We don’t know for certain, since some attachments and schedules have not been released (probably because they aren’t ready yet), but a current “draft” of the contract has been published (PDF). (One provision, incidentally, states that the contract will never be considered secret. Do keep that in mind should it ever be signed.)
- If the successful vendor fails to produce and install a piece of street furniture, the city can hire somebody else to do it (¶3[c]). Let’s see if the city actually does that.
- “The City may reject the proposed locations of [ad c]aissons in any instance and for any reason” (¶4[d]). The vendor must “cease construction and/or remove or relocate” an item “for any reasonable municipal purpose or concern whatsoever” (¶5[d]). Nothing prevents a citizen from writing in and providing a reason, purpose, or concern for the city to reject a proposed location or remove or relocate an item. I speculate it may be possible to file lawsuits against the city to require the enforcement of such provisions if a reason, purpose, or concern is supplied. (The vendor cannot remove or relocate any item without city permission [¶5(g)].)
- There is no requirement whatsoever to use “sustainable/innovative technologies,” which the vendor must merely “explore” (¶4[g]).
- “The Company shall, at its sole expense, produce and install TTC route maps in each new shelter” (¶4[j]): Does “produce” mean “redesign, typeset, and print from scratch”?
- The city can decide unilaterally to install items of street furniture anywhere it wants in Toronto, explicitly including parks (¶4[m]). They really mean that, as the clause is provided “[f]or greater certainty.”
- The vendor needs city approval to sell its designs somewhere else, but such approval “may be unreasonably or arbitrarily withheld” (sic; ¶4[n]).
- This one’s important (emphasis added): The vendor has to pay the city a hundred grand “to fund a design study to be undertaken by the City for the purpose of recommending complementary design solutions for bollards, pedestrian railings, tree grates, maintenance covers, sidewalk subway entrance portals [q.v.] and other street amenities… for the purpose of complementing and enhancing the Street Furniture designs” (¶4[o]). Yes, that means this is not the end of the domination of Jerry “Wayfinding of the Apocalypse” Kramer, the presumptive author of any such study to “standardize” everything else in the city that is untouched by the current street-furniture proposal.
- This one’s very important: “The Company shall not, under any circumstances, place or permit the placing of advertising on benches or any stand-alone street furniture elements” [¶10[f](iii)]. As stated, a bus shelter sitting there by itself cannot include advertising. Neither could a garbage can.