All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

Moving On

Posted on May 19, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

At least the timing works.

Heading off on a little jaunt and, as always, passingly sad about missing any City Hall doings. The special casino meeting called for Tuesday, for example. You don’t have to be out of the city for too many days to be assured of something of interest happening in your absence. Blink and you’ll miss it.

And then Thursday happened.

In a matters of hours, the casino debate collapsed, followed by a massive bloodletting at the OLG. That lip smacking turn of events quickly overshadowed by allegations of more mayoral misbehaviour. Never, ever a dull moment.

I was trying to finish off a couple posts before checking out but they just sort of sagged under the weight of accumulating baggage. Every sentence and point needing some caveat. In normal times, this would apply… All things being equal…

It would be, I don’t know, novel if this was an exceptional circumstance. Who doesn’t like a little salacious gossip with their politics? Problem is, here in Toronto, it’s all become boringly routine. Not weekly but certainly monthly wouldn’t be much of an exaggeration. The circus has come to town and refuses to leave.

As hard as it may be to believe, none of this brings me much pleasure or glee. I abhor everything Rob Ford stands for as a politician. Doesn’t mean I wish him ill as a person. My preference would be to see him run out of town because of his woefully misguided policies and inability to push forward anything resembling a coherent agenda, not whatever demons may be haunting him personally.

Either way you look at this, it is a clusterfuck of monumental proportions. A dynamic that hangs over every bit of city business. It isn’t a leadership vacuum. It’s a leadership black hole, sucking all light and matter into it.

If the defenders of the mayor are right and this is just the latest in a long line of conspiracies perpetrated by people who refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of his election, holy shit, we are sad, sad lot, all adherence to the democratic process null and void. With each passing incident, however, this concept of dark forces aligned against him stretches credulity ever thinner. And if the video proves to be legitimate, and Mayor Ford actually did what he did, said what he said on it, well, it’s hard to see a way he gets past this even with his infamous Houdini skills of slipping out of tight spots that finish off the careers of other, mere mortal politicians.

Either way, his mayoralty has become an increasing liability to the proper running of this city. He is the millstone hanging heavily around the neck of good governance, the source of dysfunction at City Hall. If his colleagues at City Hall hope to salvage this term as anything more than some freak show oddity, a footnote that future generations will simply laugh and shake their heads at, they now have to step forward and past the mayor’s office to take charge of the agenda and act as if he’s no longer a contributing member of council. He’s become that much of a distraction.

— espanaly submitted par Cityslikr

The Cost Of Doing Business

Posted on May 17, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

On Wednesday over at the Toronto Standard, writer Jeff Halperin interviewed Josh Hjartarson, vice president of policy and government relations at the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, talking about the organization’s report this week, The $2 Billion Question. Business’s perspective on, you guessed it, funding Metrolinx’s The Big Move. Both are interesting reads and lead to some wider questions.

The first is kind of tangential to the matter of transit itself but one that jumped out at me immediately. In the OCC report [pages 1 & 3, if you’re following along], it was pointed out that for ‘every $100 million invested in public infrastructure, 1670 jobs are created’. The total number of jobs created between 2012-2031 with The Big Move would be in the neighbourhood of 800-900 K. 800,000-900,000 new jobs over the next 19 years.

Remember, these numbers are cited by the Chamber of Commerce, folks. Not a group you normally associate with promoting public sector spending. Numbers that would’ve come in handy during the transit funding debate last week at city council. I’ll give your grossly inflated $1000/year/household in new taxes, Mr. Mayor, and see you some one million jobs created. They shouldn’t be the only ones allowed to round up in their favour.

When talking up the merits of a casino or runway expansion, it’s all about the jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs. Ten thousand of them, apparently, if the casino were to be taken off life-support.

But the jobs created investing in public infrastructure? Not it if means any sort of tax increase. Any whatsoever. No New Taxes trumps Jobs, Jobs, Jobs every time.

