Friday, April 13th, 2007 ::: "Street Furniture"

FIRST: Today’s Novae Res Urbis covered (or pretended to cover, because they didn’t even interview us) the conflict of interest issue. Marketing Daily also had a report on it. Click here to read our story on conflict of interest: how the project director of street furniture worked to develop a Kramer billboard during the RFP process and click here to read about how staff lied to bidders to cover up favoritism towards Astral. Now, to today’s post, and note that there is an UPDATE at the end of the post:

“We’re going to be keeping a very close inventory on everything. So we’ll certainly be tracking what’s going on with the street furniture.”

-”Street Furniture” bureaucrat Andy Koropeski in yesterday’s Eye Weekly

IllegalSigns.ca has discovered that Astral Media, the company bidding on Toronto’s “street furniture” RFP, has installed illegal Info-MUST-GO pillars on University Avenue under its contract with the City to provide info-kiosks.

The two illegal signs that we know about were are installed in the median along University Ave at Dundas and at Richmond.

University Avenue is protected by a special by-law that prohibits all third party signs in this area. Because all of Astral’s Kramer-designed pillars (except one) are installed off the road allowance, they require a permit from the Chief Building Official and planning approval under the signs by-laws.

Astral Media never obtained variances to the University Avenue by-law and therefore could not obtain a permit to install these signs. These two signs were simply erected without the required approvals.

The only approvals that Astral obtained for its pillars are in this decision, this decision, this decision and bolded item 8 of this decision. At no time did Astral apply for or obtain any permission to vary the University Avenue by-law, nor did it obtain permission to erect signs on the University/Richmond or University/Dundas road allowance.

Here are the illegal pillars we have confirmed:

Astral Info-must-go, Dundas and University

Astral Info-must-go, Richmond and University

We suspect there are other illegal pillars out there, our research into this matter has just begin.

Astral Media has once again shown it’s true colours. In its submission to the “street furniture” RFP Astral is proposing to erect an additional 120 of these signs. Astral’s proposed pillars are identical to the pillars that it illegally installed.

How can the City trust this company when it has already shown to have violated the law in connection with the contract it already has with the City, let alone in its billboard business?

And what was that Mr. Koropeski, P. Eng., said about tracking the street furniture to Eye Weekly? You see, this is the same bureaucrat that allowed Creative Outdoor, Eucan and CBS to install all manner of illegal signage without permission. Then, when it came to the “street furniture” RFP, Mr. Koropeski needed an inventory of existing furniture to provide bidders, except Mr. K had no idea what was actually on the streets he is entrusted to manage because Mr. K. had no inventory whatsoever, let alone a “close inventory.”

So, Mr. K asked the ad-companies to tell him what was on the street.

Then, Mr. K. did nothing to verify the list of “furniture” the ad-companies provided to him.

And then, get this, because this, folks, this is the kicker: Then, Mr. Koropeski issued an RFP based on that list of existing street furniture his staff did nothing to verify, a list of phantom (and illegal) furniture. This list was used by Mr. K to calculate the amount of ads currently on our street, resulting is a massive over-estimation of the ads out there. And the amount of advertising the winning bidder will be permitted to erect is based on that over-estimation, which flows from the un-verified list of furniture that the ad-companies themselves provided. Our streetscapes will be raped by advertising if this thing isn’t stopped. All because Mr. K didn’t have an inventory. All because he relied upon what the ad-companies told him. We’ll tell you more next about it next week.

Mr. K. isn’t going to have any time to be keeping track of anything once he starts counting how many ways he screwed-up this RFP.

UPDATE: We were informed by the planning department this afternoon that these signs are on the University Ave road allowance. Now please see Answer 42 of Addendum 2, wherein Transportation Services staff say that “It is noted that only one of the 25 Information Posts porvided under the current Pilot Project is located within the City Streets.” Staff was refering to the pillar on Dundas, opposit the Eaton Centre that was approved in bolded item 8 of this decision. This is our evidence for claiming the signs are illegal. If Astral can provide us any evidence that a permit was obtained from Transportation Services for these signs, and that Transportation Services incorrectly answered Answer 42 of Addendum 2, we would be happy to provide a retraction, but we don’t expect that to happen. We point out that Astral Media had the opportunity to correct TS’s Answer 42 (if it is indeed incorrect) during the “street furniture” purchasing process, but did not do so.

If you are interested, the special provisions concerning signage on University Avenue are available in Attachment 3 of this document. The University By-Law’s signage provisions was rolled into Chapter 297 of the Municipal code in May 2006, at minute 4.10 of this document.

We also suspect these signs are actually located on the road allowance, but we would need a survey to confirm that. Again, no permissions have been granted for road allowance construction.

The approval to erect an Info-MUST-GO at the Hospital for Sick Children was recinded and moved to Allan Gardens.

We will send our our submission to the Fairness Commissioner on Monday.

James Bow wrote about us yesterday. James is a cool dude. Also, Spirit in the Village.