Tag Archives: Councillor Ana Bailão

Project 23

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I should be back at City Hall taking in the rest of council business today. There is other business for sure aside from the new bike lane plan. A plan, by the way, that is now in the hands of non-biking riding suburban councillors. Step one? Remove many existing bike lanes in their respective wards.

It’s all a little dispiriting right now, I will admit. A musty smell of the 1950s fills the chambers. Kind of like Aramis or the odd odour your grandparents give off.

Team Ford won a convincing victory in the bike lane debate today. We’re assured those on Jarvis Street won’t be removed until the protected lanes on Sherbourne are up and going although no definitive commitment was made of that if the money for the Sherbourne bike lanes gets lost in the Great Budget Crisis of 2012 or some other technical glitch pops up. Plans are already afoot to bring back the reversible middle lane with nary a peep about the pedestrianized plan that set this all in motion.

Just trust us, we’re told. Our best interests will be taken to heart.

You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t hold my breath, waiting.

But I think it makes the timing right for my unofficial announcement for what I’ve been calling Project 23. An idea in its infancy with the intention of turning up the heat on councillors who are currently enabling the mayor and his crew to do the damage they seem intent on inflicting on the city. As we here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke have written previously, Mayor Ford is an unmovable force, incapable it seems of compromise or lacking any interest in seeking a broader consensus. There’s little use expending energy trying to change that.

He has his ideological brethren who will not deviate from his position on important or close votes. They too aren’t worth much further consideration. And there are those now luxuriating in the aura of power, a power they could not possibly achieve on their own. Step up and take a bow, Councillor Mammoliti. I’m figuring they are a lost cause. At least until the power begins to dissipate.

Instead, we need to concentrate on those in the so-called mushy middle. Let’s call it the vulnerable middle. Councillors, both new and old, who are regularly siding with the mayor out of either fear of the mayor’s tactical pressure or plain old political expediency. The going’s good now and they are aware of fallout if they are seen to be bucking Ford Nation. So they’re skulking in the shadows, hoping no one notices them and that come election 2014, they’ll be able to continue under the radar of their own ward races.

Let’s start informing them that that’s not going to happen. They will have to answer to their voters if they continue their craven allegiance to this administration. If they think there’s a price to be paid not being a Team Ford player, notice needs to be served there’s going to be no free ride for such slavish devotion.

I’m thinking the likes of the hypocritical Councillor Gary Crawford (Ward 36). A silent Ford yes man, he managed to get bike lanes in his ward pulled from the new plan for further community consultation and then proceeded to vote against every other motion for further consultation some of his colleagues had put forth. Take that for bipartisanship.

There’s Councillor James Pasternak (Ward 10) who gave a rambling, incoherent defence of his support for the mayor’s bike plan. To Councillor Pasternak’s mind, cyclists aren’t parents or business owners. Both he and Councillor Crawford were elected last fall by the slimmest of majorities, propelled mainly on name recognition as school board trustees. In 2014, they will be labeled as nothing more than Ford men.

Executive Committee members Michelle Berardinetti (Ward 35) and Jaye Robinson (Ward 25) have been largely silent Ford loyalists, doing the mayor’s bidding and rarely standing up to defend their position. Councillor Berardinetti did get feisty today, flashing the Mammoliti thumbs down in order to remove bike lanes from her ward. Why? Because she lives in the suburbs and the suburbs weren’t designed for bike lanes.

Councillors Josh Colle and Ana Bailão, wards 15 and 18 respectively, lined up in favour of the new bike lane plan and have consistently voted with Mayor Ford on important issues. It’s not entirely certain why yet although one does have to wonder about the mayor’s hold on the Lawrence Heights development in Councillor Colle’s ward until after the bike plan vote. This may be the tactical pressure both rookie councillors tend to wilt under.

And then there’s the other Josh, Councillor Josh Matlow (Ward 22). Josh, Josh, Josh. Councillor, Councillor, Councillor. I don’t have the vote results in front of me and will state right now I will retract anything I say if I’m wrong but, once more, he seemed to talk a big game of seeking partisanship, deciding on the facts and the facts alone and then proceeding to vote along the lines of supporting the mayor when the chips were down and then voting against him when it didn’t matter. Soon he has to learn that it is not acceptable to talk like a progressive and vote without principles in the hopes that no one notices. We’ve noticed, Councillor Matlow.

We cannot forget council’s perennial deadweights either. Councillors Frank DiGiorgio (Ward 12), Mark Grimes (Ward 6), Norm Kelly (Ward 40), Peter Milczyn (Ward 5) and Cesar Palacio (Ward 17), all of whom voted to install the Jarvis bike lanes in 2009 and then to remove them 2 years later (What about the taxpayers, councillors?) Each had their tortured reasons. None were convincing. Yes, we too know which way the political winds are blowing, councillors.

