Tag Archives: Councillor Janet Davis

If Boxing Week Sales Continue Into January…

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(A double dose of our City Hall holiday questions-and-answers today. Up now, Councillor Janet Davis, Ward 31 Beaches-East York!)

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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.

Despite reductions in provincial funding and a recommendation from KPMG against it, Council agreed to reinstate the Hardship Fund and Medical Benefits in 2013. This means thousands of Torontonians struggling to survive will get help with things like prosthetics, wheel chairs and other medical devices. The vote was almost unanimous. Restoring some dignity to the lives of our most marginalized residents helped restore some dignity to City Hall. It also restoreth my soul (and sharpeneth my focus.)

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

Council has to change the way it considers and approves “The Budget.” Residents – and Councillors – need more time and better ways to become informed if they are to participate in a meaningful way. The capital and operating budgets need to be separated. The process should start in the new year when we have better information on revenues and surpluses. Standing Committees should be involved again to set policy and budget priorities. We need year-round education and outreach combined with real decision-making for local communities. Torontonians need to follow the money – budgets turn principles into reality and promises into action. Budgets count.

merrychristmas2012

— still seasonally submitted by Councillor Janet Davis

Taxing My Patience

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Just a quick slapdash entry after deputations on the 2013 budget wrapped up this afternoon. madhatterHopefully it will appear entirely different from my regular slapdash efforts.

Mike Del Grande. Councillor Mike Del Grande. Budget Chief Mike Del Grande.

Mike Del Grande, Mike DelGrande, MikeDelGrande, mikedelgrande…

Despite listening to over 200 deputants, none of whom I heard demand their taxes be cut, and a litany of the usual suspect downtown lefty councillors suggesting their constituents would prefer a better city over lower taxes, our budget chief doesn’t buy any of that nonsense. People don’t like paying taxes. End of story. Let’s move on.

How does our budget chief know this? By a rigorous examination of a solid, evidence based study, OK? Voluntary repayment of the Vehicle Registration Tax back to the city. All these people, coming down to plead their case in front of the Budget Committee year after year, all the bleeding hearts the likes of Councillor Janet Davis meets in her ward, all saying they would happily pay more in tax. Well? Where are they, the budget chief wonders. Certainly not filling the city coffers out of the goodness of their hearts, let him tell you.

Now, I don’t have a car, thus don’t pay the VRT but if I did and didn’t have to pay the VRT because the Ford Administration is averse to that kind of revenue generation, nothankyouthe last place I would be returning that money saved is to a City Hall run by a gang of far right, anti-government ideologues. All taxes are evil, as far as the likes of Councillor Doug Ford is concerned. Yeah… sure. Here’s my rebate, Mr. Budget Chief. Please do something nice with it, OK?

Instead, I know a couple people who have diligently used the $60 they saved when renewing their car sticker and donated it to places hurt by recent city cuts – i.e. the library. So, the budget chief’s certainty that people don’t like paying taxes based on a lack of returns back to the city is based on, what do you call it, an inadequate sampling? Nonsense? Pure and utter bullshit?

On top of which, taxation really only works as a collective enterprise. Elective participation in handing over one’s hard earned cash doesn’t tend to fill the coffers like a compulsory obligation. It only fully functions if we’re all in it together, contributing. Some more, some less but none voluntarily.

I’d like to think my willingness to pay taxes is based on an absolute selflessness. That I am constitutionally more inclined to help out the ‘widows and orphans’ than our budget chief is. But that wouldn’t be entirely true.taxation

From an unequivocally selfish perspective, I want to pay more for better transit (which I don’t depend on), for fewer people forced to live on the streets (I have a house), for free recreational programs (which I’ve never taken) because it means the lives of other people (mostly who I don’t know but share this city with) are made just a little bit better, a little more liveable, their prospects of a better life just a little brighter. Why does that matter to me? The possibility of them being able to contribute more significantly and positively will make this a better city for me to live in.

