There are a number of changes which the mayor’s office is proposing which may not be good for Ward 19 and downtown Toronto residents. Come out to the meeting and share your opinions on what is important for your Toronto so Mike can take this back to council.

If you can’t make it out fill out the survey on this City Service Review website here.

the back patio at Union Restaurant.

Teo was out serving the best hamburgers and sausages I think I have tasted in a while, with some great condiments. Mike Layton, our Ward 19 counselor,  stopped by and chatted with Teo, explaining that these are the kind of local places that we need in the neighbourhood.

Right now, but current bylaws, Union cannot open their patio to the public, so they will need to go to the Committee of Adjustment. During these hearings, letters of support from locals can be helpful.

Teo’s goal for Union is to be a refuge for both farmers and patrons, and he has wanted a patio since he began his journey to ownership. The idea for the patio is that it would serve a maximum of 24 people, and also house his composting area as well as a charcoal barbeque. Produce from local farmers will also be showcased along the wall. It will close at 11pm, so as not to disturb local neighbours.

He is asking for letters of support so if you can email him at chefteo@gmail.com a letter noting your support, he can then use that at the committee meeting.

According to municipal documents, Joe Pantalone requested an investigation into the intersection in 2009 and said investigation took place (which is probably quite out-of-date considering the pace of change on the street) in that same year. There was a public meeting about the stoplight, which for some reason was held in East York, so it was unlikely to attract the attendance of neighbourhood residents, the very people most impacted by this decision.

According to the municipal documents, the lights cost the city $130,000. One assumes that there was some safety concerns about the intersection that led to the initial discussion, which is hard for city Councillors to turn down. Interestingly, this doesn’t seem to be the case. The report pointed out that

for the three-year period ending July 31, 2009 …six collisions had occurred at the intersection of Ossington Avenue and Argyle Street. Of the six collisions, none involved a pedestrian, and one was considered potentially preventable by the installation  of traffic control signals.

But the report issued by the city raises some valid concerns about the lights at the intersection including:

• Possible Increased congestion and delay to traffic on Ossington Avenue is possible;
• Increased traffic volume on Argyle Street;
• Parking must be prohibited at all times within 30.5 metres of the intersection resulting in a loss of about six parking spaces on Ossington Avenue and three parking spaces on Argyle Street;
• Increased wait times for pedestrians crossing Ossington Avenue.

This all seems, to us, like a lot of negatives for not a whole lot of positives. There was a crossing guard at the intersection during school hours, who seems to have been removed, or at least have shorter hours these days. Only one accident (out of only 6) could have been prevented by this light which will cause more pedestrian wait times and more traffic. All this to address a 3 year old request from a now obsolete politician.

Dani Elwell, of Jaiden’s Petals, likes the new stoplight. Her daughter is often crossing Argyle and Ossington and she has always been nervous about cars that don’t pay attention to the cross-walk. The new light, she says, will help to create a bit of humanity at the intersection.

According to current councillor Mike Layton, the lights will remain green for those on Ossington until requested or actuated by a car or pedestrian request on Argyle.

What do you think about the new lights? Good? Bad?

Currently on Ossington there is only one boulevard license belonging to Painted Lady, and two that face onto sidestreets at Roylat -  BQM and Crooked Star. Bohmer is blessed with a bit of a boulevard space in front of their property as well as having front windows that open right up onto the sidewalk. Now that there are signs of the upcoming patio season, hopefully this will go through quickly and we’ll have another place on Ossington to sit outside and enjoy some drinks and, in this case, really nice food.

In last night’s meeting, Mike covered a lot of topics. He gave us an update on the budget dealings at city hall, and some of our esteemed mayor’s other plans. As news readers know, transit is a hot topic in Toronto these days, and that will likely be the focus of Mike’s next community meeting.

Besides his own updates, Mike allowed the 15 or so attendees to discuss their concerns and issues. There were representatives from parks, business improvement groups, resident’s associations and Live Green Toronto.

No one directly from Ossington was there (besides me), but there was a rep from the Do West BIA, the Friends of Trinity Bellwoods Park, and the Trinity Bellwoods Community Association, so definitely local interest groups. We consider Trinity Bellwoods our local park, and we’re not the only ones. Every year more people use the park, and I learned they do not have a great budget, evidenced by the one part-time parks employee who does all the maintenance all summer long. So remember that next time you stop there for a picnic with friends, and clean up after yourself, please.

