Swimming With Sharks

July 10, 2012

Is there a term or phrase that refers to the period of time after somebody jumps the shark? That vast pool of ridiculousness when jumping the shark has become the general rule rather than an exception. Suspension of disbelief is simply too, too difficult to maintain; the only proper response: Oh, Come On!

I can’t support taxing the taxpayer.

Seriously.

That’s what Mayor Ford said yesterday in response to the One City transit proposal.

I can’t support taxing the taxpayer.

Oh, Come On!

It’s like we’re witnessing some increasingly deeper, darker performance art piece. Dada Mayor Dada. What he says next will confound and amaze you! I’m half expecting Andy Kaufman to burst from a fat suit and begin singing the Mighty Mouse theme song.

Here I come to save the day/So taxpayers will never pay!

But just in case you think it’s all some sort of stale joke, a sitcom relying solely on stunt casting at this point, the man purporting to be mayor has fired off a written request to City Manager, Joe Pennachetti, angling for a property tax freeze for both 2014 and 2015. Combined with a 2011 property tax freeze and followed by a modest 2.5% increase in 2012 and an even lower proposed one of 1.75% in 2013, that totals a 4.25% increase in property taxes during Mayor Ford’s term, in all likelihood below the rate of inflation during that period. That math basically works out to less money to pay the increased costs of running this city.

Can you say, No Service Cuts, Guaranteed?

The mayor’s road to re-election has him on a collision course with reality. Something’s got to give and pretence ultimately crumbles in the face of the facts on the ground. At least, in the long run it does. As the administration struggles and snorts to the halfway mark of its term, the vacuity of its political philosophy is on full display. It’s irresponsible. It’s petulant. It’s pandering not governing. To suggest all taxes are evil, as the mayor’s brother and councillor-consigliere did earlier this year is to admit you don’t actually know how government works and that you’re wholly unqualified to be in the position you’re in.

By now, none of this should come as a surprise. God knows, we’ve talked endlessly about it here. Still, it’s always surprising to listen to what comes out of the mouths of hardcore right wing ideologues and their steadfast belief that what they’re saying actually makes any sense. More surprising is that there remains any core of support for this monotony of mindless summer reruns. (Albeit, an ever shrinking core of support if the liberal media is to be believed.)

A city does not operate on wishful thinking and a tip jar. Why do people really think they should pay less and get more? I understand residents were angry at something back in 2010 and thought they found a vehicle in Rob Ford that would right the injustices that caused them such misery. It would all be so simple. Find efficiencies here. Restructure there. You wouldn’t feel a thing, folks.

Ooops.

The truth, as it usually does, turned out to be a little more complicated. Toronto faces difficult choices and can’t afford to rest on whatever laurels it once had. A refusal to acknowledge that and pretend the future will happen without us having to contribute anything to it is… how did Councillor David Shiner refer to the original design of the Fort York bridge?… a little fancy, a flight of fancy.

Electing Rob Ford mayor may’ve seemed like a good idea at the time. The comedic sidekick character given a starring role in an exciting new spin off. Not to worry. His one note schtick wouldn’t become quickly tiresome. He’d grow into the role. Really. It would be a huge hit.

Guess the shark jumping happened right at the get-go, back in October 2010.

– fonziely submitted by Cityslikr

1 Comment | Budget, City Building, City Council, Elections 2010, Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Press coverage, Race 4 Mayor, The Toronto Sun, Toronto Star | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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Ford-V-Vaughan

July 9, 2012

Nothing it seems is capable of stirring the somnolent, summer-dazed state of the Ford Administration like a broadside delivered its way by Councillor Adam Vaughan. Like a dopey, grumpy bear kicked in the slats while still in hibernation mode – wait for it, I’m going for a seasonal grand slam here – Team Ford wakes with a roar of indignation whenever it sniffs a slight emanating from the direction of Ward 20. Springing into fight mode and shedding its leaves of inaction (Nailed it!), Ford Nation dons the magical Cloak of Victimhood and goes full on DefCon 2 when alerted to a Vaughanian attack.

From the mayor’s standpoint, it’s entirely understandable. Hoping to re-channel the spirit of 2010, suburban-versus-urban mojo into another winning campaign, nobody better summons the loathing of downtown elitism more than Adam Vaughan except maybe Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam. Whip smart, smart-alecky and familiar with basic concepts of city building, Vaughan is everything Mayor Ford isn’t. And the mayor and his most ardent supporters despise him for that. Since anger serves as fuel for Ford Nation, an object for their ire is what primes the pump.