But the winds will change direction because that’s what political winds do. We can help speed that process along by focusing on these malleable councillors. All we need is to get 6 or 7 of them to start seriously weighing their options every time they press their vote button in favour of the Team Ford agenda. They need to know that there will be repercussions. That they will not be able to operate in obscurity. Their actions will have consequences.

Thus, Project 23. Further details to come. Stay tuned.

Courage!

— determinedly submitted by Cityslikr

The Immoveable Mayor

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Mark it down in your calendar, folks. The week of June 20th, 2011. It’s the date the mayoralty of Rob Ford officially jumped the shark. (If such a thing is possible. To jump the shark suggests that there’s a point of quality from which to jump. For example, can it be said that a Full House or Who’s The Boss? ever achieved the necessary creative heights to attempt the shark jump?)

Within a matter of days this week our very own Mayor Danny Tanner signaled that he’s unwilling, unable or just downright uninterested in reaching out past his core constituency. First, in Executive Committee he deep-sixed an offer from the province to pay for 2 public health nurses. Then the mayor announced that he would not be marching in the upcoming Pride parade, opting instead for a family long weekend at the cottage. In two fell swoops, Mayor Ford made it clear he was not the mayor of all Toronto.

I wouldn’t for a moment be presumptuous enough to try attaching a motivation for these decisions of the mayor aside from a reluctance to accept things that he doesn’t understand. Public nurses? We’ve got hospitals for sick people. Use them. T’eh Gays? Well, it’s all just a little too.. err… queer to him. Have at it. Live your life. Just don’t expect the mayor to endorse something he’s unfamiliar or uncomfortable with.

The real takeaway message here for me is that Mayor Ford doesn’t feel a need politically to broaden his appeal among Toronto voters. He’s perfectly happy wallowing in the pond of support that brought him to power, and that shares his uneasiness with extra front line health workers and homosexuality. These are his people and the decisions he made in both cases make perfect sense to them. His intransigence might even solidify his reputation as a straight-shooting, uncomplicated, apolitical, little guy. Our mayor doesn’t bend to special interests. Just like us hard working, taxpaying, regular Joes.

Or something like that. We who are flummoxed by the choices our mayor makes need to get used to it. He ain’t ever going to change, so stop expecting him to. That trait may be his greatest strength, his best political asset.

So, let’s stop trying to find common ground with the mayor. It is a small and barren patch of land. A my way or the highway mentality means that the only compromise we can ever hope to reach is all on our part. We give. He takes.

We need to set our sights elsewhere. The time has come to turn up the heat on those at city council who continue their willfully blind support of Mayor Ford and who continue to enable him to do the things he does. If the standard operating procedure so far has been to back the mayor or suffer the political consequences, we have to find a way to point out that such unstinting support will also come with adverse political consequences. A light must be shone on those councillors who have, so far, been quietly cowering in the safe shadow the mayor casts.

Sure, Team Ford is made up of a handful of councillors sharing the mayor’s limited view of politics and the city. Brother Doug, for one, and the Deputy Mayor. They will be immune to such pressure. You might throw in Budget Chief Del Grande and Councillor Shiner as well although, they like Speaker Nunziata and QB Mammoliti, former Ford non-allies present now because the going’s been good but alert to any changes of fortune that might come if the mayor’s destructive and narrow-minded policies become something of a drag on their standing with the electorate.

Even in toto that’s a pretty small group and won’t be able to help dig Mayor Ford out of any holes he gets himself into.

The councillors I’m talking about are the rookies who haven’t established any sort of real foothold besides being the mayor’s flunkies. There’s Vincent Crisanti, Gary Crawford and James Pasternak (the two latter elected in 2010 with the slimmest of pluralities, within the margin of error.) Councillors Michelle Berardinetti and Jay Robinson, undistinguished members of the mayor’s executive committee. And the deadweight veterans, Cesar Palacio, Mark Grimes, Frank DiGiorgio, Chin Lee.

Then there are the moderates from both sides of the political spectrum that have already started bucking under the weight of Mayor Ford’s missteps. Peter Milczyn, Michael Thomspon, Denzil Minnan-Wong, Norm Kelly, Joshes Matlow and Colle, Ana Bailão, Mary-Margaret McMahon. TTC Chair Karen Stintz could be counted on to bail out if things get a little rocky.

Let’s refocus a grassroots effort from the mayor to these councillors, the non-ideological hidebound and opportunists, and start holding them accountable for participating in this war against the city. Alert their constituents with loud announcements of their collaboration and facilitating of this ruinous administration. We need a catchy name for it. Project 23 comes immediately to mind but may not be ominous enough.

Mayor Rob Ford is a lost cause for anyone hoping to build a strong city. It doesn’t interest him and he wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to even if he had the inclination. That’s not going to change.

What can change is the support he now has at City Hall if more councillors begin to realize a price will be paid for their ongoing association with a mayor determined to do his thing and his thing only.

