Monthly Archives: December 2015

2016 Budget Launch

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So yesterday, led by the new city manager, Peter Wallace, staff delivered its 2016 Preliminary Budget presentation at a special meeting of the Budget Committee. My impressions? lookoverthatwayYou’ll have to find out here at Torontoist. While you’re at it, give a read to Neville Park and Sarah Niedoba and Catherine McIntyre. Rather hear words than read them? Brian Kelcey talks about the 2016 budget with Matt Galloway on Metro Morning.

While city staff seemed to be offering up the opportunity to finally have an adult conversation about the kind of city we want to have, and how we’re going to pay for that, early signs coming from the mayor’s office and the point people on his team are not encouraging. Budget Chair Gary Crawford pushed a paper clip motion at committee to see if they can find enough coins under the cushions at City Hall to pay for various initiatives. “Council can make investments and still keep increases at [the] rate of inflation,” Crawford insisted at a press conference after the budget presentation. No, it can’t. That’s pure budgetary fiction.

Councillor Justin Di Ciano, a member of the budget committee, perhaps summed up this approach best and emptiest when he essentially strung together meaningless words and spun a meaningless anecdote for 2 minutes, absolutely devoid of any substance, and echoing Mayor Tory’s campaign chant of ‘prudence’. These people, the mayor’s people, are zealously determined not to have any sort of serious conversation about the direction the city has to go.

The reality on the ground may have other ideas. Mayor Tory (and other so-called ‘fiscal conservatives’ on city council) may have finally painted themselves into too tight a corner. Things cost money. That money has to come from somewhere. Empty rhetoric has been tapped dry. Big investments and ever shrinking revenue sources simply don’t add up.

Councillor Gord Perks begins the conversation this city needs to start having.

— ominously submitted by Cityslikr

Rules Of Engagement

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Yesterday with the news of a new Uber launch, this one called UberHOP, a commuter service of minivans and SUVs shepherding people from 4 downtown hotspots to the financial district at $5 a pop, I found myself in yet another social media spat. As so often happens with these things, the conversation went off in directions not exactly on point to the issue at hand. I swore at somebody, fairly quickly. Everybody eventually retreated into their familiar corners. Nothing much was solved.

donnybrook

Just for future arguments, let me state my Uber stance for quick reference:

  1. I’ve never suggested Uber anything be banned. I think it should be subject to the same kind of driver and car oversight the taxi industry faces in terms of insurance, safety, background checks, etc. Whether further regulation is required in terms of things like fare rates and passenger protocol or if we just open it wide like the wild west, leaving it to the market to decide seems to me to be the legislative battle ahead. If drastic changes for the industry are in store, I do think there must be some talk of compensation to those who’ve invested under previous terms and agreements, and played by the rules in place.
  2. As for UberHOP, have at it, yo. If you want and are able to pay $5 for the pleasure of a semi-private ride back-and-forth to work, it’s a free country. Ditto your fancy limousines, rickshaws and sedan chairs. Just don’t try convincing me such a service will contribute to improving public transit in general in the city. It won’t. Solving your problem does not solve the problem. Getting people who can afford $5 a trip around the city is not the problem the TTC faces at the moment.
    sedanchairEven the TTC could turn a profit if it had the luxury of only providing service along high demand routes. Unfortunately, that’s not how effective public transit works. I don’t know how much overlap between transit and Uber users there is in the neighbourhoods UberHOP is going to service but it’s not going to free up that much space for those still opting to use the King and Queen streetcars. A solution for some is not a solution for everyone.
  3. There are already on-the-books ways in which commuting from Liberty Village, Fort York, City Place and the Distillery District to the financial district could be improved during the morning and evening rush hours without charging more for it. A service like UberHOP helps us avoid addressing those possible solutions. In fact, by putting more vehicles on many of the same streets, competing for limited road space, UberHOP might contribute to making those commutes worse for more people. Time will tell, I guess.
  4. UberWhatever is not about sharing. It’s about profit-making. That’s fine. For some, that’s what makes the world go `round. Fair enough. Just stop trying to convince us it’s about anything else. It’s not.

moneymoneymoney

— helpfully submitted by Cityslikr

Pissants

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One vote.

That’s how close Mayor John Tory came to inadvertently winning Councillor Rob Ford’s business travel expense item for him at last week’s city council meeting. One vote.

I say ‘inadvertently’ since I’m giving the mayor the benefit of the doubt on this one. He spoke out forcefully against it, seconding Councillor Justin Di Ciano’s opinion that the item was nothing more than ‘grandstanding’ on the former mayor’s part. He just pushed the wrong button, green instead of red. Understandable, since in the back of your mind Councillor Ford pretty much always votes ‘no’, so if you’re standing opposed to the councillor, you reflexively vote ‘yes’. redandgreenbuttonMayor Tory did, and narrowly avoided the embarrassing situation of speaking against something and turning around to vote in favour of it.

The mayor wasn’t alone, it seems, in his confusion. During the revote — permitted on the mayor’s behalf because it wouldn’t change the outcome of the vote — two other members of council, Frank Di Giorgio and Mary-Margaret McMahon, also flipped sides. What had been a nail biter the first time around (one vote), turned out to be a more comfortable 19-12 defeat of Councillor Ford’s motion.

(Let it be noted here, by those who think me overly hyper-critical of Mayor Tory, how I cut him some slack on this gaffe. I didn’t go to the darker place of thinking maybe he was trying to  play both sides, have his cake and eat it too, speak out against but vote for, hoping no one would notice. No. Flubbed votes happen to the best of them.)looktheotherway

The mayor’s goof, and the subsequent prolonged process in his taking a mulligan on the vote, only served to add credence to Councillor Ford’s motion when all it really deserved was dismissive contempt. Was it all about grandstanding? You betcha. But add to that, counter-productive nitpicking that probably cost more to debate than it would ever save the city if implemented.

Do you know what the number was Councillor Ford’s motion entailed? The total amount city councillors’ claimed for business travel expenses? Total? In 2014, it came to $42,672.09. $42,672.09. That’s under $1000/per city council member/year.

Or, in terms of an almost $11 billion annual operating budget, 0.0000039 of that. Not sure I have the right number of zeroes, there are so many of them. pickingupapennyThat’s not even rounding error.

Councillor Ford didn’t necessarily begrudge the $100 per diem. He just wanted receipts to prove a city councillor travelling on business spent that amount. If they didn’t, they’d only get reimbursed the amount they did spend. We’re now wading into the Fordian weeds of infinitesimally small savings but symbolically charged tubthumping. Never mind the time lost to staff tallying up receipts rather than just signing off on established per diems.

But we already knew that. That’s always been this councillor’s schtick. Rather than take time questioning his motives, time would be better spent running those numbers by him. It was a nuisance motion, ultimately endorsed by 12 city councillors who should be ashamed of themselves for contributing to the myth Rob Ford needs perpetuated in order to remain relevant.

Given Councillor Ford couldn’t be at the meeting to personally defend his item, why not just let it slide by pretty much unnoticed instead of breathing life into it and, on Mayor Tory’s part, almost passing it into law by accident? Sure. The councillor was grandstanding. No surprise there. But grandstanding back is still grandstanding, giving more notice to it than it ever deserved.

— contestedly submitted by Cityslikr