Roadies

April 12, 2013

Public Works and Infrastructure Committee.

Public works; private moments.publicworks

Apropos of nothing. Felt it had to be said. Movie tagline smooth.

Aside from the Budget Committee, Public Works and Infrastructure may be the most important committee at City Hall*. This is where big decisions about big stuff get made. Transportation and streetscapes. The delivery of water and the collection of waste. None of it necessarily pretty but all of it absolutely vital. Properly done, public works and infrastructure is the difference between a successful, well run city and one that is neither of those things.

“The Public Works and Infrastructure Committee’s primary focus is on infrastructure, with a mandate to monitor, and make recommendations on Toronto’s infrastructure needs and services.”

Public Works and Infrastructure offers up politicians and municipal civil servants the opportunity for greatness and lasting contributions to the city they serve long after they’re dead and gone. bloorstreetaquaductRead John Lorinc’s Globe and Mail article from last year about R.C. Harris, Toronto’s long serving Public Works Commissioner from 1912-45, and marvel at what can be done with some vision and fortitude. The R.C. Harris Water-Treatment Plant and Bloor Street Viaduct are the obvious example but as Lorinc points out:

Harris..left his civic fingerprints all over Toronto, building hundreds of kilometres of sidewalks, sewers, paved roads, streetcar tracks, public baths and washrooms, landmark bridges and even the precursor plans to the GO commuter rail network.

Of course, Harris wasn’t a politician and subject to the whims of the electorate. In fact, his contributions may’ve been the product of his time, impossible to duplicate outside of those particular circumstances. “…it’s unlikely a towering and outspoken figure like Mr. Harris…,” Lorinc quoting Professor Steven Mannell in his article, “would thrive in public service today, given years of political attacks on civil servants at all three levels of government.”

While I hardly mean to equate R.C. Harris with the ex-TTC CEO Gary Webster, it’s useful in underlining Professor Mannell’s point.  rcharriswtpMr. Webster expressed an opinion about transit options our mayor disagreed with, and Mr. Webster was ousted. In such a politically volatile environment – a toxic mix of ‘parsimonious politicians’ elected on ‘narrow mandates’ to paraphrase Professor Mannell , and our dimly held view of bureaucrats —  it’s hard to see how anything gets built, let alone anything on the grand scale that R.C. Harris imagined.

In fact, it could be argued that getting things built is the exact opposite goal of our current Public Works and Infrastructure big cheese, committee chair Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong.  Unless it has something to do with road maintenance, he might be better referred to as Cap’n Tear Up. Jarvis bike lanes, gone, expensively re-replaced by that reversible 5th lane. Proposed Fort York pedestrian bridge scaled back for being too fancy. Scrambled intersections? I don’t know. hulksmashWe need to look at those just in case cars are having to wait too long at red lights.

And that Gardiner Expressway Environmental Assessment ordered up to examine the various options for the eastern portion of the roadway? Mysteriously disappeared upon the councillor’s appointment as PWIC chair, only to be revived last year when over half a billion dollars was budgeted for the Gardiner revitalization starting with its eastern portion. Wait? What did the EA recommend? What do you mean, what EA? Where the hell did the EA go? Den-ZILLLLL!

Like the administration it represents, the current Public Works and Infrastructure Committee reflects its mandate by doing the exact opposite of what it should be doing. Tearing down instead of building up (unless, of course, we’re referring to roads). Looking back instead looking forward. Status quo instead of adaptation.

Or as Rowan Caister so succinctly put it: …money that we could spend on public space and innovative infrastructure is being clawed back in order to dismantle inexpensive infrastructure (Jarvis) and keep expensive infrastructure on life support (Gardiner).

At Wednesday’s meeting the committee chair and one of the newest members, Councillor Michelle Berardinetti, both indulged their colleagues by voting to receive the report update on the Gardiner EA while knowing full well what the outcome must/will be. There will/must not be any removal of any part of the Gardiner. sewersDrivers depend on it. Any alternative will result in chaos.

As it was and has been, so it shall always be.

It isn’t the motto a Public Works and Infrastructure committee should try to uphold. Cities flounder when they do. That’s just how important this committee is to our well-being. We need to treat with the respect and attention it deserves.

*  *  *

(*Not including the Executive Committee which is made up of the Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Chairs of the 7 Standing Committees and 4 at-large members.)

– diggingly submitted by Cityslikr

11 Comments | City Building, City Council, Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Press coverage, The Globe and Mail | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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Striking Out At Striking Committee

November 19, 2012

If anyone’s still patiently waiting for the Ford administration to get its shit together after two years at the helm, you only need to look at Friday’s events to realize that’s probably not ever going to happen. Either through sheer incompetence or simply not giving a fuck, the mayor and his… brain trust, let’s call them, seem content to simply fly by the seat of its collective pants and let the chips fall where they may. No direction. No design. No over-arching bigger picture.

No nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

As Mayor Ford took the stand to defend himself against a case of libel, his Striking Committee settled in to sort out councillor (re)assignments on council’s committees, boards and agencies for the second half of the term. How badly did it go? Well, the mayor did better in court than the Striking Committee did doing its work, and the mayor didn’t do very well. Following along with both events via the Twitter, it wouldn’t be out of line to call it all a two-pronged shit show.

Establishing councillor representation of the city’s ABCs goes a long way to determining how successfully mayors roll out their agenda. Deftly beating out the wrinkles in items and motions at the committee level smooths the ride out for them when they arrive at council meetings. Arguably, good, thorough work done at committees will help lessen the time and length of full council meetings.

Naturally, any mayor wants and should have a majority of like-minded councillors in control of the committees. At least the ones they view as important. (Take a peek at the proposed line-up of the Community Development and Recreation Committee to see what little interest the mayor has with those issues. If the committee gets too big for its britches, he can bury its motions at Executive or Budget Committees.) There has to be an upside to our semi-strong mayoral system. Committees shouldn’t be a quagmire for an administration, the places a mandate goes to die.

That said, committee make-up also needs to reflect the diversity and regional representation of Toronto. From the outset back in 2010, Mayor Ford has shrugged that obligation off, choosing instead to load up the committees he cares about with loyalty first and foremost. Nothing from Friday’s Striking Committee circus suggests he plans on anything different for the second half of his time in office.

His Executive Committee, nine of the thirteen members there “…by virtue of office or having been appointed by the Mayor as a Standing Committee Chair” and the remaining four selected as at-large members are all from the inner suburbs and only one isn’t male. Ditto the Budget Committee. Its six proposed members are all suburban and only one is female. If Councillor Mike Del Grande is re-named chair by the Executive Committee, the rigid and narrow gender, regional and ideological pattern will be reinforced.

Such flagrant disregard of even a semblance of bi-partisanship led to the Striking Committee meeting’s biggest flare up. According to tweets from the Toronto Sun’s Don Peat and Star’s David Rider, Councillor David Shiner appeared to have lost his cool with the proceedings and the mayor’s staff over moves to leave him on the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee and remove Councillor Gord Perks.

“At striking committee where midterm council appointments being hashed out, [Councillor] Shiner is blowing his top,” tweeted Rider. “[Councillor] Shiner now very mad at Mayor Rob Ford’s office staff,” from Peat. Peat again, “”Your boss doesn’t consult, your boss works in a vacuum. The chief of staff doesn’t consult & guess what, you don’t win like that,” from Councillor Shiner. Summarizing, David Rider tweeted, “Backstory to Shiner flipout is he was angry that mayor’s staff want to take uber-knowledgable Cllr Perks off public works.”

So a noted conservative councillor, a regular ally of Mayor Ford (plastic bag ban aside) goes all snake (to paraphrase the mayor) on the mayor’s staff and the Striking Committee process because he feels that they’ve put politics ahead of good governance by moving to replace a qualified but ideologically opposed councillor on the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee with, let’s face it, nothing more than a major mayoral toady, Speaker Frances Nunziata.

And there’s poor Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday seemingly baffled by the kerfuffle.

“I would have thought someone would like the opportunity to serve on executive.” 

Why, when only the most blindly loyal need apply?

No, that’s not entirely true.

The blindly loyal, nakedly political and/or most highly delusional.

After musing out loud earlier this year about leaving the Executive Committee, Councillor Jaye Robinson will be back for another kick at the can. In replacing Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti as the chair of the Community Development and Recreation Committee, she will return to the Executive Committee, the lone female representative. Councillor Michelle Berardinetti has jumped ship, citing a desire to be free of “…intense vote-whipping pressure from Ford’s staff… on even minor issues.”

For her part, Councillor Robinson still believes she can be a “moderating influence” on the Executive Committee. Just like the committee’s newest member, Councillor Josh Colle. “My hope is that I can inject some reason and ration and new ideas into some of those [Executive Committee] discussions,” he said.  “I think I can contribute to that discussion and hopefully some refocusing.”

Well, good luck to them on that front, I say. Both have, at times, been the faces of moderating influence on the Ford Administration. Councillor Robinson led the pushback to the mayor and his brother’s wacky waterfront plans while Councillor Colle announced the proposal to eliminate some proposed cuts in last year’s operating budget. But I would argue that was done at council level where there are actual allies for them to count on.