Another question is what role businesses as a whole have in contributing financially to the public infrastructure that helps them operate. From the public education that provides a functioning pool of workers to the roads and rails that bring both employees and goods to their doorstep, what should the cost be of doing business? Does the business community pay its share for carrying the freight, so to speak, of the public sphere that it relies on to exist?

The quality of local infrastructure is key to attracting international investment and talent. Effective transit and transportation grows the potential pool of workers which businesses can draw from and the customers that businesses can sell to. Efficient transit reduces the number of cars on the roads, which enables goods to flow faster and more reliably.

Better transit makes for a better business environment, according to these words from the Chamber of Commerce report. If that’s the case, as a group they should be more than willing to do their part and pony up. Yet, that’s not the vibe I’m getting from the report.

Of the 11 revenue tools put forth by Metrolinx and considered by the OCC, only three directly impact businesses – commercial parking levy, land value capture and development charges – and most of the costs of those could and probably would be passed on to consumers. Right out of the gate, an employer payroll tax was deemed a ‘Non-starter’. “The tool would be a drag on competitiveness and job creation…”, the report states, “… the tax would be a disincentive to invest in the GTHA… concerned that there is no direct connection between the input (revenue) and the output (improved transportation).”

There’s a disconnect here between the emphasis on the importance of infrastructure in ‘attracting investment and talent’ and the concern that a payroll tax would ‘be a drag on competitiveness and job creation’. We need solid infrastructure like transit as long as someone else pays for it. Sound familiar?

How is there ‘no direct connection’ between an employer payroll tax and ‘improved transportation’? The ease with which employees get to and from work would surely be related to their overall productivity. Why should it be the employees alone, through transit fares or road tolls, paying for something that will also benefit their employers?

Like the revenue tools debate at city council, there’s too much stress put on the disincentive side of taxation for transit funding. It will chase businesses out of the GTHA. It’s a job killer.

Where are the voices touting this is a long overdue investment? Certainly the Toronto Board of Trade needs to be commended for its tireless work in keeping this conversation going while all levels of government dither. But there needs to be a buy in from the wider business community like those taking part in the Chamber of Commerce report that revenue tools shouldn’t be seen as a burden but a necessary course of action for our future well-being and economic competitiveness.

For decades, governments of all stripes have under-invested in the GTHA’s transportation infrastructure, the OCC report states. That much is undeniable. The question is why?

Jurisdictional disputes, starting with a near absence of the federal government on the transit file. The cities alone incapable of raising the amount of money needed and a province either not inclined to spend money building transit or overly concerned with being seen focussing on just one locality. Fear of the Toronto Premier knock.

But we also can’t ignore the fact that the senior levels of government have been creating huge holes in their respective revenue streams, accepting the common sense ‘wisdom’ that lower taxes translates into a better economy. Personal income taxes cut. Sales tax reduction. Corporate taxes cut.

We can hardly be considered antagonistic to business interests in this country, according to a Pricewaterhouse Coopers study last year. Maybe the timing’s just a coincidence that as governments willingly forgo revenue, investment in the public domain has also gone underfunded. You can try blaming inefficiencies and spending scandals for the lack of money to spend but all told, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to income lost by tax cuts.

That’s not to suggest business pick up the entire tab for The Big Move. But I’m not sure why they should get a pass either. Corporate taxes were never put on the table for consideration by Metrolinx or the Board of Trade. The Ontario Chamber of Commerce worries about ‘economic competitiveness’ as much as it does fairness in its consideration of the various revenue tools.

What could be more fair than everyone chipping in, including businesses? Everyone has a reason why they shouldn’t have to pay. Now is the time for someone to step up and say, here’s my x%. Let’s get this thing done.

— curiously submitted by Cityslikr

Change Isn’t Always Worse Than The Alternative

Posted on May 16, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

You know what the scariest word in English just might be? No, not anesthetist. That’s the hardest word in English to pronounce but not the scariest. Unless, of course, you’re going in for surgery imminently.

Change.

That’s the scariest word.

People are averse – averse? adverse? averse? Again, tricky words. Not necessarily scary ones — to change. Even those most likely to benefit from a particular change are reticent.. reticent? hesitant? I’ve clearly thrown myself off here. Pick a word and run with it.

