Tag Archives: Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam

The Power Of The Mayoralty

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Don’t think of this as a boast but it seems that we here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke have reached a level of recognition that’s snagged us a cyber-groupie. No, actually it’s more like a cyber-stalker. A commenter at our site so relentless that even after we deemed it necessary to ban any further commenting (not entirely, we let the occasional one through just to prove how illogical, obtuse and nasty this nameless commenter can be), said commenter still writes in. Talk about your dedicated hater.

But, fair’s fair, and we do have to acknowledge when we’ve been correctly called out even by a cyber-stalker. Earlier this week as Mayor Ford continued to steamroll over city council, having his way this time with the TCHC vote, our biggest fan submitted a link to one of our posts from last August where we essentially said that even if then Councillor Rob Ford was to win the mayor’s race, his anti-collegial attitude would leave him a minority voice at council. Our very own words were even thrown back into our face. “So to you fanboys out there, trumpeting the ascension of Rob Ford and crowing about all the ass he’s going to kick and unions he’s going to bash and cyclists he’s going to run over, if your man gets elected, he’s going to be a mayor of one. All red faced and blustery, he’ll spend his time in office, stomping his feet and bellowing how he can’t get anything done, blaming everyone else but himself when the fact is, while pathological assholes who can’t work with others may be an asset when running an inherited business, it simply doesn’t fly at a non-political party municipal government level.”

Oops. How much more wrong could we have been? Colour us red-faced. Full disclosure here. This was a sentiment we continued to believe right up until and even after Rob Ford won despite those telling us that the power of the office could very well transform even the most cracked of crackpot councillors into a force to be reckoned with. Yep. We were clueless.

How could we have missed the warning signs coming from the likes of Giorgio Mammoliti? Rob Ford’s most withering and aggressive critic while both men were running for mayor and arch-nemesis on city council (except when they ganged up to chase a reporter from the socialist Globe and Mail out of chambers a few years back), upon withdrawing from the mayoral race, Mammoliti packed up any last vestiges of personal principal and threw his weight behind the Ford campaign. Now he basks in the glow as, literally, the mayor’s right hand man at council meetings and his chief apologist and defender.

As goes Councillor Mammoliti, so goes city council?

Mayor Ford’s strong majority might be even more surprising if it was built on a positive base of consensus seeking but I’m guessing that’s not really the case. There are whispers of cowering councillors fearful of reprisals if they don’t bow down and obey the mayor. In today’s Toronto Star story about the mayor’s voting cheat sheets, an anonymous member of the Executive Committee admitted that it wasn’t really an option to vote against the mayor’s wishes. At the TCHC vote on Wednesday night, Councillor Wong-Tam said her purposed amendment to the mayor’s motion received praise from some fellow councillors who winded up voting against it out of fear of the mayor. “I had councillors coming up to me saying they would love to support my motion, that it was fair and well considered, but that they would get in trouble.”

‘Get in trouble’?! What are you, 4 years-old? What kind of trouble?

Sure, the mayor is swinging some heavy duty pipe right now. I mean, he threatened the premier of Ontario, fergodssakes, with retributive political pain at the ballot box if he didn’t hand over some money. Even before he was elected mayor, Ford anointed Vincent Crisanti in his race to unseat fellow Etobicoke councillor Suzan Hall because Hall had the temerity to question Ford’s claim of being the only one to bring home the Woodbine Live development. Councillor Peter Milczyn fought for his political life when Ford propped up Morley “I Thought He Was Dead Already” Kells as an opponent.

Councillor Milczyn now? Awarded a spot on the Executive Committee by way of being Chair of the City’s Planning and Growth Management Committee, he is also Vice-Chair of the TTC. All he has to do in return? Keep quiet at council meetings except to rise in defense of the mayor by citing all the misuses of power by the previous administration and vote exactly how the mayor instructs him to vote.

So one has to wonder about other cowed councillors especially those not fully entrenched or who barely squeaked into office last October. The aforementioned Councillor Crisanti and his 41% of the popular vote. I’m thinking, Councillor Gloria Luby Lindsay at her 300 vote victory. Councillor James Pasternak and his eye-poppingly low 19%!! Or Councillor Gary Crawford and his 25%. The list goes on.

The problem as I see it about this possible rule by threats and intimidation, it doesn’t always stick. There’s no lasting loyalty just fear. Next election is still nearly 4 years off and that’s a lifetime and beyond in political time. What happens when the winds change and the mayor isn’t as popular as he is now? And the winds always change. Those councillors now basking in the mayor’s conditional love may not remain so obedient if fortunes turn and given Mayor Ford’s aggressive, confrontational manner, he will never be as popular as he is right now. Things will get uglier. The mayor will make sure they do. No one comes out of that kind of battle scenario unscathed.

