Tag Archives: City of Toronto Act

Mayoral Endorsement II

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My Endorsement For Mayor: Joe Pantalone.

Although I may still vote for George Smitherman. I mean, David Crombie just endorsed him. Come on!

But I’m still endorsing Joe Pantalone.

I am that living, breathing, mushy middlist voting cliché everyone has been on about for the past week or so. The Smitherman team wants me. The Anybody But Ford coalition hounds me. We few, we unhappy few, we band of political brothers (and sisters) apparently hold the key to the outcome of Monday’s election. In our hands, lies the future fate of our city. Oh, the weight of such responsibility.

I, for one, know that George Smitherman will make a more capable mayor than Rob Ford. What I’m not as convinced about is if the city will be any better for that. Yes, Smitherman’s decked out his outerwear finery with the bow of John Sewell and ribbon of David Crombie. Perhaps that’s the silent signal to me that Smitherman will not ignore my concerns if he’s elected to City Hall. Just cross my fingers and hope that all the other stuff he’s been far more vocal about throughout the campaign, the right of centre meat and potatoes of tax freezes/cuts and job elimination through attrition, is just political posturing, necessary in the negative atmosphere that’s polluted election 2010.

It’s a leap of faith I’m just not sure I’m prepared to take.

I like living in Toronto. The past 7 years have not struck me as the dysfunctional quagmire many pundits and electioneering candidates have tried to make it out to have been. I’m not alone in that assessment. Check out here, here and here if you don’t believe me. There have been hiccups, no question. Some self-inflicted, others far beyond our control (i.e. the economic meltdown and subsequent recession). All things considered, I feel better about living in Toronto than I did in 2003.

I bought a house and had to pay the then newly instituted municipal land transfer tax. Came with the territory, as the city tentatively tested new powers granted to it through the City of Toronto Act.  The Vehicle Registration Tax had no affect on me as I don’t own a car and if there’s one major difference I have with Joe Pantalone it’s his pledge to remove it if elected. People may not like it. It may be regressive. But I think we should use all the tools at our disposal to make owning a car in this city a grind.

My garbage and recycling is picked up as often as I need it to be. I don’t mind the exercise shoveling snow from my own walk. I can walk home at night through a back alley, slightly drunk, playing with my telephonic gadget with very little fear of having harm done to my person. I spend more money per month on my Rogers bill than I do on services the city provides to me and I am much more satisfied with what the city delivers.

As you’re probably thinking as you read this, yes, I am one of the fortunate people living in Toronto. Indeed, I may do even better under a fiscally conservative regime at City Hall, what with all those taxes being cut and frozen under either a Ford or Smitherman administration. Except that, what I see emerging from both these candidates is a city more desperate. They’ve said little to absolutely zero about combating poverty, about continuing to work on fixes for our high priority neighbourhoods. Their transit plans are woefully short of properly dealing with congestion. One term of either a Ford or Smitherman mayoralty will result in a city that’s less livable. So all of us will be the worse for it.

Since I am also convinced that out there in the bigger, wider world, we may not yet be through the economic shit storm that started blowing through back in ought-8, and senior levels of government seemed pumped to begin budgetary slicing and dicing at the behest of what should be discredited neo-liberal voices that they are still mysteriously listening to, I trust neither Rob Ford or George Smitherman when the inevitable calls for further cuts start to ring out. I can already here the post-election statement from Ford or Smitherman. It’s much worse than I thought it was but don’t worry, it’ll only hurt a little.

No, in what will inevitably be a rough next few years, I am much more comfortable with the idea of Joe Pantalone as our mayor than anyone else. He will not turn on us. He’s had 30 years fighting for a fairer, more equitable and livable city, through good times and bad. He has the city’s best interests at heart. That, I know, is not true of Rob Ford. George Smitherman has not convinced me he does, either.

Read these Pantalone endorsements at ChangeToronto and blogTO. They are much more eloquent and thorough in their endorsements of Joe Pantalone than I’m being. Then for fun, take a glimpse at NOW’s Alice Klein endorsement of George Smitherman.

