Toronto's unionized city workers are preparing to vote Wednesday on the tentative agreements reached with the city that could bring an end to their strike, but it will take a few more days before things begin returning to normal in Canada's largest city.

Striking city workers will vote Wednesday on a tenative deal reached with the City of Toronto. (Canadian Press)

The results of the vote by CUPE Local 79, which represents inside workers, and CUPE Local 416, which represents outside workers, are expected sometime Wednesday night.

City council would then hold its own meeting to ratify the deal on Friday.

About 24,000 of the city's 30,000 unionized workers went on strike on June 22.

The strike closed down virtually all city services including garbage collections, city-run daycares, swimming pools, summer day camps and the ferry service to the Toronto Islands.

But after a weekend of intense negotiations the city and the unions managed to complete tentative deals.

Toronto Mayor David Miller, seen during this year's Pride Parade, says he is optimistic striking union members will accept the tentative deals worked out with the city. (Sumitted by Jen Yeaman)

"Obviously there was a little bit of give and take [in the negotiations] on both sides," said Toronto Mayor David Miller in a Tuesday morning interview with CBC News. "But our goals were very simple: they were to be fair, the agreement had to be affordable."

Miller would not comment on the particulars of the deals, saying that would be inappropriate before presenting the agreements to the union membership and city council. But the mayor did say the negotiating team kept within the city's guidelines.

"What we settled was squarely within the mandate of the employee labour relations committee, which was almost unanimous, and we had most of council there and people were in complete agreement with the approach we were taking," he said.

He said he is "optimistic" the two locals will accept the deal. "I think they recognize that in 2009 you have to have a reasonable settlement — and this is fair and it also deals with some important issues that the city needed dealt with — in order to keep providing public services and ensure they're cost effective for the long run."

As for when city services will return to normal, Miller wasn't able to be specific.

"We will do our best to best to deliver what services we can starting the moment that council ratifies and the picket lines are down," he said. "We will resume services as soon as absolutely possible... we're doing everything we can and we'll let people know this week a detailed schedule of what will be resumed [and] when."

Some residents have expressed concerns that workers who walked the picket lines for more than five weeks will now be in line to collect overtime in order to clean up the mountains of garbage that have accumulated in temporary garbage dumps around the city.

Miller said that is unavoidable as city managers try to get Toronto back to normal.

"We're going to do our level best to minimize the overtime, but we also have an obligation to clean up the city, and if you're living beside a temporary [garbage] drop-off site you want it cleaned up. We don't want to spend significant amounts of money on overtime — and we'll do our level best not to — but we also need to get the city moving as quickly as possible."