Toronto city council feels like an endurance contest.

Councillors spend days debating minor issues, while Toronto’s big-picture problems go unresolved.

A new report argues that it doesn’t have to be this way.

This week, city council is locked in another seemingly endless meeting filled with hundreds of agenda items.

To plow through its bloated agenda, exhausted councillors will end up voting on matters late into the night, when no one is thinking clearly, and long after anyone has stopped watching.

Multimillion-dollar choices will inevitably be rushed or buried, as small-scale neighbourhood issues burn disproportionate amounts of time and attention.

All the while, no one at council will stop to ask: Is this really the best way to make decisions?

So we asked it for them.

Last fall, we brought together a volunteer group of City Hall veterans, including former councillors, city managers, and political staffers — Toronto Sun Editor Adrienne Batra, among them — as well as others from across the political spectrum with close knowledge of how city council ticks, to form the City Hall Task Force.

In order to remain neutral, we launched without any city money or official approval.

The group met publicly four times at the University of Toronto’s School of Public Policy and Governance, where we asked members a simple question: Using only the legal authority the province already gives the city, what would you fix?

Their answer: A lot.

Their priorities: Improve accountability, and help council be better at setting priorities.

The task force came up with 14 recommendations to improve council decision making.

If the task force’s ideas are heard at City Hall, city agencies and commissions will go through a regular public review.

Key motions will have “citizen summaries” attached in plain language. Routine notices will be done electronically to save precious council time without losing any debate time.

Unfunded financial motions outside the budget will get more scrutiny.

Community councils handle more local issues without taking them to the full council.

The challenge, of course, is seeing these proposals through.

Those who are most familiar with the nooks and crannies of the current system will resist change, even if a new way of doing things might make it easier for everyone in the system.

But unlike so many other governance reviews, these reforms were designed to be politically realistic.

Every idea adopted was agreed to by everyone in a politically diverse group.

Some compromises were made, but none that individuals couldn’t live with.

Many of the ideas should appeal to penny-pinching conservatives and die-hard progressives at council — which is how good rules should work.

Best of all, there’s no need to wait. City council has all the authority it needs to be more open, productive, efficient and decisive — all without having to compromise on important democratic principles.

It just needs a push, and a sensible plan to consider. The task force has delivered that.

Now it’s up to council to decide whether it wants change, or day after day of the same exhausting, unfocused process.

KEY PROPOSALS

Some of the key recommendations from the task force:

All city agencies should be publicly reviewed by council every few years on a rolling basis.

Change the budget process to focus on priorities and require committee review of off-budget changes.

Council can save time by shifting more neighbourhood-level decisions to (existing) community councils.

City Hall needs new systems to make more data public before key decisions.

Motions should include a “citizen summary” to be more accessible to residents and delegations.

- Kelcey is an urban policy consultant at State of the City Inc.; Eidelman is an assistant professor at the U of T’s School of Public Policy and Governance. Both organized the City Hall Task Force, which recently released its final report: uoft.me/cityhalltaskforce

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