Other issues include the very long-term work that’s been done with the streetcars on Dundas. This construction is going to start up again very soon, and as of this Monday, April 4, we will once again see buses replacing the streetcars both east and west bound in our portion of Dundas.

One of the purposes of this meeting was to connect like-minded groups and allow them to network, share information and help each other with shared experience. So, the parks people connected, and the BIA people shared info. Good idea, and I think it worked.

Finally, Mike pointed out that it is very likely council will soon revoke the harmonized bylaws. He expects it to happen in two weeks. This means a lot of work for council to start over with zoning rules, but, on the positive side, the laws could hopefully make a lot more sense!

For your chance to learn more about council and what’s going on in the community, and to have your say, definitely stay posted for the June town hall meeting. We’ll let you know.

It’s a chance for local residents to voice their concerns and give their thoughts on how budgets within Ward 19 are allocated.

We believe it’s important for residents to know what’s going on in their neighbourhood, and this is a great chance to ask Mike Layton about

his plans for the Ward going forward. He is new to the role, so now is the chance to express your opinion.

If you can’t make it and you still want to have your say send an email to Mike Layton here.

For a look at the details of the current budget check out the city site here.

These are the 10 most popular posts by site traffic over 2010.

1. Beau Lieu Bistro is now open. – This is one of the unsung stars of Ossington. A low-key French bistro, with really nice food, a good ambiance, and a staff that cares. So we are happy that, at least on our blog, they are getting the attention they deserve

2. Dinner at Salt Wine Bar. – Before this place had a license they were operating on catering certificates. We went over and tried the food and were very impressed. Soon after  we ate there they were closed for almost two months. Reader were curious on what to expect when they finally got a chance to taste the food.

3. Ward 19 Candidate’s Debate. – When we announced that we were going to have a candidate’s debate, it was a new thing for us. The debate itself was a lot of fun and there were a lot of folks that ended up watching the UStream video from this post from the night itself. Michael Sims rocked the night and shook some people up.

4. Goed Eton Gets off to a Rolling Start. – One of the quirky, but delicious places that opened on the street is Goed Eten – where the proprietor, Johan, has been putting together a menu of poutine, local fed sausage burgers and other gourmet food. This post we put up right when he open and was still working out the kinks.

5 Salt Wine Bar Looks Open. – Salt Wine Bar gets another place on our top 10 list from our post on Aug 7th when we learned it had opened – albeit without a license.

6 Karen Sun shows good knowledge of Ward 19. – We did a number of candidate profiles over the course of the election cycle, but the big hit on our site was the profile of Karen Sun. Although she didn’t beat out Mike Layton, she was the site favourite in terms of page hits.

7. Call Joe Pantalone, Open Salt Wine Bar. – Again, Salt Wine Bar hits our top 10 list – the frustration with Joe Pantalone’s decision to put a moratorium on the restaurants on the street encouraged others to check out our post.

8. Jess’s Dead Sexy bad ass, mother Fxxxing, pulled-pork Sandwich. – What can we say? The best pulled pork sandwich on Ossington, or maybe in Toronto, is in an unexpected place, The Painted Lady.

9. The Evolution of Dundas off Ossington. - This year because of the moratorium, as well as other factors, the Dundas strip to the east and west of Ossington became popular with places like Churchill, Camp 4, Red Light,  The Port, Enoteca Sociale and more. This post looked at some of the newer places that emerged.

10. Havana Cultura Starts Today. – Our 10th place post is about a festival that took place in August celebrating Cuban Culture. We have a number of places on the strip as well as just off that joined in the festivities with Cuban food and music.

PostCity.com seems to have the scoop that the Ossington moratorium has been lifted.  This story claims that’s the reason for the re-opening of Salt Wine Bar, scheduled for tonight.

This is the only source of this information, and they were unable to get confirmation from City Hall, so we will continue to pursue the news, and update here when we can. In the meantime, head out to dinner on Ossington. It’s been an uphill battle, and hopefully this means it’s over.

UPDATE: Today’s blogTO and Torontoist are confirming reports that the ban on new restaurants on Ossington was lifted on the weekend. Funny how the same way this whole mess started (without consulting the public) is how it ended (no public notice). Now that Joe Pantalone is no longer our city councillor, we hope for more communication with our local council.

