All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

Our Money. Our Budget.

Posted on June 28, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

“…I might have some pool of funds somewhere that are hiding somewhere, I don’t know.”

— Toronto Budget Chief Frank “Pockets” Di Giorgio, in response to the provincial announcement of a 3 year, $150 million phase out of pooling funds.

Well, since obviously just anybody can be the city’s budget chief overseeing a $10 billion or so annual operating budget, why not all of us?

A group calling itself Better Budget T.O. has come together, hosting an inaugural event last night at the Academy of the Impossible’s Campaign School. It is a nascent movement here that has taken root in other places like Calgary, New York City, South America with the intention of bringing about a more inclusive way of putting together the city’s budget. Participatory Budgeting. A grassroots approach that not only endeavours to de-mystify the budget process but to build political engagement at the community level.

While not perfect, the municipal level is a great place for the public to influence how tax dollars are spent. Federally, provincially, the budgets are delivered, largely sight unseen. Boom. Press lockdown. There you go. Locally, the process is much more public, coming together over a longer (albeit not long enough) process that begins in earnest in the fall and concludes at city council in mid-January.

But as was pointed out last night, transparency does not automatically mean clarity. Sure, we can see but we’re not sure what we’re looking at. The budget can be intimidating. The numbers overwhelming. But people, trust me. If the likes of Councillor Frank Di Giorgio can be seriously considered capable of putting together Toronto’s budget, anyone can. And I mean anyone.

A Better Budget for a Better City, writes Lisa Marie Williams of the Wellesley Institute. As the mayor keeps telling us, it’s our money he’s fighting for. So let’s make sure it’s spent the way we want. Let’s truly make it our budget.

— all-together-nowly submitted by Cityslikr

One Is The Loneliest Number

Posted on April 1, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

It would be easy to write off the city’s new budget chief, Councillor Frank Di Giorgio as… ineffectual, let’s call it to keep things on a civil level. It’s difficult to point to a single contribution he’s made during his undistinguished time in office. His one stand out quality seems to be posing the most baffling of questions during council meetings. If there’s a current councillor who elicits more “I’m sorry. I’m not sure what you’re asking.” responses one doesn’t immediately spring to mind.

Yet there he is, a North York and Toronto councillor since 1985 save the first term of the amalgamated city. That’s 25 years for those of you counting at home. He’s got to be delivering the goods in some way, doesn’t he? Otherwise, you’d have to conclude that his residents aren’t really paying that much attention to who represents them at City Hall, and their voting habits consist of nothing more than checking off the most recognizable name on the ballot.

Let’s not travel down that cold, bleak road.

Instead we’ll assume that Councillor Di Giorgio is one savvy political survivor. A canny operator who knows what needs to be known, does what needs to be done to continue getting elected to public office. He has his finger on the pulse of what Ward 12 York South-Weston voters want and expect in a councillor.

Now, after years in the wilderness of obscurity, he has finally ascended the heights of prominence. Clawing his way up over the corpses and cast offs of a once powerful army, he is the last man standing. The chosen one from the dwindling ranks. The few, the proud, the Team Ford.

Being budget chief is a tough, thankless job at the best of times. Arguably, this is not the best of times. The position kicked the stuffing out of his predecessor, Mike Del Grande who seemed to have coveted the job from the time he was first elected as councillor in 2003. Why would Councillor Di Giorgio want to travel down that same grueling path with a crowd not playing at the top of its game and hardly noted for overt displays of loyalty toward those who’ve offered up their services for the cause?

Surely the councillor’s been around the political block enough times to know that he’s not going to make a lick of difference in the direction the budget takes as long as the mayor’s brother sits to his left as the committee’s vice-chair. Sure, there are five other members on the committee but with hyper-Fordian Councillor Frances Nunziata now one of them, it’s hard to see much of a free flow of ideas happening that don’t carry the imprimatur of the councillor-brother. It’s obvious who’s running the show at budget committee in everything but name.

We here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke were on record for not thinking much of the former budget chief’s job. In our humble opinion, he never fully grasped the nature of public finances, maintaining a very cloistered view that saw debt and taxation as unnecessary profligacies. But Councillor Del Grande was no toady. He possessed an independence of attitude that, more often than not, overlapped with Mayor Ford. When it didn’t? Well, ultimately that’s why he quit the post.

Watching Budget Chief Di Giorgio’s inaugural budget committee meeting as chair last Thursday, independent minded was not the first thing that sprung to mind. He was solicitous and polite and did not commence the meeting with a bang of the gavel. Granted, the meeting was light on business and for the most part, items sailed through with very little fuss or bother. Nobody set about re-inventing the wheel on this particular day.

And then came the last bit of new business.

An item from the February Government Management Committee meeting to purchase a little over a third of an acre of green space from a surplus TDSB school along Dufferin Street in Ward 15.

For most of the committee members in the room, this was the first they’d heard about the item and understandably wanted to get a little more information before giving it a green light. (Councillor Nunziata took the opportunity for her familiar complaint refrain about not getting the parks in her ward cleaned let alone getting a new park.) Due diligence and all that.

But the budget committee vice-chair took the wariness a couple notches higher.

A million bucks for a park?! Who did the math on this? Fair market value, the budget chief assured him.

A park on Dufferin Street?! Who would want their kids playing there? Well, the area is lacking green space, the budget chief told him.

If we buy a park for Ward 15, where’s the park for every other ward in the city? Let’s keep everything at the lowest common denominator, folks. Parks for all or parks for nobody. And it’ll be for nobody since a million dollars for a park is outrageous.

So it went until the committee voted in favour of sending the item onto Executive Committee without recommendation, effectively washing their collective hands of making any decision on it.

