Hacknight #51: Liane Fernandes from Mississauga Halton Local Health Integration Network (LHIN)

Project Lab, Jul 19

Participants: Zakaria, Abdi, Howard, Cheryl, Hanifa, Gabe, Jenn

where does section 37 funding go?
(it seems arbitrary, and not very transparent!)
I’d like to know if that money actually goes back into the communities it came from
I’m especially interested in Scarborough

there’s no appetite from city councillors to bring more transparency to this, because they benefit from it
the guideline is that the monies have to be used within 500m
it’s a guideline, not a rule

would it be possible to track the money?
Aaron Moore, a post-doc at IMFG, did a study of section 37 monies, and published what he found
I don’t think anyone has updated it
he compared it to Vancouver, and suggested ways that Toronto’s system could be improved

some of the data would be in council minutes
the formula for calculating developer contributions is opaque and developers often find it frustrating

long-term: this should be an open dataset published by the City
short-term: it’d be great to update this data, and keep it up-to-date
what organization could support that work, in the meantime?

there’s an equity issue
because there’s not much development happening outside of downtown, there’s less money available to fund necessities in those areas

orgs who could support this: IMFG, Neptis, Ryerson City Building Institute, YorkU?, any academic planning researchers?
Social Planning Toronto?

in the long version of Aaron’s paper (which may not be online?), he describes the process he used for getting the data
we might also be able to get in touch with him

next steps:
– talk to Aaron: he would know if anyone else is working on this
– Abdi is up for helping get this initiative off the ground(!!) and will start a Slack channel: #s_37
– Howard is up for advising, and can try to track down Aaron
– after talking to Aaron, we can decide if/how to reach out to organizations who could support this ongoing
– we can also reach out to City Planning (and Open Data) to ask for the data to be made open

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police-community relations
a site for Torontonians to register positive or negative interactions they’ve had with police
we hear about *terrible* interactions, but not about the “just kinda annoying” ones, or positive ones
data is important for validating the community’s concerns!
precedents:
cityofbrains.com
doored.ca
ihollaback.org
https://www.aclu.org/feature/aclu-apps-record-police-conduct
https://www.wired.com/2015/05/right-film-police-apps-can-help/
domino effect framework:
C.O. -> Toronto Life article -> Data project -> court action (force data release)? -> End carding (is that the goal?)

TPS announce open data competition today! http://torontopolice.on.ca/newsreleases/35405
TPS open data portal: http://maps.torontopolice.on.ca/
Paul Ainslie wants TPS to release open data: http://www.paulainslie.com/Paul-Ainslie-NewsReleases.html

—–

human-centred design
asking the community what they want
not all civic tech projects are driven by that, but maybe they should be!
a more community-centred approach
having the community be part of the process
especially interested in projects that help marginalized groups

urban design, tactical urbanism
there’s lots of stuff going on, but no central points for collecting examples, case studies
so that communities can learn from each others’ experiences
it could be kind of like a civic tech, but branded differently. urban design, etc.

i’m working on a training module for the budgetpedia group
doing external research, to see if other cities/countries have good portals, training sites
and then i’ll ask people/users about what they’d like to know about the budget
and then build some personas
then build out a training module