There was, however, some great debate and discussion during the race, in our debate at the Garrison, as well as the other debates in the ward. Karen Sun, who didn’t come with the family support, and Sean McCormick, who challenged from the right, as well as Jim Likourezos, Karlene Nation, Ted Footman, Ross Bruto, George Sawision all challenged for the seat on council. And some great arguments were heard, and hopefully Mike will take some of those to city council to keep a progressive movement alive in the city and to keep the Ossington area alive and growing.

We congratulate Mike on the victory, and wish him the best of success in the new position. As we’ve posted before, it’s important that he keep the local issues close at hand, and communicate with his constituents in a way that his predecessor failed in his waning years. In numerous discussions tonight with his supporters at his event, as well as in the other events, locals we talked to liked him but felt that it was important he become his own candidate at city council and move from campaign mode to community mode. We agree.

When we met Mike in person he was genuine, and very caring about the community. He wanted to listen and open channels with both people and businesses, so problems, especially those along Ossington, could be solved. He brings with him some experience in the foodservice industry, as well as an understanding of cultivating an entertainment and lively culture – something his father brought to the downtown core many years ago. These are the traits we hope he brings with him to council.

It was a good night in the ward despite many disagreeing with what happened in the mayoral race. We wandered along College visiting Ted Footman’s event at Bar Italia; Revival, where Joe Pantalone passed the family torch to Mike; and then to meet Karen Sun at Brass Taps, where her supporters congratulated her on a hard fought battle against a competitor with far greater resources. (then for some food at Lakeview!) We hoped to make it to Sean and Karlene’s events, but ran out of steam, but look forward to catching up.

Here are some pictures of the night:

So? When can we go to Salt Wine Bar, legally? Mike?

We met Michael a few months ago when he reached out to us, having read the blog. We learned about the position of TDSB trustee from him and did a short profile of him on the blog. We then thought it fair to reach out to Chris Bolton, his incumbent opponent, and invited him to the debate on October 5th, as well as mentioning to him at the time that we’d be happy to do a profile of him. Bolton did attend the debate, with barely any notice, and didn’t follow up with us about the profile.

What has impressed us about Michael is how he is willing to shake things up and his willingness to explore and use technology to embrace change. Michael got up at the debate and called out Mr. Bolton for distributing his campaign flyers through Maria Pantalone’s (Joe’s sister) school in the area – something Mr. Bolton has apologized for and said was a mistake.

We feel he is dismissive of local concerns. In questions from the local paper, the Gleaner, “Bolton refused to comment directly on any of  Sims’ accusations. ‘It’s not news, it’s been withdrawn, the letter basically says it,” said Bolton. “What we should be concentrating on is … policy.’” The TDSB, of which Mr. Bolton is vice-chair, decided to take no action against him for the breach, and it doesn’t seem clear that Mr Bolton didn’t make that decision himself.

Our experience with Chris, as bloggers and constituents in his ward, mirror the Gleaner’s experience. We had a reader submit a question to us about him and his background, which we passed on to Chris. It was essentially a simple issue that needed clarification but we also received a similar terse reply – with little or no substance, and no follow-up.

It also concerns us that he has full support from another candidate running in the riding, which Sean McCormick has pointed out and asked to end, and that offers significant advantage. There is a large funding difference between a city council candidate and a TDSB candidate. A donation to a candidate for city council comes with up to 75% tax rebate, while a donation to a TDSB candidate offers no rebate.  So, by putting names on signs, thus relieving Mr. Bolton of thousands of dollars of expenses not offered to Mr. Sims, the election is unfairly stacked – not exactly democratic.

But we wouldn’t endorse someone just based on the actions of the incumbent. Michael has been blogging about his experience running and has offered some good ideas. As a software developer (and I run a small software company), he proposed the idea of modernizing parental participation using something similar to bug-tracking software, where people can file issues, and watch to see whether they get resolved. He has also proposed using open source software to reduce some of the expenses in local schools. If you read his blog, he shows a curiosity to look into new ideas for improving the way things are, which we like.

So, even if you don’t have kids in the school board, you want someone who represents the area, and someone who won’t be dismissive of the local concerns. We endorse Michael Sims for TDSB.