Transportation Committee Meeting – a detailed account
From Judy Lishman, Chair, Manor Park Bridge Committee:
After a marathon session of Transportation Committee yesterday, (beginning at 9:00 a.m .and still going at 11:30p.m.) Councillor Wilkinson tabled a motion to recommend that the top 3 bridge sites proceed to phase 2. The motion passed 5 to 3. This is not the ideal outcome, but it was a victory for us considering the committee had been told by the city lawyer that because of the motion the council passed in June 2007 to support Kettle Island, any new motion on the subject would be out of order. This procedural debate took up the first 90 minutes of the meeting and was left unresolved. I had the opportunity to talk about this fix at city hall on CBO morning and CTV noon hour show and in an interview with CFRA. West end councillors led by Alex Cullen had voted in June 2007, to name KI as their preferred option in exchange for support from Rainer Bloess and the other far east end councillors’ support to take all west end bridge sites out of the study. Bloess and Cullen continued to support each others’ positions all day yesterday.
Steve Taylor then presented the report, followed by presentations from the public. The far east end was represented by 7 or so community association presidents who spoke as a group and whose only argument was that they didn’t want the extra traffic on 174 from a bridge in the greenbelt. Then they left. It was obvious that they were all show and no substance.
Two speakers from Lowertown spoke about the need to remove all the trucks from King Edward when the new bridge was built, but did not support any particular corridor. This position on trucks is supported by an OMB ruling and by a city resolution. This confirms our recent suspicions that when a new bridge is built, it will receive not 40% of the trucks from King Edward but 100% of them with the accompanying increase in all the health and safety impacts if it is built at KI. Taylor was pressed hard by the councillors to clarify this situation but as usual spoke out of both sides of his mouth. This situation has huge impacts on the whole decision making model and clarification is essential before any final decision is made on which corridor(s) proceeds to phase 2.
Two west end people spoke against preserving west end corridors and the remaining 40 or so speakers spoke eloquently and passionately against Kettle Island until after 6:30. Councillors Legendre and Bedard were in top form and fought tirelessly to oppose Kettle Island. They took every opportunity to hold Taylor to account and were highly critical of the fact that they were being asked to accept a report that was only available to them in summary and that the full report, which they did not have, was only in English. There were many times that Taylor’s credibility was questioned and, in fact, he was caught out in a direct lie to the councillors. Jacques and George by directing questions to our delegations allowed us extra time to make our case. Without their herculean efforts, we would not have achieved this step in the right direction.
There are still not enough votes to carry this resolution through council, but in the face of the forces lined up against us yesterday morning, this resolution to carry 3 sites forward was a monumental achievement. We still need to fight for the rejection of Kettle Island outright, and the truck situation will give us new ammunition. We are gaining ground.
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