTC operators avoid the 92 Woodbine South because of the bike lanes.

They were a product of the local city councilor at the time (Mary Margaret McMahon) who was an avid biker. She pushed for the lanes but realistically anyone who offers to tear them up will win the election or at least get a damn good showing. They cause a bottleneck coming up from Eastern Ave and Kingston Road compared to before they were installed. They were not thought out, simply a pet project.

As an area resident who is pro-bike lane, I have to disagree.

I drove Woodbine less than an hour ago........it was fine.

Yes, its a bit busier in rush hour, but its 5 extra minutes, tops, if your going from the bottom to O'Connor.

Yes, MMM was supportive of the lane, as was Janet Davis (councillor north of Danforth).

It was also done because the envisioned lane in the Bike Plan was on Coxwell, but there were limitations both with that plan and in getting it through Council............

Yes the bike lanes are lightly used overall, but that doesn't diminish their value, cycling is up 100% and climbing, which for one-year old lanes is quite reasonable.

Most of the people held up by the traffic don't live in the ward.

I don't see it as a defining issue, but we shall see on election day.

 

[christiesplits]

What are people's thoughts on Kevin Vuong's chances against Cressy in Spadina-Fort York? He has a strong social media presence and claims to have visited tens of thousands of doors. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean he can overtake Cressy who has a high profile and incumbency.

However, the fact that Han Dong declined to run in the new ward system suggests that there may have been push back from local Liberals who think Vuong is a better candidate.

 

[Urbinski]

What are people's thoughts on Kevin Vuong's chances against Cressy in Spadina-Fort York? He has a strong social media presence and claims to have visited tens of thousands of doors. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean he can overtake Cressy who has a high profile and incumbency.

However, the fact that Han Dong declined to run in the new ward system suggests that there may have been push back from local Liberals who think Vuong is a better candidate.

In a 47 ward scenario, Vuong had done the work and had a good chance. In the new 25 ward model, he's up against a strong incumbent in Cressy and has twice as many doors to knock on. I wouldn't give him a better than 20% chance.

 

[EagleEye]

Regarding the Woodbine bike lanes, I'm on a facebook page for that area and people are overwhelmingly against them. The road is an obstacle course and there are hardly any cyclists. The amount of time for drivers hasn't changed much but they are definitely not being used like you'd expect. I rarely see more than 1 or two people when driving along Woodbine and more often than not there are no cyclists.

 

[SunriseChampion]

Added a now poll (mods thanks for deleting the old one!). Place your bets!

Wow, I'm jaded.

Also, I'd put down a hundo on 5.

Edit: Jaded aaaand illiterate! I meant 2....missed the non- part after having read it twice.

Sigh. Carry on.

 

[SunriseChampion]

. According to a family member and 30+ year resident of The Beaches, the deciding issue for most of his neighbours is Woodbine bike lanes, of which the majority of his neighbours are vehemently opposed to.

Damn, I wish I had their problems.

 

[King of Kensington]

I wouldn't discount Mihevc, especially with union endorsements and a big volunteer pool.

Don't forget Karen Stintz's endorsement!

 

[EagleEye]

https://www.bluffsmonitor.com/ward-20-candidates/

Apparently Dyson is actually in Ward 19 but here are all the ward 20 candidates.

 

[WislaHD]

Don't forget Karen Stintz's endorsement!

Karen Stintz's endorsement probably lost Carmichael-Greb votes 4 years ago. So I don't know how great that is. Though, area residents probably don't know who Stintz is and just see someone endorsing Mihevc.

Also I really want to know who Josh Matlow pissed off that right wingers are endorsing Mihevc.

I'm not sure that it is fair to call Stintz a right-winger. But to answer your question, Matlow pissed off a lot of Ford-ites over the past 8 years.

In any case, Stintz is associated with the pro-developer lobby, which might play poorly in nimby midtown and forest hill, against Matlow.

Beaches East York: The three front runners seem to be former MP Matthew Kelway, urban planner Brad Bradford, and business consultant Josh Makuch. All three were initially running in the Beaches (Ward 37) ward, which has now expanded to include East York. I give Kelway the slight advantage given that he has name recognition north of the Danforth from being MP, but the two other candidates seem to be running strong campaigns, at least down in The Beaches. According to a family member and 30+ year resident of The Beaches, the deciding issue for most of his neighbours is Woodbine bike lanes, of which the majority of his neighbours are vehemently opposed to.

I am really hoping Bradford wins, but I hope the Woodbine bike lanes issue won't become a debilitating issue to his chances.

