Preparing the decision

“We are making an executive summary from the tapes of the presentations and the questions,” he said. “We also have daily summaries of the input from the feedback via the website.” “It will be next week before the Project Team can begin to form serious conclusions. We will assess the reactions so far and make a progress report to Council at next Monday’s meeting. “I will strongly recommend that Council set aside a special session of the General Committee for a very long discussion on the options.”

Mayor Karin Marks and three other council members are attending the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ annual conference in Calgary at the end of next week,

Marks will also attend another conference — on Making Cities Livable, in Portland, OR — and take a planned vacation in the West, so any extended council discussion is unlikely to be before late-June. “I expect to have informal conversations with council members before I leave,” Marks said. “We will look again at the studies and the reports that the Director-General is preparing, but we will have to make decisions. “There has to be a balance between study and action.”

Meantime, St. Louis committed the administration to responding to questions raised at the consultation. “There were some problems mentioned — for instance, the growth of traffic on Melville — that deserve looking into whatever happens to the soccer fields,” he said. “We will be determining those as part of our review of the input.”