Olivia Chow is Toronto’s new mayor. What does her transition say about her priorities?

Fresh off an election win, Olivia Chow is assembling her team and making plans at city hall.

Toronto’s new mayor-elect told reporters Thursday that she has hired a chief-of-staff, has been immersed in meetings for the past several days, and has three immediate priorities as she transitions into the role.

There will be no blue-ribbon panels and reports. Instead, there will be consultations with experts and then movement, she said.

“I’ve learned a lot and, certainly, I’m very ready to take action,” Chow said.

The mayor-elect announced that she’s hired her campaign director Michal Hay, a veteran of city hall, as chief of staff. Its the first major personnel decision of her young term, and probably the most important, as she fills her office.

Chow’s team said she will meet with frontline experts, community leaders and the civil service to look for solutions to the city’s “most urgent problems” in the coming days. Those meetings will focus on affordable housing and economic opportunities, community crisis response, and supportive housing and wrap around services.

Chow asks committee to meet in August

She also announced that she has asked the city’s executive committee to meet in August — and then city council to gather in early September — to discuss Toronto’s long-term fiscal outlook. With a billion-dollar budget gap, Chow said she wants to get to work addressing that problem.

“I know, traditionally, city hall here takes a break in August,” she said. “I don’t intend to have a holiday. I intend to work right through the summer so that we can tackle some of the challenges and issues we face head-on.”

Experts who follow city hall closely say this transition period will be different from previous changes in Toronto’s top office. Former city councillor John Filion worked with Chow for a decade, sitting two seats away from her in the council chambers. He said he can already see signs of the councillor he knew in her early days in this new job.

“I thought she was brilliant behind the scenes,” he said. “She was one of the few councillors who wasn’t looking for a lot of credit. She just would quietly get things done and let somebody else take the glory for it.”

He said Chow has hit the ground running already, and needs to, by necessity.

“Usually you have a lot of time to get ready for taking office as a new mayor,” he said. “This is going to be a big rush.”

Former mayor John Tory’s surprising resignation in February launched the byelection, which created a condensed timeline for the winner to take office. Chow said this week she will be sworn in on July 12, cutting the usual transition period by weeks.

“She’s doing all the right things, which is meeting with all of the councillors, because you need to build the coalition so that you’re able to run with the ball from your first day in,” he said. “And she’s also meeting with the provincial and federal leaders, because she’s going to need new sources of funding in order to get anything done.”

Mayoral transitions becoming more formalized, expert says

York University public policy professor Zac Spicer said given that timeline, people on Chow’s team have likely been preparing for the possibility of the transition for weeks. He suspects other campaign teams were doing the same thing in the event that they won the election.

“The transition process doesn’t have a kind of a set rhythm and flow,” he said. “But over time, at the local level, it has become more and more formalized to look more like the transition of a premier or a prime minister.”

Spicer, who has studied mayoral transitions, said city department heads will be sending briefing documents to Chow’s team to get them, and the mayor-elect, up to speed.

“The reason why the transition process has become more and more complex and a lot more formalized is that the mayor’s office wants to get a handle on all of those projects and figure out what’s going on,” he said. “The one thing that the mayor doesn’t want right now is surprises.”

Strategist and consultant Kim Wright said she doesn’t expect Chow to come in and begin to tear apart initiatives put in motion by her predecessor. She will listen to all of the former mayor’s allies on council and try to find common ground, she said.

“Everyone wants to come in and rip up the last person’s work — it’s not her style,” she said. “There’s some really good work that’s been done. So, I expect Olivia to listen to that, to figure out what makes sense for Torontonians and move it forward.”

Wright, who was an advisor to former Ontario NDP Leader Howard Hampton, said she expects Chow’s transition into the job to set the tone for her leadership at city hall. It will focus on listening and collaboration, she said.

“She’ll have a team around her, but her fundamental belief is how do we engage people where they’re at and move them to where they need to be?”