I favour what Northern Light said. With the Jarvis bike lanes, the people opposed to them were not local residents. They were people in my neighbourhood in North Toronto who used Mt. Pleasant & Jarvis to get downtown by car who vocally opposed them. It would not surprise me one bit if the people most vocally against the Woodbine bike lanes lived to the neighbourhoods to the north, and not in the Ward.

Then again, it is The Beaches, so who knows really what public opinion is actually like down there. Gather 3 locals from the area and ask them what their neighbourhood is called and you'll receive 4 different answers.

 

[lead82]

Matlow must have pissed off many to get Stintz to support Mihevc. Stintz was the worst TTC chair in recent memory. The service went downhill fast under her watch and her scheme to resurrect the Scarborough subway got us into the mess we are currently in. She is an opportunist that did nothing good for this city.

In the new ward 12, I plan to vote for Matlow. He's an active councillor, and while I may not always agree with him, Mihevic needs to retire. While Matlow is a zealot for stopping unwanted development, he stands up for poor city spending (ie. Scarborough subway). In terms of housing, some of the NIBYism is warranted, especially around Yonge/Eglinton - it is getting a bit too crazy. It's over-developed in the East portion but the West side of Yonge is under-developed. Infrastructure and services need a lot of improvement to allow for density. This is one thing Toronto fails at. The planners and housing advocates all say density is good but it's actually a degradation on the way of life without improvement in services and infrastructure. This is whats happening here. Yes there is an LRT coming, but no new schools, or parks, the density is too much in one area. It needs to be spread around the city more.

It will be interesting to see the new mix of councillors and how they will vote in the new world of 25. Will it be right-leaning again with suburban issues taking priority and being funded by the booming downtown. Looking at the ward populations, certainly the new wards are bigger but they average just over 100K each, so quite even.

 

[Thorns_Embrace]

Karen Stintz's endorsement probably lost Carmichael-Greb votes 4 years ago. So I don't know how great that is. Though, area residents probably don't know who Stintz is and just see someone endorsing Mihevc.


I'm not sure that it is fair to call Stintz a right-winger. But to answer your question, Matlow pissed off a lot of Ford-ites over the past 8 years.

In any case, Stintz is associated with the pro-developer lobby, which might play poorly in nimby midtown and forest hill, against Matlow.

Is Stintz really that unpopular in the midtown area? She won pretty safely in ward 16 in every election she ran in. I don't think she lost Carmichael Greb votes by endorsing her. In fact, if my memory serves correctly Carmichael Greb did poorly in the advanced vote and then won after John Tory and Stintz endorsed her late in the campaign.
Also she is definitely right wing, at least relative to council at least. She was like the unofficial David Miller opposition leader back in the day.

Still I don't think this is a major point in the election at all, as she is irrelevant now. And I am of the opinion endorsements only matter if:
a)the person who is doing the endorsement has political sway over a group of people
b)the race is close
c)the candidate is already not well known enough so that people haven;t made up their own minds on them

 

[Thorns_Embrace]

Matlow must have pissed off many to get Stintz to support Mihevc. Stintz was the worst TTC chair in recent memory. The service went downhill fast under her watch and her scheme to resurrect the Scarborough subway got us into the mess we are currently in. She is an opportunist that did nothing good for this city.

In the new ward 12, I plan to vote for Matlow. He's an active councillor, and while I may not always agree with him, Mihevic needs to retire. While Matlow is a zealot for stopping unwanted development, he stands up for poor city spending (ie. Scarborough subway). In terms of housing, some of the NIBYism is warranted, especially around Yonge/Eglinton - it is getting a bit too crazy. It's over-developed in the East portion but the West side of Yonge is under-developed. Infrastructure and services need a lot of improvement to allow for density. This is one thing Toronto fails at. The planners and housing advocates all say density is good but it's actually a degradation on the way of life without improvement in services and infrastructure. This is whats happening here. Yes there is an LRT coming, but no new schools, or parks, the density is too much in one area. It needs to be spread around the city more.

It will be interesting to see the new mix of councillors and how they will vote in the new world of 25. Will it be right-leaning again with suburban issues taking priority and being funded by the booming downtown. Looking at the ward populations, certainly the new wards are bigger but they average just over 100K each, so quite even.

The funny thing is as a big Scarborough Subway enthusiast i still think I prefer Matlow over Mihevc. While I am really annoyed at Matlow's constant crusade against the subway, Mihevc votes against it as well and is not better in any regard at least with regards to things I care about. I at least feel like Matlow is an independent thinker who will occasionally vote correctly, while Mihevc is 100% downtown NDP even if he tries to play the friendly uncle role.

