Despite promising to get on with contracting out garbage collection east of Yonge St., Mayor John Tory says several roadblocks are cause for pause.

After three weeks on the job and dozens of briefings from staff on all matters concerning the city, Tory — who also promised to bring effective calm and renewed vigour to city hall — is learning its not always easy to just “get on with it.”

In a wide-ranging interview with the Star, Tory said his meeting with staff on garbage collection revealed the need for more study, despite his campaign claim that the contracting out west of Yonge St. served as the proof it would work for the other half of the city.

“That doesn’t mean at all that I’m not still of the view we should be seriously examining the contracting out, but I want to do it based on real facts that are put in front of people,” said Tory, seated on a black leather couch in his new office overlooking Nathan Phillips Square, where he has replaced a wall of editorial cartoons hung by former mayor Rob Ford with large framed paintings of city scenes.

Tory said there are issues of logistics since city trucks still collect some west-end garbage at night. In terms of costs-savings, he said there are a “significant number” of employees who have seniority job protection and would still be receiving city salaries regardless of whether they were collecting garbage. The public service also claims they have improved productivity after learning from the contractors in the west end — where contracting out saved the city $11 million — meaning the amount of money to be recouped in the west may be shrinking, Tory said.

“The issue is on the table and should be on the table,” he said, adding he believes there are benefits to not having a “monopoly” provider for collection. “I want to discuss it in a non-polarized sort of way. I want to discuss in a way that sort of says, look, just what’s the best most sensible thing to do here?”

This is the John Tory that has been working largely behind-the-scenes since his time in transition. He hints at the answers he has heard during briefings that he doesn’t like — when presented with “black and white” scenarios and resistance to new ideas.

“They give you these reasons,” Tory said. “I think what’s going on, is that for the last five or six years here there’s been nobody pushing — people who are very professional and very well-meaning — but nobody’s been pushing to say: Could we do it faster? Could we do it better? Could we do it cheaper? Could we do it in a more customer-friendly way?”

Since he was sworn-in earlier this December, Tory said he has focused on checking off promises to get things fixed now. Some of them, he said, are admittedly small things — like his announcement last week that TTC will start accepting debit and credit card payments at all stations come January.

By next year, the new mayor said he would like Torontonians to judge him on “meaningful progress” on traffic and transit, increased job opportunities for youth, work on the affordable housing file and a real start on a poverty reduction strategy.

On traffic, Tory said he realizes there isn’t a cure to congestion.

“But I think if people can notice that the obvious irritants are solvable, the kind of, people parked where they shouldn’t be parked and the people blocking up intersections and that sort of thing, that they’ll have seen some significant progress on that,” he said.

Before he had even officially taken office, Tory said he wanted to restore 41 routes previously cutback by the TTC under Ford. Today, he says much of that plan depends on whether there’s money in the budget for next year. The city also needs to find buses that would again service those routes.

When he was told by staff that little could be done before the fall, Tory said he asked about a shorter timeline to restore at least the off-peak bus service that can be supplemented by buses from other routes.

“Why can’t we do that in March?” Tory said he asked.

“I honestly believe the public are starved to see even the little things.”

On SmartTrack, Tory is standing by a seven-year, $8-billion target that was the central plank in his campaign.

He said Metrolinx, the provincial body that operates the GO service on the same tracks his 22-stop, above-ground service would run on, has now told him they have no doubt his plan will take pressure off the Yonge-University-Spadina subway — an often debated criticism during the campaign of pushing his proposal over a downtown subway relief line.

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“There’s been nothing that we’ve heard that caused us to call into question the price tag or the timetable,” Tory said. “We’re acting as if we’re on that timetable too.”

That’s why he pushed for an “accelerated work plan” approved by council earlier this month, which will see consultants report back mid-January. He said meetings with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Premier Kathleen Wynne and other senior officials where he pitched his rail plan have all been positive.

As for his goal to fully fund the project through tax-increment financing — a point his political opponents often grilled him on during the campaign — Tory said he hopes the upcoming studies will confirm the early work his team did, pricing out the funds to be made from future development along the proposed line.

“If anything people have been more encouraging about it as a mechanism that is quite practical and plausible to use for this,” Tory said.

There are many challenges to meet some of the promises, including working on the affordable housing file that involves asking for “other peoples’ money,” he said.

But Tory said they are discussing a backup plan if the other levels of governments won’t come to the table.

A task force on housing, which plans to have report back by July, will likely focus on the issue of the corporate structure of the Toronto Community Housing Corporation.

That team and other future advisory boards comprised of councillors and citizens have yet to be selected. But the mayor still has some people on his wish list — including Olivia Chow and David Soknacki, who ran against him to be mayor.

“I think she’s got a lot to offer and David similarly,” Tory said of his former rivals.

Whether Tory can check off a box in each category of those campaign promises by next year is still unclear.

“What I want people to conclude overall a year from now is, yes there’s some things getting done — including small things — but overall what we’re seeing is sort of professional, practical management of the city that is stable,” he said.

A city, he concluded, “that is not too controversial or too exciting most of the time.”

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