Thus, the Toronto Sun columnist and former Ford PR flack, Adrienne Batra, had to engage in some pretzelling of logic to refer to Councillor Vaughan’s latest criticism of the mayor as a personal attack. The point of the councillor’s comments as I read them, Ms. Batra, was that because of Mayor Ford’s absence in doing anything, well, mayoral, the space is filled with his off-the-field antics. Or, involvement “…in an inordinate amount of unusual situations”, as you refer to them.

So the story then becomes all about Councillor Vaughan instead of the underperformance of Mayor Ford. The councillor’s angry, still seething about Ford’s victory. He’s a spotlight seeker, constructing a platform for a run at the mayor’s office in 2014. It’s just personal, just politics. There’s nothing of substance to his criticisms. The mayor’s performance is beyond reproach except maybe of the friendliest type from the likes of Adrienne Batra. All else is simply cheap politicking.

The curious thing for me, though, in this on-going saga is the councillor’s motives in all this. As a former journalist, he must be well aware of the optics at work. He’s the bête noire of this administration and with each critical utterance toward it only becomes bête-er noire-er. It has to be an intentional stance he’s taking, this outspoken gadfly who receives as much enmity as accolades every time he takes aim at the mayor.

Any publicity is good publicity as they say. Keeping visible while in opposition. Grooming himself to be the most logical opponent to Mayor Ford in 2014.

It’d be foolish or naïve to rule the possibility out. As Matt Elliott wrote last week, Toronto’s downtown core and East York didn’t play an insignificant role in Rob Ford’s successful mayoral bid. Any major shift against him there could further dampen his re-election chances. So perhaps Councillor Vaughan believes that relentless, merciless slagging of the mayor will so diminish him in the eyes of urban voters that the inner suburbs will have to swing even harder toward the mayor in order for him to have a hope in hell for a second term. A trend which is not yet materializing.

It’s a strategy that comes with considerable risk for the councillor. For every downtown vote he swings away from Mayor Ford, there could be a suburban vote that hardens in the mayor’s favour. The numbers still favour the politician who can swing a majority of suburban votes their way. Besides—

IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT THE FUCKING 2014 ELECTION, FOLKS!

Why can’t we extend the same, I don’t know, courtesy toward Councillor Vaughan as we did then councillor Rob Ford, and assume not everything he says and does is about running for mayor? Maybe he’s just another straight shooting, telling it like is, Johnny that we all viewed Rob Ford to be back in the day. Maybe, like Rob Ford circa 2009, Adam Vaughan is just fucking angry with the current direction the mayor is trying to take the city and has trouble keeping a lid on it. Folks loved Rob Ford’s frankness. But somehow Adam Vaughan’s is smug, self-serving, angry vitriol?

But before I take the Rob-is-Adam, Adam-is-Rob, I Am the Walrus comparison too far, it’s worth pointing out that Rob Ford’s angry tirades have proven to be largely illusory which is the source of the doldrums the mayor currently finds himself in. The out of control, tax-and-spending Gravy Train was little more than the figment of his blinkered small government mindset. It was what we would crudely refer to as pissing into the wind.

So far, nobody’s been able to prove Councillor Vaughan wrong on his anti-Ford administration screeds. There has been an appalling lack of leadership from the mayor’s office. Mayor Ford’s needed no help from Councillor Vaughan in having his antics overshadow his accomplishments in governance.  The mayor has only himself to blame for being sidelined and perhaps the only motivations in Councillor Vaughan’s continued verbal assault on him is to keep it that way. It’s just better for everyone concerned.

– wonderingly submitted by Cityslikr

4 Comments | City Building, City Council, Elections 2010, Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Press coverage, Race 4 Mayor, The Toronto Sun | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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TTC Capo

June 30, 2012

I often imagine what it was like behind the scenes back in the heady days of the fall of `10, just after Rob Ford’s surprise mayoral victory. Transitioning into power, drawing up their enemies candidates list for positions in the administration. The only absolute condition was a shared visceral antipathy toward the mayor-elect’s predecessor. Also, being yes men toadies a must.

“So, Stintzie wants to run the TTC. What do you think?”