And I can’t do that single-handedly, giving back my VRT or making some other voluntary contribution to the likes of Mike Del Grande. Taxation only works en masse. Everybody pitching in what they can.

It’s disheartening that the person in charge of spending billions and billions of dollars annually either doesn’t realize it or doesn’t believe it.

— taxingly submitted by Cityslikr

Too Far Gone

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Another Friday, another less than flattering photo making the social media rounds showing fingerinthedikeMayor Ford painting the town red. And then there are rumblings that one of the city’s newspapers is sitting on another mayoral scandal. A non-contested stay granted for the mayor on his conflict of interest conviction pending an appeal; an appeal John McGrath exhaustively assesses and concludes does not look overly strong. News from the Ford For Mayor 2010 campaign finance audit waits ominously in the wings.

Such bad boy/cowboy behaviour would all be so riveting if Rob Ford was, I don’t know, the professional football player he always wanted to be, or a rock star. It would be gripping fodder for the yellow pages of tabloids if he was a member of the royal family. Right proper grist for the infotainment mill.

Unfortunately, he’s the mayor of our city. His Worship and all that. Instead of providing leadership, he’s simply proving to be a major distraction.

And hey, that might not be too great a blow to his own cause, given the news trickling out of this week’s Budget Committee review of the staff’s proposed 2013 operating and capital budgets. badnewseveryoneWhy just today, word emerges of the cuts to the city’s Fire Services. A Swansea Runnymede Road firehouse closed, reduction in trucks to others. It can’t possibly help already worrisome response times in the city. I wonder if Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong plans on alerting insurance companies to that fact, see if they can scare council straight like he did with the plastics lobby and the bag ban.

Councillor Janet Davis has suggested this is the year the city will eliminate some 41,000 shelter beds. A fight is a-brewing over budget reductions for the Toronto Police Services. The Planning Department remains woefully under-staffed. TTC rider subsidies shrink again with another fare increase and a flat-lined budget from council.

This is nothing like the easy finding of efficiencies and gravy that the mayor promised during the campaign in 2010. It is the slash and burn scenario all his opponents promised. No service cuts, guaranteed is a broken pledge much harder to dismiss than any onslaught of personal foibles.

Especially if you can blame those kind of setbacks on others, that ever growing list of far left enemies who’ve spent nearly 3 years now trying to discredit the mayor and nullify his election victory. Mayor Ford’s just trying to do his job, looking out for the little guy and respecting the taxpayers, hediditif only bullies like Adam Vaughan, Gord Perks, Shelley Carroll and their cabal of sore loser whingers in league with unelected and activist judges would stop trying to subvert democracy. Who hasn’t occasionally slipped up and fallen afoul of the rules and regulations? Everybody knows everybody does it. Buried bodies will be unearthed.

The amazing thing is, we wouldn’t accept such shirking of responsibility from a wayward teenager, trying to blame their failing grades on the distraction of classmates. Yet plenty of voices are still willing to give Mayor Ford a pass on his growing pile of transgressions. It’s not his fault but the fault of the fault finders. If a mayor breaks the rules but there’s no one around to see him do it, does he really break the rules?

Every time he digs himself out from under some sad spectacle or sideshow he’s served up, he vows to forge ahead, get on with the job he was elected to do and [fill in meaningless campaign slogan here]. But increasingly, there’s nowhere for him to go. He’s the kid at the back of the room, disrupting class. Teacher! Teacher! Look at me! I don’t have the answer but let me crack wise and make fart noises!

Whatever happens with his appeal in January and a possible by-election as a result of it, it already seems as if we’ve passed the point of no return where redemption seems even beyond a faint hope. Rob Ford has become a punch line not a mayor. overthefallsHis edict from afar to hold the budget line at 0 and keep taxes low is making him no new friends while even once steadfast allies are lining up behind each other to keep their distance from the toxic cloud billowing from his office. It’s hard to see how he can take control back of the wheel at this point.

The question at the end of another roller coaster week is why does Rob Ford even want to try?

— wonderingly submitted by Cityslikr