If there’s anything that’s pushed me more firmly into the Joe Pantalone camp, it’s the hectoring self-righteousness coming from those who’ve decided strategically voting in order to stop Rob Ford from winning is our only recourse. Hey. Fair enough. I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to tell you who you should or shouldn’t vote for. Yes, Rob Ford is a despicable man. Yes, he’ll make a despicable mayor. But spare me the hysteric he’ll be Sauron who actually gets hold of the ring and transforms Toronto into Mordor if he gets elected mayor narrative. It leaves me cold. We will live to fight if this grisly scenario comes to pass.

In answering for my self @arvelomcquaig‘s quandary, I can’t decide if a Ford mayoralty is more worse than a Smitherman mayoralty than a Smitherman mayoralty is worse than a Pantalone mayoralty, yes, yes I believe a Mayor Smitherman would be significantly worse than a Mayor Pantalone than a Mayor Ford be worse than a Mayor Smitherman. Or, to put it another way, a Mayor Ford and Mayor Smitherman are more closely related than are a Mayor Smitherman and Mayor Pantalone.

For that reason (as convoluted as it may be) I, Urban Sophisticat, am endorsing Joe Pantalone as Mayor of Toronto.

— endorsingly submitted by Urban Sophisticat

George Smitherman Is Kicking Asses And Taking Names Later

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Just when I started to think that George Smitherman had dropped out of the race to be the next mayor of Toronto, he’s popped back up into view, spitting, snarling and feisty. Embracing his Furious George, bully boy image (“If my bureaucracy basically shot me the finger,” Mr. Smitherman said [in a Globe and Mail interview], “well, I’ll let my reputation speak for itself…”), Smitherman promises to apply his trademark bulldog style to deal with the city’s woeful finances and the uppity bureaucracy that, apparently, is all that stands in the way of a brighter, fiscally rosier future for Toronto.

Now maybe George is simply over-compensating for what has been perceived as a tepid campaign performance so far. As the big name, front runner he’s been adhering to the rule of saying nothing and doing even less in order to not be dragged into the fray so early on. But as an insider on the Barbara Hall 2003 campaign flame out (she too was the early frontrunner) perhaps George does not want to see history repeat itself.

So we have George Smitherman channeling his inner Howard Beale. Mad as hell, George isn’t going to take it anymore. As mayor, he’s vowed to get tough, knock some heads and make sure that the TTC trains start running on time. How’s that for a deliberate evocation of a catch phrase in order to conjure up images of ruthless, fascist efficiency?

Still, as the perceived centrist candidate George can’t step on too many toes. He has to garner some support from the right and some from the left to be able to piece together a winning combination. So there’s a bit of a whirling dervish quality to Smitherman’s strikes; not so much surgical as they are erratically tactical.

Nowhere is this more in evidence than in his pronouncements about getting City Hall’s fiscal house in order. Aside from whipping the TTC, civil servants and their departments into shape, George has openly mulled over the idea of things like road tolls while also circling some taxes he’d like to cut. Apparently, the municipal land transfer tax is one that Smitherman can live with but vehicle registration tax.. ? Well, that was the proverbial straw “… that broke the camel’s back,” Smitherman told the National Post, “and elicits from so many people this feeling that they have been nickel and dimed…”

Nickel and dimed?!

Maybe someone should tell the former deputy premier of Ontario that while he was in the inner sanctum of Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government, they passed this little thing called City Bill 53 Stronger City of Toronto for a Stronger Ontario Act. In case George never got around to reading it, the bill contains some elements that broaden, ever so slightly, Toronto’s ability to raise revenue through various taxation powers. Revenue needed to plug the huge financial gaps created almost exclusively by senior levels of government who have, for the better part of a couple decades now, more than nickeled and dimed municipalities to the point of insolvency.

Thus grudgingly, the city ultimately got around to instituting land transfer and vehicle registration taxes. Now George wants to rescind one of them while trying to bring about some fiscal sanity. How? Well, that kind of information’s just going to have to wait until later in the campaign. When George is able to get a better sense of which way the political winds are a-blowing. For now, it’s all about attacking, attacking, attacking and painting a dystopic picture of a city that he alone can ride into and straighten out.

We all know and can list off what’s wrong with the city, George. Being mad as hell is the easy part. How you propose to fix it all is the thing that we’re waiting to hear from you.

— impatiently submitted by Cityslikr