“Ummm… Don’t know. Did she hate Miller as much as I did?”

“Nobody hated Miller as much as you, Robbie.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I fucking hated that guy. But you think she respects the taxpayers enough? Remember those voice lessons she paid for out of her office expenses?”

“As long as she votes with us to cut those expenses, we can let bygones be bygones. But I’ll tell you what. If she’s still thinking about ever running for mayor—”

“I will crush her. Ford Nation will tear her apart. Like LT snapping Theismann’s leg, Crrrr-acckkk!”

“That’s the thing, Robbie. You won’t have to. The shit we’re going to do to the TTC. Cuts… cuts… cuts–”

“You know who else I fucking hate, Dougie? Jerry Webster. Can we so fire that guy?”

“Why not. You’re the mayor now. You can do anything.”

“Yeah… sweet. Can we go home now?”

“It’s like 11 a.m. There’s still stuff to do.”

“Fine.”

“Stop pouting.”

“I’m not. You’re pouting.”

“The thing about being the TTC boss is that we’re going to so mess it up but it’ll be their face attached, you see what I’m saying?”

“… no… not really.”

“Doesn’t matter. Just trust me on this, OK? It’s a good move. We’re going to vote for Stintzie to be TTC Chair.”

“Hey. Whatever you say. You’re the boss.”

“And it’s also good, she’s a girl.”

“Is it?”

“… I think so, yeah. Why wouldn’t it be good?”

“Dunno. Why would it be?”

“… Yo, Adrienne! It’d be good to have a chick run the TTC, right?”

With that scene (or some reasonable facsimile thereof), Councillor Karen Stintz became TTC Chair Karen Stintz and dutifully fulfilled her role as a loyal Team Ford member, standing silently by as the mayor killed Transit City and obediently overseeing a 10% cut to the department’s budget when asked. She pretty much did what the mayor and almost everyone expected her to do.

And then, then she went rogue. No, check that. She went Michael Corleone on Team Ford’s asses.

I’m unprepared to attach motives to the about face. The better angel of my nature, that blackened, wizened, flightless better angel, likes to think she simply grew into her position. Listening to staff and other knowledgeable voices around her, she slowly realized Mayor Ford’s transit plan, such as it was, was unworkable. Way back last October, she raised a red flag of concern about how they were going to tunnel the Eglinton LRT across the Don Valley.

When then TTC General Manager Gary Webster backed her view that LRTs might be the smartest way forward, the mayor and his TTC commissioner boys iced him at the proverbial toll booth. If their goal was to intimidate the TTC Chair back into line, it failed spectacularly. In retaliation, she offs the mayor’s men on the TTC commission, emerging from the fracas in The Limey style.

Tell them I’m coming! I’m fucking coming.

(Yes, municipal politics came be this cinematic.)

It was all downhill for the mayor from that point. In short order, he was pushed, kicking and screaming Subways! Subways! Subways, to the sidelines. Transit City revived in all but name. And then this week, the TTC Chair and her Vice-Chair unveiled a much grander, 30 year transit plan called One City that lit up the switchboards for about 2 days before the province went out of its way to throw cold water on it. (That’s for another post entirely. Suffice to say, the premier and Minister of Infrastructure and Transportation might be well served noting how our TTC Chair dealt with the mayor when he crossed her.)

How One City grew to even see the light of day is, if nothing else, instructive as to how Toronto can actually govern itself in the absence of mayoral leadership. Take a moment to read John McGrath’s account of it at Open File, Don Peat’s in the Toronto Sun and David Rider’s in the Star. It is a microcosm of how council can and should be working together on vital initiatives for the city. A centre-right, centrist and two left wing councillors setting aside ideological differences in order to put forth a discussion paper on how to move forward on building a transit system Toronto so desperately needs. A discussion neither the mayor is capable of conducting and our dark overlords at Queen’s Park are unwilling to consider.

If nothing else, this latest transit saga has shown what is possible in a leadership vacuum when a politician sees that normal operating procedures don’t apply and decides to fill in the void constructively. Karen Stintz, arguably a councillor of little consequence during her first two terms in office, has seized the “opportunity” given her under this malignantly negligent administration and made a mark in a file not usually known for its generosity toward those toiling within its parameters. It’s a lesson others granted positions of power under Mayor Ford could well learn from and act upon.