The Executive Committee?

Aside from the occasional renegade in Councillor Shiner, there’s not a single face of moderation on the committee. Maybe councillors Ainslie, Milczyn or Thompson on particular issues but even then, that’s still a minority in the room. So why would either Colle or Robinson want to waste their time and energy trying to roll that rock up the hill?

If anything, the messy, partisan cock up at Friday’s Striking Committee session should only have emphasized to them that Team Ford remains in highly immoderate mode.

– just sayingly submitted by Cityslikr

6 Comments | City Building, City Council, Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Press coverage, The Toronto Sun, Toronto Star | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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Taxes! What Are They Good For?

October 11, 2012

You know who likes paying taxes? Take it away, former mayor Mel Lastman. N-o-o-o-o-body! Except maybe Jesus who bade us to render onto Caesar what was Caesar’s and Oliver Wendell Holmes with his belief that taxes made for civilization.

Both partisan based rhetorical flourishes, if you ask me. Who takes a look at their pay stub, sees all the tax deductions and thinks, at least I’m contributing to a better society? It’s only about a grudging acceptance. Death and taxes and all that.

You know who thinks they’re over-taxed? Everybody. There’s never been just the right amount of taxation. That balanced point where you’re sure you’re getting absolute value for money. No extras. No gravy. There’s always a sense of couldn’t this be done less expensively, more efficiently.  It’s all about a grudging acceptance. Death and taxes and all that.

Only the obdurately ideological, those suckled on the teat of anti-government sentiment that has been ours for over 30 years now would senselessly argue against the notion of taxation. Oh, hello, Councillor Doug Ford.

“We’re against all taxes,” he said in March. “All taxes are evil as far as I’m concerned.”

You’re welcome, sir, for all the roads you drive on regularly, and for the protection our police constantly offer your brother to keep him safe.

Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong jumped aboard the mindless train this week at the Executive Committee meeting during a discussion on transit funding strategies. Referring to the list of various revenue generating ideas in the City’s CFO report, the councillor said, “That’s like asking which poison would you like to drink? Would you like the hemlock? Would you like the rat poison? We should be asking them, would you like to take that poison?”

This from the mouth of our chair of the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee, folks! You know, all that stuff we need to build in order for the city to function properly? How do we undertake such massive endeavours? Taxes, that’s how.

Councillor Ford and his fellow libertarian thinkers seem to believe that all good things flow from the beneficence of the private sector. You want new subways? Just ask nicely in the form of a P3 or AFP model and you’ll get your shiny new subways. It won’t cost the taxpayers one red cent.

The councillor is either being supremely disingenuous or displaying a mind blowing ignorance of how these things actually work.

Transit is funded and operates only in two ways as far as I know. Through direct government subsidies (paid for by taxes) or the fare box. If there’s another system at work that’s slipped my notice, I’m all ears.

By its very profit making nature, the private sector doesn’t build public transit without the expectation of making, well, a profit. Somebody has to ultimately pay them. That someone? The taxpayers.

So we either do it upfront with government laying out the cash as we go (in all likelihood with the help of Councillor Ford’s much vaunted P3s and AFPs to help reduce costs) or we pay later through fares to use the service. Even at that point, it’s no certainty that a private company can recoup enough profit to maintain fares and service levels at a point that makes public transit an attractive option to riders or beneficial to the transportation needs of a region. How do you strike the proper balance between the profit motive and public good? Usually from the public purse.

Yeah, we’re back to taxes again.

And this talk of needing to sit down with other levels of government in order to work through their expected contributions? Or going cap in hand, as our mayor used to deride his predecessor. Where do you think they’re coming up with the money? Errrr, taxes.

Besides, given our pressing transit needs, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for either Ottawa or Queen’s Park to come riding to our rescue. The federal government just defeated a bill on a national transit strategy, something every other developed country has. So I’d put them down as a ‘Don’t Give a Fuck About Transit’.

As for the province, they like to give the appearance of giving a fuck about transit in the GTHA, with their big plans and detailed maps but so far I’d say it hasn’t exactly been a priority in practice. We’re expecting a funding plan from Metrolinx next June, five years after the Big Move was unveiled. Five years! Their involvement with Transit City in Toronto has been as much about playing politics as it has been with building anything. They’ve hardly earned a reputation as honest brokers on the transit file.

But who can blame them? We’re all operating in a sweet smelling haze of dishonesty when it comes to providing public services. We want them but we don’t want to pay for them. We hate taxes but we desire what they pay for. Nothing comes for free except everything we take for granted, it seems. Roads, police, subways that stop right out front of our single family detached house with a big front lawn and an even bigger one in the back.