— start a firingly submitted by Cityslikr

Garbage Debate

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It all ended so anti-climatically. A day’s worth of debate and bluster, bare knuckles and bared teeth. A flurry of motions, amendments and barely contained confusion, wrapping up in a couple, three quick votes. Then a recess was called, an in camera session declared, spectators, many clad in union supportive orange, wandered from the council chambers toward the elevators, surprised to learn that it was all done, the deal sealed.

Toronto now has private garbage collection, west of Yonge Street to Etobicokie, from Steels down to the lakefront. Sort of. Rather, a call to tender out trash collection in the city’s District 2 has been approved by council. The winning bid will then be brought back, further debated and voted on, subject to a series of stipulations and benchmarks crafted at Tuesday night’s council meeting to help ensure that the savings we have been guaranteed will be had.

Let’s call it step 1 toward the full implementation of Mayor Ford’s campaign pledge to privatize garbage collection citywide, thereby fulfilling his mandate of respecting the taxpayers and saving them x amount of dollars. (x being a fluid, evasive number dependent on who was touting it and for what purposes but always variable.) It wasn’t the slam dunk many of the mayor’s previous initiatives were and much of the drama had been bled from it when, in the face of some stiff opposition to an earlier plan to have council give carte blanche to the Bid Committee to sign off on any deal, Team Ford appeared to have caved to council’s will. The real battle is set to happen when the selected bid comes before council for its approval.

Of special note is the role played by the so-called mushy middle in tempering the mayor’s desired stampede to full on privatization. The two Joshes along with Ana Bailão, new councillors all, managed to push through amendments that, in theory at least, establish more rigorous oversight when the bid comes back to council for final approval. In doing so, they delivered a few nice body shots to the mayor, proving that he is not invincible and his grip on the majority of council members is not ironclad.

Yet… yet… not meaning to diminish their achievements, defeating the mayor in some important votes on such a high profile item that he so identifies with is nothing to sneeze at, but it all felt so unnecessary. I know Councillor Josh Matlow is a big proponent of ‘process’, of not adhering to simple ideology in determining how decisions are made. It just seemed to me that the process should’ve been simpler. There were two sides to the debate. Those favouring privatized waste collection and those not. (Or in Mayor Ford’s more nuanced view, those respecting taxpayers versus tax-and-spend socialists.) Each presents and makes their respective cases, the pros and cons discussed and deliberated thoroughly and thoughtfully, leading to a majority decision. That’s council process.

If the mayor and his forces want to privatize garbage collection, all they have to do is to prove that it will save money and improve the service we already have. Simply put, they couldn’t do it. Their numbers are suspect and all they had for improved service was to point out that in Etobicoke where collection has been fully private since the mid-90s, they get no more complaints than in the rest of the city.

No more?! That isn’t an improvement. That’s a wash. And without being able to show that privatizing will actually respect the taxpayers and save them money, all they had to go with was guaranteeing there’d be no more strikes.

And that’s not even guaranteed. There’s no way the city can include a no-strike clause in any contract it signs with a private firm. City staff admitted as much on Tuesday. All that is possible is a decreased likelihood of future strikes because non-union workers don’t tend to go on strike and, from the arguments I heard, private waste collection is usually performed by non-unionized workers. Workers working for less money and with less benefits which is where the savings for the taxpayers are supposed to come from.

But that’s really all the rabid pro-privatizers had to go on, and they went with it with all the shrill, hectoring vehemence they could muster. Between Councillor Mammoliti and Speaker Nunziata, they painted a veritable Mad Max of garbage collection up in their York wards. Trash ridden streets, broken and busted bins, anti-social, unionista collectors putting the fear into old ladies and keeping them cowering in their houses, taking cover weekly, waiting until the garbage trucks passed to re-emerge out in the daylight to clean up the mess left behind.

All anecdotal and unlike anything I’ve ever seen with garbage pickup outside of my house. More to the point, every horror story councillors Mammoliti and Nunziata used to fire up their supporters must be matched by similar tales of woe in Etobicoke because as Chair of Public Works and Infrastructure, Denzil Minnan-Wong, and city staffed told council repeatedly, complaint levels on both sides of the fence are roughly the same. Privatization has not proven to be an ingredient for increased public satisfaction.

In terms of process, the anti-privatization argument at Tuesday’s council meeting won the day if for no other reason than their opponents’ case was flabby, unproven and based almost exclusively on hearsay and unbridled emotion demanding vengeance on those who caused us so much discomfort and heartache for nearly 40 days during the summer of 2009. On the face of it, the vote should’ve been one-sided in the other direction that it ultimately went. That is, if councillors had left their concerns of being smeared as free spending socialists and enemies of taxpayers back in their offices.

All was not lost. If some of the amendments that managed to get out from under Councillor Mammoliti’s down turned thumb are adhered to as the debate moves forward, and the numbers are actually explained and examined honestly and without bias, the move towards privatization may not yet be a done deal. Of course, that’s predicated on the assumption that the councillors still sitting on the fence of the privatization issue really are waiting for all the facts to fully emerge. That’s something I’m not convinced of.

— trashily submitted by Cityslikr