– auteurly submitted by Cityslikr

3 Comments | Municipal Politics, Elections 2010, Race 4 Mayor, Newspapers, Press coverage, City Council, TTC, Provincial Politics, City Building, Toronto Star, The Toronto Sun | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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The Fault, Dear Brutus

June 8, 2012

Let’s get this straight right off the bat.

Toronto’s city council is not out of control. It has merely stepped into the leadership vacuum created by Mayor Rob Ford’s misguided, hell bent pursuit of his self-proclaimed ‘mandate’. A mandate now in tatters due to ill-advised blunders like the Port Lands land grab, declaring Transit City dead with no viable plan to replace it and an overarching war on revenue that has put an unnecessary strain on already stressed city coffers.

While the mayor loves to play victim in this, beset on all sides by deranged left wingers (new members of the club now include councillors Michelle Berardinetti and David Shiner… Michelle Berardinetti and David Shiner, people), his monochromatic, black-and-white, us-versus-them worldview has been the actual impetus for his startling loss of control at council. There is no obvious official mechanism in place to strip power from a mayor. A mayor squanders the office’s powers purely through a failure of leadership.

“With limited executive authority,” the Globe and Mail editorialized yesterday, “a Toronto mayor’s power is mostly derived from his or her ability to unite councillors in common cause, or at least broker compromise.” The paper goes on to suggest that, “Rather than embracing his current role as an opposition politician, Mr. Ford needs to find a way to lead again.”

The problem is, the mayor has never led in the sense the Globe would like to see. Uniting or brokering compromise is not exactly his strong suit. What Mayor Ford is truly skilled at is dovetailing his angry sense of privileged entitlement with the anger of those who have truly been left on the outside. Tea Party like demagoguery exploiting grassroots populism in order to divide and conquer.

So every significant loss at council such as the most recent surreal tale of Toronto’s move to ban the use of plastic bags isn’t seen for what it most certainly is. The unintended consequence that results from not having any plan in place past point A. No. Instead it’s portrayed as a petulant fuck you to Mayor Ford by those who remain vigilantly bitter about his successful 2010 campaign. And dissing the mayor is dissing all of Ford Nation.

Was city council’s vote to ban plastic bags unexpected and impetuous? Yes. But it followed its own logic. Everyone agreed that the 5¢ cent fee council imposed – more like, suggested, since it was a bylaw never enforced – had done what it was intended to do. Reduce the use of plastic bags and their presence in our landfills. If that was the goal, why not pursue it to the obvious conclusion? So first Councillor Anthony Perruzza and then Councillor David Shiner pushed for an outright ban.

Toronto will hardly be on the vanguard on this issue if it is in fact enacted in the new year. There has been an international move in this direction for some time now. Countries in Europe have banned them. Peruse this list to see the extent of it in the United States. Hell, deep in the heart of Alberta oil country, the city of Fort McMurray has had a plastic bag ban since 2010.

(Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star gives a thorough breakdown of the implications of the city’s proposed ban here.)

City council merely stepped into the void created by Mayor Ford whose agenda now consists of nothing more than building a re-election platform for a campaign that doesn’t begin for another 18 months or so. The only chaos or anarchy currently swirling around at City Hall is in the mayor’s office. Mayor Ford has left the actual role of governing up to his 44 councillor colleagues. They should be commended not condemned for accepting that responsibility.

– seriously submitted by Cityslikr

3 Comments | City Building, City Council, Elections 2010, Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Press coverage, Race 4 Mayor, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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The Truth Is Easier

June 3, 2012

(This is an earlier version of a post first seen at Torontoist this week. It was recently discovered in a bottle found floating somewhere near Union Station.

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

– Mark Twain

Since the municipal campaign heated up in 2010, Toronto has been existing in a fiscal alternative reality. City Hall was a painted as a place full of tax-and-spend, corrupt politicians, held captives by unions with rivers of debt turning our streets blood red. Businesses were fleeing. Graffiti blighted the skyline as far as the eye could see.

But fear not, good citizens taxpayers. A fix would be easy. A nip here, a tuck there. A round of some good ol’ fashioned belt tightening. All done with no service cuts…guaranteed. We’d be good as new in no time.

That virtually none of that nonsense rhetoric held any water was hardly the point.