 

[44 North]

Matlow is good but you're right he can be annoying on the SSE front. Yes all info points to transferring to a diff train being better. But he never crusaded against TYSSE or YNSE for similar reasons. Sure they didn't have secondary options presented, but all the more to be a thorn in a side like he's done with SSE. Not sure what Stintz is up to or if her endorsement was recent, but she's practically a useless nobody.

Now I don't know what's happening down in my area of the city. All this DF/PC, council-reduction stuff left me exhausted.. Who's who, where are the boundaries? From going on just a simple post I saw here last week Wong-Tam is in the running to be a councillor for my ward? Is that correct. But I do know Troisi was around w/ a petition to have a moratorium on safe-injection sites for the ward. Apparently we have more safe-injection sites of any neighbourhood in the world. I can see people agreeing with her opposition. Doesn't mean they're opposed to the concept of safe-injection, or having a 1-2 or a few. But that we simply stuff all unwanted things in the downtown - the largest tourist destination in the country - is a bit off and does resonate with people. If one agrees with her does that make one hard-right? It shouldn't, since it's a moratorium on the present extremely-high number existing today. Obviously people in the outer 416 or 905 have addictions, why not put a few out there?

 

[WislaHD]

Is Stintz really that unpopular in the midtown area? She won pretty safely in ward 16 in every election she ran in. I don't think she lost Carmichael Greb votes by endorsing her. In fact, if my memory serves correctly Carmichael Greb did poorly in the advanced vote and then won after John Tory and Stintz endorsed her late in the campaign.
Also she is definitely right wing, at least relative to council at least. She was like the unofficial David Miller opposition leader back in the day.

She started off very popular because she had very strong support of the local parent groups and was actively involved in that realm. Her popularity waned midway through her second term though because she increasingly began to take strong public positions on city-wide issues (most notably, the Scarborough Subway) while (as it was perceived) ignoring many of the issues in her ward. These perceptions were affirmed when Stintz announced her mayoral campaign. The second major reason why she became unpopular was that she approved every development application in the Ward, and the condos that were approved under her watch in her first term were now under construction during her second term, causing nimby-ist hysteria in the neighbourhood. Let's just say that it isn't just the council vacancy that led to 14 people running in the ward that election. Many of those people were planning to run against her.

The nimbyism, this needs further context. Karen Stintz was elected 15 years ago specifically because she was supposed to take a stronger role against developers. The previous councillor, Anne Johnston, was in power for 30 years before that and was popular until she supported condo developments in the area and was promptly voted out. I have a feeling this was probably on the back of Karen Stintz's mind when she decided to run for mayor, and if it wasn't, the local residents association shouting "remember what happened to Johnston" at statutory public meetings probably were.

Tellingly, of the 5 front-runners in the 2014 election, only one was pro-development, which was Carmichael-Greb who had received the Tory endorsement. I am expecting a large vote split again this election.

As for political orientation, I guess terms have been redefined in recent years. I would describe her as a John Tory Liberal (or even progressive conservative), which is typical of the demographic of the Ward she represented, as opposed to a Tim Hudak neoliberal or Ford populist.

 

[WislaHD]

Matlow must have pissed off many to get Stintz to support Mihevc. Stintz was the worst TTC chair in recent memory. The service went downhill fast under her watch and her scheme to resurrect the Scarborough subway got us into the mess we are currently in. She is an opportunist that did nothing good for this city.

In the new ward 12, I plan to vote for Matlow. He's an active councillor, and while I may not always agree with him, Mihevic needs to retire. While Matlow is a zealot for stopping unwanted development, he stands up for poor city spending (ie. Scarborough subway). In terms of housing, some of the NIBYism is warranted, especially around Yonge/Eglinton - it is getting a bit too crazy. It's over-developed in the East portion but the West side of Yonge is under-developed. Infrastructure and services need a lot of improvement to allow for density. This is one thing Toronto fails at. The planners and housing advocates all say density is good but it's actually a degradation on the way of life without improvement in services and infrastructure. This is whats happening here. Yes there is an LRT coming, but no new schools, or parks, the density is too much in one area. It needs to be spread around the city more.

It will be interesting to see the new mix of councillors and how they will vote in the new world of 25. Will it be right-leaning again with suburban issues taking priority and being funded by the booming downtown. Looking at the ward populations, certainly the new wards are bigger but they average just over 100K each, so quite even.

You pretty much nailed it.

If I was still in Ward 12, I would vote Matlow for the same reasons you articulated. Yes, some of the nimbyism is warranted, but I can't help but read what is being said in between the lines of these nimby groups, which is a message of "we don't want poor(er) people in our wealthy neighbourhood". (Ignoring of course that people purchasing brand new condos are by no means, poor.)