In a rare show of solidarity during yesterday’s meeting at City Hall, council unanimously approved the city’s new graffiti management plan.
It also approved a motion from Councillor Adam Vaughan to declare the laneways south of Queen Street West between John and Bathurst Streets—Toronto’s “grafitti alley”—as “an area of municipal significance” and exempt it from any graffiti bylaw by a vote of 24 to 17.
Council members spent most of the day praising the plan, the staff who drafted it, and Councilor Cesar Palacio who, as chair of the Licensing and Standards Committee led the drive to developing it—this, even though they had much more urgent items to consider, including the controversial bike plan.
Removing graffiti was a major plank of Mayor Rob Ford’s election platform and he identified the management plan as his key item of this week’s council meeting.
The city intends to continue to fight graffiti vandalism, while encouraging “street art” that appears on the walls of properties whose owners have approved the artists’ work. It also hopes to step up efforts to enforce laws prohibiting tagging and other unwanted graffiti on walls and along laneways: the policy identifies any tags or graffiti that property owners have not asked for as vandalism.
Councillor Glenn de Baeremaeker, rarely an ally of the mayor, like many other members, stood up to praise the mayor and staff for pushing the strategy forward and offered some of the best lines of the day.
“I have to say that, originally, I was opposed to the idea of this strategy. Frankly, it conjured up images of police officers chasing teenagers down railway tracks, or my colleague, Councillor Mammoliti, popping up everywhere, filming taggers with his video camera.”
“Now, however, I think Torontonians are going to remember Mayor Ford as having created the world’s biggest outdoor art project, just like we remember Mayor Mel Lastman for his [Moose in the City project]. Some of those Lastman moose are still around, years later, just as some of the art that this policy creates is going to immortalize Rob Ford.”
Despite the unanimity, some councillors took the opportunity to give the mayor the gears, when he confused the city’s 311 information line with the emergency 911 number. Others lambasted him when he commented on the funds that business improvement areas have used to clean up graffiti from storefronts.
“I’m opposed to some businesses receiving city funds to clean up their stores,” the mayor said. “There’s no business improvement area in Ward 2, the area I used to represent. Those store owners are on their own when it comes to cleaning up graffiti. It’s not fair that BIA stores use city funds and they can’t. I favour a level playing field, where the city treats everyone the same.”
Councillors Fletcher and Wong-Tam, among others, pointed out that, although the city collects the extra taxes that fund BIAs, that money comes only from BIA members.
Councillors Perks and Matlow, while also praising the plan, wondered whether the current review of city services would have identified graffiti management as an essential service, since the review suggests the city could cut back on other essential services, such as street sweeping.
Both at a recent graffiti management forum at the Drake Hotel, and during the Licensing and Standards Committee discussions, I heard grafitti artists assure councillors, business owners and other members of the audience that street artists have a code, which means they won’t paint over another person’s art. I’m not sure whether expecting a group that’s already defying rules by tagging buildings to suddenly start following some unwritten code is nave or not… but, for this week at least, city council seems to think it’ll work.
