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HomeMy WebLinkAboutADMIN-05-01 L ~ '. THE CORPORATION OF THE MUNICIPALITY OF CLARINGTON REPORT Meeting Council Meeting File # Date: March 19, 2001 Res. # Report #: ADMIN-OS-Ol File #: By-law # Subjecr Review of the Greater Toronto Services Board Recommendations: 1. That Report ADMIN-OS-O 1 be received. 2. That the GTSB be advised that the Municipality of darington endorses Option D - A Provincial Ministry. 3. That a copy of this Report be forwarded to the GTSB and the Region of Durham. 1.0 BACKGROUND 1.1 The Greater Toronto Services Board was established on January 1, 1999 by Provincial Legislation. The GTSB Acr requires a review of the GTSB before December 2000. As a result, a review process was underway in early 2000 involving many stakeholders culminating in a Final Report prepared by Deloitte Consulting which was released in February 2001. 1.2 The GTSB will be reviewing the Consultant's recommendations and is seeking input and comments from all GTA Municipalities before March 31,2001. 2.0 COMMENTS ON GENERAL RECOMMENDATIONS 2.1 A copy of the Consultant's report has been circulated to members of Council earlier. For the purpose of getting to the recommendations directly, this staff report will not repeat the information contained in the Consultant's report pertaining to the process of the review and other discussions that lead to their recommendations. ~ ' REPORT ADMIN-OS-Ol 2 2.2 In summary, the Consultant made 13 general recommendations pertaining to the following: . Geographic Coverage . Mandate Terminology Selection of Chair . Authority of Chair Formation of an Executive Committee . Membership of Executive Committee Size and Representatives . Standing Committee . Use of Alternates . Federal and Provincial Representatives . GO Transit . Greater Toronto Marketing Alliance . Dispute Resolution Function 2.3 Staff have reviewed these recommendations and generally concur with the Consultant's fmdings, except for the following: Authority of the Oxti:r The Consultants recommend the authority of the Chair be enshrined by Provincial legislation as opposed to leaving it to the Board to defme. This is not acceptable because the Chair is accountable to the GTSB and therefore his authority should be defmed by the Board. Further, enshrining the authority of the chair in the legislation will remove the operational flexibility of the Chair and may not be in the best interest of the Board to maintain a flexible working relation with the Chair. Fo'l?17atim of E:xecutirx: Omrrrittre and Mernlmhip Regardless of which option is chosen, the Executive Committee must report to the Board and not be given decision making power as suggested by the Consultants. Further, the Chair should not be given the power of appointing members to the Executive Committee for obvious reasons. To ensure fair representation, we recommend an agreed-to formula to ensure there will be representations from all parts of the GTA in order to ensure no one city or region dominates the Executive Committee. '.' .. REPORT ADMIN-OS-Ol 3 3.0 COMMENTS ON OPTIONS The Consultant identified four (4) possible options for the GTSB. In summary, they are: A. Planning Authority This option suggests a mandate to monitor and guide the "growth management" of the GTA including policies on planning, land use patterns, transpottation netWorks and related development. B. A Planning and Services Brand In this option, the GTSB will have the responsibilities of developing a growth management plan to which all other regional and local official plans must conform. In addition, the GTSB will have the authority to set service levels, act as borrowing agent for all municipalities, and the legislated mandate to become involved in service delivery as it sees fit, and could include allocating any provincial or federal funding to projects, services or initiatives. C. A GTA Council The option would establish a GTA-wide govemment. No derails are provided regarding the future of regional or local governments. D. A GTA Ministry of Provincial Government This option would abolish the GTSB with a new GT A Ministry to assume the responsibilities of overseeing planning in the GTA, coordinate GTA initiatives and capital investments and take on a dispute resolution role of conflicts and problems between GTA agencies and municipalities. The Municipality of Clarington does not endorse Option B - Planning and Service Brand, and Option C - A GT A Council. Both options erode local autonomy in planning and service delivery and certainly leads to another level of government which is absolutely not warranted. -. REPORT ADMIN-05-0l 4 Option A - A Planning Authority is essentially a status quo option with minor adjustements which may still be a viable option if the GTSB concentrates its effort on solving the transportation issue and rhen tackles other issues only after it achieves some tangible results in transportation. Option D - A GT A Ministry is the preferred option for Clarington. If the Province is serious about the future well being of the economic engine of Ontario, it should assume its responsibilities of all GT A issues, many of which were the responsibilities of the Province previously. The issues faced by the GT A are complex and require the Province to play a major role to make it work Reality is that the GTSB will never be able to solve rhe GT A transportation problems without the Province committing major financial resources to the Board and that is unlikely to happen. Left to its own devices, the GTSB will fail without a major funding commitment from the Province as it will eventually be choked by its member municipalities due to the diverse interests and conflicts among members such as urban versus rural, 416 versus 905, and lack of funding. 4.0 CONCLUSION Few would disagree that the GTSB is ineffective in its current form and many agree that it needs ro be fixed. However, as the Consultants pointed out there is no consensus on the remedies. The reason is obvious, any agency that is represented by such wide and diverse interests is unlikely to accomplish much. The lack of general consensus in the GTSB review process and agreement on an option further reinforce the flaws of the set up. It is the system that fails the GTSB now and will continue to do so if the fundamental flaw in the system is not remedied in the future. Clarington believes Option D - A Provincial Ministry is the best option thar would remedy the fundamental ills of the GTSB. Respectfully submitted. cl~~ Franklin Wu Chief Administrative Officer FW*jlc