All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

Birds Of A Feather

Posted on January 21, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

Suppose sometime over the course of the next couple weeks or so, Mayor Ford’s conflict of interest appeal is upheld and he’s officially tossed from office. Suppose not assume because, for me at least, my assumptions over the last 3 years have been woefully off the mark, starting with my early mirth about the improbable prospect of a ‘Mayor Rob Ford.’ Here, there be no more assumptions.

But let’s do suppose the courts toss him from office.

Much has been made of the Candidate from The Left who would best oppose him. Olivia Chow? Councillors Adam Vaughan and Shelley Carroll? All with the inevitable concern for vote splitting between them, allowing the mayor to slip up through the middle to another unlikely election win.

But recently, there’s been chatter about the right. This poses as equal if not greater threat to the mayor than any sort of alignment on the left, I think. A split on the right side of the spectrum would probably be fatal to his re-election chances unless somehow the left fragmented into tiny little pieces which, after 2010, I don’t see happening.

That’s assuming (ooops!) there’s a vote at all. Council could simply appoint a mayor instead of electing to have a by-election. Re-appointing Mayor Ford has been seriously floated by the likes of Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday. Like some real life Dallas re-do. It’s all just been a dream.

But why would council do that? More specifically, why would council conservatives do such a thing? Why would they allow Rob Ford to continue damaging their brand?

That speaks to a bigger picture, frankly. A response to my post yesterday, My Problem With Conservatives, summed it up in under 140 characters. “Have been curious for some time about why moderate conservatives have allowed, what were fringe radicals, to co-opt their parties.”

We’ve seen it down in the States with the Republican Party and, to some degree, up here at the federal and provincial levels. These are not your daddies’ Progressive Conservative parties. Hell, in Ottawa they cut to the chase and dropped Progressive altogether.

And it’s meant a certain degree of electoral success. At least in the short term. The results of the 2012 U.S. election suggest right wing radicalism is, however, hurting the conservative cause now. Here in Ontario, after 2 terms of far-rightedness under the Common Sense Revolution, the P.C.’s have experienced trouble bringing voters back into the fold even in the face of discontent with the ruling Liberal party working in their favour.

And here in Toronto, well, Rob Ford.

It’s not like his type of right wing crank politician never existed before. But they just weren’t usually allowed to drive the bus. Driving it into a ditch.

I guess a cynical view might be that council conservatives with an eye on the mayor’s office could see fit to prop him up until next year at this time when the official 2014 campaign kicks off. Then, all bets are off. Whoever decided to run could take the 10 months to draw a distinction between their type of right of centre politics and the mayor’s. The right message delivered by the wrong messenger and all that.

That would be a calculated risk, I’d think. If Mayor Ford continues to blow up in such spectacular fashion, it might be difficult to continue keeping the fall out off of you. A smart, progressive campaign would tar all conservatives with the same brush.

Political calculations aside, surely to christ, moderate conservatives at the municipal level must now realize that the mayor’s conservatism is harming the greater good of the city more than anything either of his immediate predecessors did. In fact, if any moderate conservative can still say with a straight face Toronto is in better shape now than it was three years ago should not consider themselves a moderate conservative. They’re willfully blind ideologues.

Take for example John Tory. A seeming old school Red Tory. Too red certainly for the provincial Progressive Conservative party.

As chair of Toronto’s CivicAction Alliance, he is now the public face of a group advocating for greater investment in public transit infrastructure in the GTA. They along with conservative leaning interest groups like the Board of Trade recognize the negative impact congestion is having on the region and the only solution is to spend money bringing our public transit system into the 21^st-century. That means considering new taxes. Road tolls.

Is John Tory prepared to stand idly by and let Mayor Ford continue to spout his subway nonsense, given the opportunity to replace him with someone more forward thinking? And I’m not talking about Tory running for mayor necessarily. With the talk radio bully pulpit he has, is he going to pipe up in favour of the status quo, keeping a mayor in place whose closet counsel is his brother, a politician on record as saying all taxes are evil? The private sector will build us our subways, folks.

It won’t. John Tory must know that. TTC chair Karen Stintz too. How about Councillor Michael Thompson?

For the sake of keeping a conservative in power will they all be content to let Mayor Ford stand for the conservative banner? Reasonable people shouldn’t let blind loyalty to their ideology trump city building. It’s OK to state that Mayor Ford has been an unmitigated disaster and still be a conservative. Someone serious from the ranks should step forward soon and say as much. Otherwise, it’ll start to look like conservatives of every stripe are more interested in power rather than good governance.

— helpfully submitted by Cityslikr

When You Roll The Dice…

Posted on January 11, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

Having attended Wednesday night’s casino consultation at City Hall, I was all prepared to write up something about it but was beaten to the punch on almost every front. Before deciding not to follow suit, I had sketched out a rough outline of my thoughts on the event which included — very, very tongue in cheek — some variation of the word ‘hijack’. I thought it kind of funny to use such an extreme word to describe what was really a fairly modest twist in the turn of events that had actually transpired.

Lo and behold, yesterday’s coverage of the meeting was rife with hijackings and coups as if the councillors who’d opened up a committee room for the people present to actually voice their opinions had burned the fucking rotunda to the ground on their way up the stairs. My God! They Stood On Chairs!! Anarchists!

Now, I hope I’m not jaded enough not to believe that, in organizing the casino consultations as they did, city staff were trying to create a safe, dry space to discuss and inform the public on what is certainly a very heatedly divisive issue. Here’s how Hamutal Dotan described the set up in Torontoist yesterday. “Residents entered the City Hall rotunda to find the usual assortment of open house accoutrements: printed information sheets, large posterboards with diagrams and key details, blank survey forms to fill out, and name-tagged City staff on hand to answer questions.”