Change ain’t easy.

Our penchant is to view change warily, assuming it’s always going to be for the worse. This despite the fact that we are where we are, doing what we’re doing in relative comfort because of change and our ability to adapt to it. I mean, we could still be creatures flopping around in mucky goo, trying to figure how to breathe oxygen in through these things called lungs not gills.

This is not to say all change is beneficial and that we should simply embrace any new fad that comes our way. Change for change’s sake and other interior decorating maxims. I need a change, while usually indicating a desire to move in a positive direction, doesn’t automatically signal improvement. It could be a phrase uttered by a guy in a bar who’s been drinking rye-and-cokes all afternoon and he just wants to change to, I don’t know, rum-and-cokes.

It’s not about blind acceptance but the moderating measured space between that and an open hostility to any notion of change.

Speaking out against the proposed First Capital Realty development for the Humbertown strip mall on Tuesday, Mayor Ford clearly falls in the latter camp.

“Time equals change,” the mayor said in his speech at Tuesday’s Etobicoke-York Community Council meeting, “we have to move on but…” But what? Gradually? In a thoughtful manner? Earlier on in his speech the mayor stated that “we have to maintain these strip malls in Etobicoke”. So we have to move on to what?

We Have To Move On But is the trademark phrase of the bonafide, heels-dug-in intransigent. Frankly, Etobicoke seems to be populated by such types. Look at their representation at City Hall currently. From the Fords to councillors Doug Holyday and Gloria Lindsay Luby, part of a historical lineage of obstructionist and obdurate municipal politicians fighting tooth and nail against the slow march of time’s encroachment into their neighbourhoods and pocketbooks.

Read Jamie Bradburn’s Historicist piece last week in Torontoist about the city’s west end politicians battling the building of a subway in the late 1950s. All the way to the Supreme Court! ‘Bamboozled’ is a familiar phrase to modern ears, a kissing cousin to boondoggle, and one used in reference to subway plans. “I am afraid these taxes [to fund subway construction] will tie people up so tightly it will make them move out of here,” said Long Branch Reeve, Marie Curtis, “the same as some of us moved from the city.”

“Don’t be misled by visionaries who would lead you to believe they see things the rest of us don’t,” decried York Reeve Chris Tonks.

That’s not an unreasonable statement if you’re talking about visionaries touting contact with occupants not named Hatfield of interplanetary crafts. But it was 1958. Subways weren’t some new fangled technology about to be foisted upon an unsuspecting population. Cities had been building them for about century by that time. It was a question of figuring out how to pay for an established mode of public transit and putting it in the right place.

Intensification runs along a similar line of thinking.

Sprawl is no longer sustainable. These kinds of strip malls Humbertown represents are relics of a past that was guided by the idea of unlimited space and cheap fuels to get us to these far flung places. As a form of land use, they no longer make sense.

Defenders of the status quo proclaim that this isn’t downtown Toronto we’re talking about, but Etobicoke. But this isn’t Etobicoke we’re talking about, not the one of 40, 50 years ago in its leafy-streeted isolation from the hustle and bustle of downtown. Now a fully functioning inner suburb, its quaint dreams of a pleasant village life located miles and miles past the outer suburbs to the west and north that push it closer to the downtown many of the residents are trying to keep at a distance.

I don’t think it a coincidence this heavy resistance to such change comes from the mayor’s own backyard. I think it’s a sentiment deeply rooted in the notion of Ford Nation. The city of Toronto has been undergoing demographic, cultural and economic shifts, accelerated by amalgamation. None of it particularly easy or cheap. But the face of the city is going to change with or without our participation. Probably not for the better if we simply choose to stand on the sidelines hoping it all passes us by without altering and costing us too much.

In 2010, a plurality of Torontonians, a healthy majority of those living in the inner suburbs and experiencing some of the biggest changes, decided to stand pat and with fingers crossed wait things out. Rearranging the furniture and painting the walls instead of undertaking a major renovation. Hopefully, no one gets too attached to the colour of the room.

— adaptedly submitted by Cityslikr