Beauty and the Beast: More Utility Box Murals that Enchant and Delight - by Councillor Paula Fletcher, seconded by Councillor Brad Bradford

The results have been well received by the community; and re-enforce the success of the overall StART program. City staff have engaged utility companies, and presented overviews of the Outside the Box Program to encourage them to adopt programs to improve the appearance of their infrastructure and offered to help them establish such programs. However, only Bell Canada has a similar mural installation program which actually pre-dates StART. There are still many intersections within the City where unsightly vandalized 3rd party utility boxes are located in close proximity to attractive hand painted or wrapped traffic signal controller cabinets - the visual compare and contrast reality is obvious. There are about 2,300 traffic signal controllers in the City of which less than 1,000 have been painted or wrapped. It is clear that painting or wrapping other utility cabinets would improve their appearance and benefit the community Rogers, Toronto Hydro, Enbridge, and others, like Bell Canada, serve the public and have considerable budgets for advertising, promotion and community engagement. StART does not have the financial or staff resources to assume this responsibility on behalf of other utility companies and deliver results in any reasonably equitable City-wide manner. City staff overseeing these programs advise they are willing to assist other utilities to develop and implement programs similar to Bell Canada's.

City Council request that a copy of this Motion be provided to the Boards of Directors of corporations identified in Recommendation 1 above.