While such an excessive outburst is nothing new, this one was something of a head-scratcher even by Councillor Doug Ford standards. Alone among budget committee members, the councillor was not unfamiliar with this particular item. As part of the Government Management committee, not only did Councillor Ford debate the item a month earlier, he actually moved the adoption of the motion.

Now, here he was railing about it.

Whatever was behind such a pronounced flip-flop?

Follow me as I make a wild guess here.

The chair of the Government Management Committee? A certain Councillor Paul Ainslie. What happened in the interim between Councillor Ford’s apparent approval of the purchase of the parkland in February and his about face on it a month later? A little accusation of more questionable public behaviour on the part of Mayor Ford at the Garrison Ball earlier this year by – you guessed it – a certain Councillor Ainslie.

Who did the math on this?!

This is the kind of eradicate, sideshow conduct Councillor Di Giorgio has signed up for in taking the position of budget chief. Entirely extraneous, personality driven politics diverting attention from the task at hand of running the city. As the administration wobbly heads into an election year, completely sidelined on most of the important issues on the municipal docket, is this really the kind of increased profile the councillor is looking for? Budget chief in name only and subject to the turbulence of a populist administration constantly undercut by a lack of realistic policy goals and regular questions about the mayor’s off-field behaviour?

Unsurprisingly, after the conclusion of Thursday’s budget committee meeting, the budget chief was left alone, talking to someone in the public seats as the media chased Councillor Ford out of the room. It’s a scenario Councillor Di Giorgio probably should get used to.

— singularly submitted by Cityslikr

Oh No, It’s Di Giorgio!

Posted on February 6, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

If upon hearing the news of Councillor Frank Di Giorgio’s appointment as Mayor Ford’s new budget chief you didn’t share in the collective shudder, you really need to go see your doctor. Clearly you don’t have whatever mechanism it is a body needs to shudder.

Budget Chief Frank Di Giorgio. Mr. Budget Chief, as the mayor kept referring to him during yesterday’s Executive Committee meeting. Budget Chief Frank Di Giorgio.

As any regular reader of these pages knows, we here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoker were no fans of the previous budget chief, Councillor Mike Del Grande. In fact, it would be safe to say we loathed him in the position. Not only was his approach to municipal finances shockingly misguided, woefully hampered by a 19^th-century view of society and a rigid ideological abhorrence toward the idea of government spending, he was petty and dismissive of those he disagreed with.

But at least you knew where the man stood.

Budget Chief Di Giorgio?

“One of the most loyal, loyal folks we have,” according the Councillor Doug Ford.

Ah yes. Loyalty. Loyalty above all else. A one-way type of loyalty, of course, where the mayor is free to play the field according to whatever whim stirs him to turn his back on those doing his bidding.

With one more budget to go before heading into a re-election campaign, Mayor Ford has tapped someone to oversee billions of dollars in spending and revenue based purely on being a good soldier on Team Ford. A numbers guy for sure with an impressive resume if he were being asked to teach algebra to high school students. Back in the 70s.

From my perch in the cheap seats at city council chambers, Frank Di Giorgio has been a wholly unimpressive, inconsequential councillor. His contribution to the discourse of city business has been almost exclusively twisted logic and syntax. A golden oldie from way back in 2003 as noted by the Toronto Star’s David Rider yesterday:

“Mr. Chairman, I think we find ourselves in an unfortunate position simply because, simply because we have tended to over-regulate perhaps too often, or Madam Chairman I should say, we have a regulatory system that is trilateral in the sense that we have three levels of government that fall in a regulation system and two levels of government that do their part.”

What?!

And a book of such quotes could be written.

Certainly, his first 24 hours on the job as budget chief did little to suggest he might grow into the job. His first media scrum with the mayor after the announcement he told all assembled that he’d be looking to freeze property taxes, department budgets and look at reducing the land transfer tax by some 10%. Later, he clarified his position, saying that an inflationary property tax might be necessary and that he was only talking about keeping spending at 0%.

“There’s no clarity as to what I’ve been asked to do, other than examine certain things,” the new budget chief said, “like: What’s the likelihood of doing something with the land transfer tax? What’s the likelihood of coming in, let’s say if (Ford) says to me, ‘0 per cent tax increase’?

“I think those are far-fetched ideas, but I will look at them.”

One might think before taking the job that sort of ‘clarity’ would be something the budget chief might want to sort out. You want me to do what? That’s kind of — how’d he put it? – ‘far-fetched’ from a budgeting standpoint, to continue slashing revenue. Oh well. Lemme see what I can do.

Good, loyal soldiers never question their superiors.

Say what you will about the previous budget chief but he had a certain independence of thought and ultimately stood firm when he felt his job and contribution to the administration had been compromised by Mayor Ford.

There’s little sense Budget Chief Di Giorgio will show the same spine in the face of the mayor’s disregard.

“One of the most loyal, loyal folks we have.”

This lack of resolve in our new budget chief as the push forward to a discussion of transit expansion and new generation of revenues was on full display in an interview yesterday with CBC’s Here and Now (h/t John Lorinc). “I personally will not be supportive of the tax increases that will come forward as potential tax increases,” the budget chief said, sharing a similar view with the mayor, “to pay for transportation.” Instead, we must ‘grow the economy’ as if transit has nothing to do with that equation.

“And if congestion is something we have to live with in the short term, we have to look at alternative ways at easing congestion.” And those ‘alternative ways’, Mr. Budget Chief? Stay tuned but don’t hold your breath in anticipation.

To paraphrase a title of a forgettable movie from the 80s: Oh no, Di Giorgio.

— dismayedly submitted by Cityslikr