No wonder we hate governments and the taxes they demand from us. They continue refusing to deliver the pots of gold at the end of the rainbows the leprechauns riding on unicorns convinced us were coming our way for no money down, no interest payments ever.

– finger pointingly submitted by Cityslikr

5 Comments | City Building, Metrolinx, Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Press coverage, Provincial Politics, The Toronto Sun, TTC | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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A Modest Proposal

September 18, 2012

With yesterday’s news that the province would brush aside requests for any new environmental assessment ahead of the planned Jarvis bike lane removal and reversion to a 5th lane of car traffic, Public Works and Infrastructure chair, Denzil Minnan-Wong hailed the decision. “… Jarvis [Street] is an important road for motorists,” he proclaimed. In that quick sentiment, the councillor revealed himself to be both car-centric, a valiant defender of the automobile in the ongoing War on the Car, as well as wholly ignorant of late 20th/early 21st-century theories on optimal traffic flow.

For all those of you out there who believe in their heart of hearts, gut of guts, that more roads will decrease congestion, I defy you to Google some variation of ‘more roads less congestion’ and find much proof to back your belief. In fact, you’ll probably find the exact opposite to be true. Counterintuitively, studies seem to show that more roads (at least, more ‘free’ roads) inexorably lead to more traffic while, inversely, fewer roads can, if managed properly, actually help reduce congestion.

There are a few caveats to all that, of course; a major one being adequate alternatives to car travel. Which makes Councillor Minnan-Wong’s extolling the fact that they’re constructing a separated bike lane a few blocks over on Sherbourne Street so empty. It’s merely a replacement not an addition. One of the surest ways to reduce congestion is to get more people out of their cars. Like roads attracting motorists, bike lanes attract cyclists. The more there are, the more there are. More cyclists would help translate into fewer car drivers.

The irony of such willful disregard of reality on the part of pro-car types should not be overlooked. The Jarvis bike lane battle has never been about anything other than satisfying and mollifying the wishes of the city’s car drivers and their misguided sense of entitlement that yes, as a matter of fact, they do own the roads. Own them, pay for them and, ultimately, should decide who to share them with.

That only the last part of that sentiment is actually true says almost all there needs to be said about transit planning around these parts. Car drivers and their advocates are still – ahem, ahem – behind the wheel when we talk transportation issues. The narrative is almost always framed as how best to accommodate motorists and their needs. Separated and/or off road bike lanes. Subways rather than at grade, dedicated ROW LRTs. Road, roads and more roads.

None of these, in and of their own, will be the magic bullet that slays this region’s growing transit woes. Opening up more space for cars like Councillor Minnan-Wong is bound and determined to do with Jarvis Street is surely going to exacerbate congestion. (Don’t believe me? Think I’m just some bike riding pinko? Bring it up with Scientific American.) It’s a boneheaded, spite-based decision propped up purely by rhetoric. When the reversible 5th lane fails to alleviate drive times, they’ll just be another false bogey man trotted out as an excuse. This time it’s bike lanes. Next time.. ? Hey, you kids! Get off the sidewalk! That’s where I park my car!

If the chair of the Public Works and Infrastructure really wanted to help out drivers on Jarvis and insisted on bringing back the extra lane, he’d be bold and introduce a motion to toll it. Get the ball rolling on raising revenue to improve transit. Start primitive, using photo radar cameras located at undisclosed locations along the route to snap the license plates of anyone in the middle lane. Let’s start at, I don’t know, $10 a pop. First pay off the 250 K+ it’ll cost the city to re-install the car lane and whatever new tolling equipment needed. After that, dedicate it all to public transit. A down payment on an actual downtown relief line perhaps?

Impractical, you say? I don’t know. I’m open to suggestions.

But it has to be better than simply reverting back to something we absolutely know ahead of time won’t offer any solution to our congestion problems. It’s nothing more than a sop to those who insist on putting their self-interest ahead of everyone else’s. And that is the surest way to making matters worse on our roads.

– helpfully submitted by Cityslikr

8 Comments | Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Press coverage, Killer Cars, City Council, City Building, Bike lanes, The Toronto Sun | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
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Never A Dull Moment

November 4, 2011

Heads up all you Toronto city council watchers. If you want to witness exactly how the Mayor Ford administration dysfunctionally functions, there’s no better place to start than spending a few hours with the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee. There’s intrigue and machinations aplenty. Dastardly double-dealing. Oozing personal antipathy.

And in the end? Invariably a little more of the city has been chopped up or sold off for an ever so slight relief of our budgetary woes. All this and no cover charge to boot.