Our credit rating was just fine, thank you very much. Corporate and condo towers were rising up at a record rate. Toronto continually found itself with high rankings on international lists of liveability and business friendliness.

But one time fringe councillor Rob Ford and his small band of right wing ideologues convinced enough voters to get himself elected mayor that his version of reality was true. Stop the Gravy Train! And the assault on fact, veracity and just basic high school economics has been ongoing ever since.

One of the first signs that we’d been had came when the Ford administration filled the holes in its inaugural budget using a more than $300 million surplus left behind by the previous mayor, David Miller. Wait, what? David Miller? That profligate David Miller? A surplus? But…but…?

Not so fast, folks, Team Ford told us. It wasn’t a surplus. It was a ‘one time savings’. Those are two entirely different things.

Then we had another surplus—errr, one time savings. And another. And just this past week, another surplus—errr, one time savings was announced for the first quarter of 2012.

So, I have to ask: How many one time savings does it take to make a surplus?

In the real world of municipal government financing here in this province, cities are prohibited from running an operating budget deficit. So they tend to over-estimate their projected costs and downplay possible revenue. Surpluses are not at all unusual or one time. In fact, they are a sign of sound fiscal management.

Now, it can be argued that sometimes city staff is a little too conservative with their estimations and present a more dire situation than is really the case. This prompts an over-reaction from some politicians who demand unnecessary cuts and reductions in order to meet the bottom line. It’s a problem that has been exacerbated (in this writer’s opinion) here in Toronto by council’s decision to get a budget done as close to a calendar year as possible while the actual wheels of finance and commerce operate on an April-to-April fiscal season. A time lag is created, with more uncertainty, more guesswork and more conservative estimates.

In the face of these continued occurrences of one time savings (annually, like clockwork), Mayor Ford has been forced to make some tough decisions. Like cutting services. Oops. Yeah, about that guarantee…

Well, first of all, the mayor would appreciate it if you stopped calling them cuts because they’re not cuts. They’re efficiencies, and he never guaranteed not to find efficiencies. In fact, he guaranteed he’d find efficiencies.

Besides, to the mayor’s way of thinking, you can’t have a surplus if you owe money, and while municipalities aren’t allowed to run operating budget deficits, they can rack up a whack of capital debt. Cities have to build and maintain things like roads and a public transit system and it turns out that shit is expensive. How else are you going to pay for it other than using any and all operating budget surplus—errr, one time savings? The bigger this one time savings, the more capital debt you can pay down. In order to increase a one time savings, you need to trim here and there on the operating side of things.

So, you see the dilemma Mayor Ford’s facing. The only other alternative to using operating surpluses to offset capital costs is debt financing. And as Councillor Doug Ford suggested at Tuesday’s budget committee meeting, debt is the first step toward bankruptcy as anyone who’s ever taken out a mortgage knows.

Imagine all the things we could have if we weren’t paying interest for the things we need. Our budget chief pointed out that the city saved $20 million on interest charges last year. That’s almost a third of the amount we lost by repealing the detested vehicle registration tax a couple years ago. It’s also a drop in the bucket of cash we gave away by freezing property taxes in 2011 and not making up the difference in 2012.

The trouble with debt, in the eyes of Team Ford members, is that you need to generate revenue to pay it off. Generating revenue is just another term for taxation, and a civil society cannot function properly under the burden of taxation. Government should not be in the business of generating revenue because generating revenue is the business of business.

This is the worldview we’ve allowed to permeate throughout City Hall.

No debt. No revenue. No expenditures except for in the service of those first two rules. That this is inherently contradictory and mathematically impossible seems utterly lost on the people pursuing and advocating these policies. But the one lie—errr, piece of campaign hyperbole – that this city was going to hell in a hand basket and our fiscal foundations were crumbling – served as the little piece of thread that, once pulled, unravelled the entire outfit. One invention led to another two being needed to prop the first up, and so on and so on.

The truth is much more economical. If we’d had an honest and straight-forward discussion from the beginning, that the city was facing some challenges, some very serious challenges, but was in a strong position to deal with them, we wouldn’t be wasting our time and energy, digging through the mounds of falsehoods and illogical that now makes up the debate at City Hall.  We wouldn’t be constantly reminding the mayor and his supporters that what they said then is miles away from what they’re saying now. The target we’re shooting for wouldn’t constantly be in motion.

– cross my heartedly submitted by Cityslikr

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