Or try this: Go to the Toronto Casino Consultation on the city’s website, open up every link that’s contained within that and print out the pages. Blow them up to placard size and imagine them all set out in a horseshoe fashion in the rotunda of City Hall, with hundreds of people milling about, trying to garner information on numbers, locations, etc., and figure out which name-tagged city staffer to pose their questions to.

My more cynical nature screams Information Dump! You know, that standard practice of overwhelming with sheer volume, hiding details in plain sight. For instance, I only just a few minutes ago learned via Twitter that under questioning from a councillor this morning, city staff admitted the city will have no say on the ultimate location of a casino if it agrees to host one. An interesting and pertinent tidbit to know but I’m having a little trouble finding that in all this consultation material.

More cynical still, I could view all this as little more than the pretence of public consultation. Yeah, yeah. We want to hear from you Toronto. Listening, though. That’s another matter altogether.

It is my experience, almost exclusively anecdotal, that while it’s good and important to sign petitions you are passionate about, I have seen too many introduced at council or committee meetings, stacks of signed petitions, placed before our elected officials. Their presence temporarily felt before being carted off to places unknown. It’s an integral part of the democratic process. Just not the only part.

In no way do I mean to sound as if the fix is in and that our input doesn’t matter. I’m just suggesting that when City Hall opens its doors for public participation it should include time and space to speak their minds and to have their questions and concerns addressed directly. That certainly wasn’t the case at Wednesday’s consultation.

So yeah, a group of councillors took it upon themselves to present that opportunity to the public who’d come out. But why did they have to stand up on the chairs?! There was no microphone to make any sort of announcement, no stage upon which to get everyone’s attention above the din of hundreds of people conversing. Horror of horrors! A couple councillors got up on a chair to announce an impromptu addition to the evening’s planned activities.

“Again, if you want to have an actual conversation,” Councillor Gord Perks said from high atop a chair, “some of us will be gathering up in Committee room 2. Thank you.”

Inflammatory! Incendiary! Hijack! Coup! COUP!! BURN!BURN!BURN!!

While I saw no selective shepherding (Only anti-casino types welcome!) or vetting of who got into committee room 2, it was certainly almost entirely one-sided in its No Casino tone. The five or six people who did get up to speak their allotted three minutes in favour of at least considering bringing a casino to town were treated mostly respectfully by the gathered crowd although a couple were subjected to some heckling.

In fact, I wished there were more pro-casino voices to speak. I want to hear their side. Representatives of the Toronto Taxpayers Coalition were in attendance but, for whatever reason, chose not to run their $400 million/year idea past anyone other than the collected media cameras and microphones.

Councillor Adam Vaughan had the last word of the informal bull session and, like Councillor Perks does in the video in the Torontoist article, he urged everyone gathered to fill out all the forms, paperwork and online feedback that city staff had provided. He stressed the importance of doing so in terms of having the public’s voices heard, recorded and presented to city council for consideration. I’m not particularly sure what was so circus-like about that or what there was any councillor had to apologize for.

Call it a disruption or departure from the planned proceedings if you want. But please. Wednesday night was hardly a coup or hijacking.

— sanely submitted by Cityslikr

Further Season’s Greetings

Posted on December 28, 2012 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

(Reflections on moments past and hopes for better moments ahead continue. Up today, Councillor Adam Vaughan, Ward 20 Trinity-Spadina!)

* * *

1) The Gift of Councilling: What is the one moment in 2012 that struck you as the best example of why it was you became a councillor?

Moving the rezoning on Alex Park Revitalization through council would have been the moment, but the process with the residents has had so many “moments” it’s hard to pick the vote as a defining moment as most of the community wasn’t there to share in it.

As background: The movement to rebuild this housing community south of Kensington Market has been under way now for almost six years. Ground will break in the new year. In the last year a developer, an architect and tenant agreements have been put in place, along with the rezoning.

To select a single moment in this process is tough, but in December an event at one particular meeting stands out. Throughout the years of monthly meetings one particular father in the community has been insisting on making sure the TCHC retains basement storage areas in the new town homes for co-op residents. The gentleman is a talented woodworker and uses his basement as a workroom. The man helps other residents by building shelves and doing small repairs. He also helps out the community gardeners by building their planter boxes. The question of whether the new units will have basements has been touch and go, as TCHC expressed concerns about hoarding. The developer on site was confident basements could be included, the residents pushed hard and staff kept negotiating.

At the last meeting of the year it was announced that basements would be part of the new design. The man beamed, the room celebrated, even the TCHC staff person was all smiles. Moving the big stuff forward is important, but we all need reminding sometimes that getting the details right is quite often what defines the achievement. In this case one resident fighting with his neighbours made his life better, his community stronger and in doing all that made my year.

2) Going Forward: In 2013, what is the one aspect you would like to see happen that would help develop better civic discourse?

Continued success on getting transportation challenges in the city solved. Whether by foot or on two wheels or more, whether by public transit, wheel chair or car, this city needs to figure out how to accommodate the choices people make about how to move in this city. Despite the rhetoric, despite Ottawa and Queen’s Park doing just the bare minimum and despite the relentless focus on traffic, as if road capacity is the only issue that needs addressing, I believe that real progress is possible if we can work as a council and begin work as a region on this issue. Part of the solution lies in finance, but just as much involves convenience trumping efficiency. It requires focussing on creating and sustaining streets as destinations as much as protecting them as thoroughfares. It also of course demands that council celebrate great design, and stop tolerating mediocre one size fits all solutions to building better, more complete streets for all.

— seasonally submitted by Councillor Adam Vaughan