Yesterday’s gathering could’ve been so very different. There was actually serious consensus brewing, and between two committee members who couldn’t really be much further apart on the political spectrum without needing spyglasses to recognize on another. Councillor David Shiner, committee vice chair and bona fide, shark hating right winger. Last spring, if you recall, he used the committee to bring to a screeching halt the proposed Fort York bridge, citing cost overruns and it being unnecessarily ‘fancy’. This came at the expense and to the surprise of the councillor for the ward the bridge was to built in, Mike Layton, left leaning and most definitely not a member of Team Ford.

Despite this history and such stark ideological differences, these two councillors seemed to have patched things up and worked out a compromise that would see a bridge built not dissimilar to the previous one but at less cost and, more importantly, slightly smaller that opened up more land nearby to be developed. That’s an important point to keep track off as it’ll come back as part of the fitting coda of this story. That just seems to be how the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee rolls.

Now, it’s hard to see what exactly Councillor Shiner representing the administration gave up here to reach an accord on the bridge. There was no disputing the fact that one was needed for the area. The only real nod to the previous design was to ape its appearance. Everything else met Councillor Shiner’s demands: cheaper, shorter and more to city owned property to sell. Even the timeline which would not get the bridge built in time for the War of 1812 bicentennial celebrations at Fort York was just fine and dandy with him. Hard to use the word ‘compromise’ with such an agreement. Sure you can have a bridge but only to my specifications.

It’s not like the councillor went out of his way elsewhere during the meeting to extend a hand to his colleague. Shiner led the charge to defeat an item Layton put forth to exclude bikes from a bylaw restricting chaining or locking items to city property for any length of time. It was the kind of thing that might be OK downtown, Councillor Shiner suggested, but wouldn’t work in his suburban ward. A chaotic scene of bikes locked to fences and bus shelters outside the Finch subway station. And we wonder why bylaw harmonization still hasn’t happened in this post-amalgamation era.

On top of which, Councillor Shiner insisted on pushing through an item that will really only serve to harass the homeless living on our streets; a situation less endemic in his ward than it would be in Councillor Layton’s ward. Is the situation so hunky dory up in Willowdale, no problems there to solve, that councillors like David Shiner have ample time to muck about in other wards, emptily pontificating on things they have only a passing knowledge or interest in? If I understood the councillor correctly, people have no right to sleep on sidewalks if he doesn’t have the right to park his car on them. (The sidewalks, that is. Not the homeless. I think.) Yeah. It was that idiotic of a discussion.

Still, Councillors Shiner and Layton overcame their differences and put forward a motion that would see a Fort York bridge built.

And then, enter the sandman, PWI Committee Chair Denzil Minnan-Wong.

Seemingly not content with what would appear to everyone else to be a victory for his side, the councillor slithered in a two part motion that would, one, direct section 37 development fees to the building of the bridge and two, specifically targeted a property, 53 Strachan to be exact, to be used as ‘leverage’ to get the ball rolling on development in the area.

Whoa, whoa, whoa went up the cry. Where did this come from, asks Councillor Layton. Even Councillor Shiner seemed surprised by the surprise move, immediately jumping in to broker some kind of deal between his chair and Councillor Layton.

Once more, at yet another Public Works and Infrastructure Committee meeting, a non-Ford compliant councillor gets blindsided by a proposal to push and/or kill a project in their ward. No prior consultation. No attempt to involve the local representative. Nothing more than a deliberate poke in the eye. Take that, consensus.

In the ensuing brouhaha, it’s revealed that among other things at 53 Strachan there’s a youth shelter and a community garden. Councillor Minnan-Wong didn’t appear to know that but might have had he spoken first to Councillor Layton. Why he didn’t, only Councillor Minnan-Wong would know but from the back-and-forth between the two, it seems the committee chair felt Layton had gone public after an earlier meeting between them about getting the Fort Bridge motion onto the committee agenda…

Or some such petty, spiteful bullshit like that. Committee member Councillor Gord Perks suggested it was just simply another example of proving who was the boss of the committee. Marking his territory.

Not that it ultimately mattered, as the chair’s item was soundly defeated by the committee. But it managed to cast a pall on what could be considered a minor step forward out from the partisan pissing match that now passes for debate and discussion at City Hall these days. It’s almost as if the more ardent members of Team Ford are allergic to anything that smacks of compromise or cooperation. Concession and negotiation are dirty words. They have the upper hand now so giving in on anything, admitting to any sort of negotiated settlement, is a sign of weakness.

Even in the building of a bridge, they are incapable of anything other than crass politics.

– submitted by Cityslikr

3 Comments | City Building, City Council, Municipal Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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