Then again, what the hell do we know? Our ability to see into the future is somewhat suspect as our cyber-stalker gleefully informed us. Perhaps we should attempt some professional pundit, George Constanza-ish prediction where what happens will be the exact opposite of what we say. So, Rob Ford will enjoy 2 terms as Toronto’s mayor, doing everything he wants to do before moving on to provincial politics (with his brother Doug taking his spot as mayor here) where he will eventually become premier for a few years before moving on to eventually be Prime Minister of Canada. Finally he will be crowned King of the World, a title he will hold until he dies at the ripe old age of 107.

Fingers crossed.

— prognosticatingly submitted by Cityslikr

The Meter’s Running

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Parking my ass down on a chair in committee room #1 at City Hall to take in the view of the first Toronto-East York Community Council meeting of the new year, look at all these shiny, fresh faces in action. Councillors Fragedakis, Bailão, Matlow, McMahon, Layton, Wong-Tam. Such a relief after being subject to the grizzled, grim visages that occupy desk space on the Budget and Executive committees. Cllrs. Del Grande, Shiner, Thompson, Kelly, Pelacio. Del Grande, Shiner. Did I mention them already? Yeah well, slap an eye-patch on either of them and we’ve got our very own Rooster Cogburns minus the infinitesimal traces of empathy displayed by the fictional cowboy. The Toronto-East York Community Council also includes 3 of my 4 favourite councillors, Cllrs. Vaughan, Davis and Perks who is serving as the council chair.

In case you don’t know, community councils serve as a direct contact between citizens and City Hall. Members from council sit and listen while people depute. Depute. Didn’t even know that was a word. There are 4 community councils throughout the city and, while they were given some power over local matters like by-laws and permits with the City of Toronto Act back in 2006, they still seem to operate more at an advisory level than an actual hands-on enforcement body.

Armed with information from their respective deputations – fun fact, the word ‘deputation’ can mean the group or person who deputes as well as both the act of being deputing and the state of being deputed. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, ya thesaurus loving kooks! Each Community Council will then take their recommendations on their respective local matters to the full city council for further consideration and an eventual vote.

More or less.

Civics pseudo-lesson over.

During the course of a deputation regarding a planned condo development out on King Street West, the subject of parking came up. A lot. (Pun not intended but not shied away from either.) It has been my experience watching public debates on proposed high(er) rise developments throughout the downtown core of Toronto that parking is up the list of resident and business concerns. Which comes as a surprise to me, frankly. Density intensification, public transit concerns, these things I get. But parking?

Of course, business owners will beat that drum, intractable as they are in the mid-20th-century mindset that cars equal sales. No number of studies suggesting that may not be the case will convince them otherwise. Local residents, too, are leery of new apartment/condo developments not only because of increased congestion but because of the premium it puts on their street parking. In the face of these fears, developers claim that there’s seldom a dearth of parking spots in their new buildings as those buying condos downtown don’t seem to want them. Hear, hear. I say. Urban dwellers reducing their dependency on the automobile. That sounds about right.

Not so fast, says Councillor Pam McConnell, our Katherine Hepburn’s Eula Goodnight I think for no real good reason other than I’ve still got True Grit-ish things on my mind. She says that those buying condos pass on parking spots not because they don’t own cars but to save money. Councillor McConnell claims that spaces in the condominiums comes with a price tag anywhere from $20-30 K. Why pay that when you can buy a six month street parking permit for $60?

Wait. I’m sorry. What? Sixty dollars for six months of parking! Are you sure about that, Councillor McConnell? It’s 2011 not 1980. Nobody living in the downtown core could be paying $10/month for parking. You must have your facts and figures wrong.

Checking the city’s website and it turns out that the councillor’s numbers are, indeed, off. With no access to off-site parking, a resident will pay just under $15/month for their first vehicle. It’ll cost them under $40/month for any subsequent vehicles. If a resident wants to park out on the street just for the convenience of it, you know, they have access to off-site parking, they’ll be out of pocket slightly under $50/month. That’s about $12 a week, under $2 a day, to park on the street simply as a matter of convenience.

How’s that for your Gravy Trains?! In fact, if you want to guest street park your gravy train outside your house, the city merely asks you to hand over $21.18 for a week. That’s $3 a day for those of you not good with the long division. To park on a street in downtown Toronto.

The War on the Car indeed.

Now I know that parking is a mystifyingly visceral topic, driven more by some ancient sense of entitlement than by good economic/environmental sense. I own a car therefore I am allowed to put it right here at no extra cost to me whatsoever. It just seems outrageous that a city as purportedly under the fiscal gun as our current administration claims it is simply gives away huge tracks of its public space for peanuts. Yes, I called on-street parking ‘public space’ and I’m not the only one. In fact, I lifted the idea outright from a much smarter writer on city stuff over at Urbanophile. Parking on a city’s streets for chump change is not some inalienable right.

We’ve talked about this before and much brighter minds than ours deliberate over the concept of proper pricing for parking to maximize profits while mitigating congestion and the resulting environmental impact. But it doesn’t take a genius to conclude that Toronto, at least in terms of its handling of on-street parking, is simply acting as Santa Claus to drivers. If you own a car, you better be prepared to pay for it. That includes the real cost of parking. And the price of that is a lot more than pennies a day.

— indignantly submitted by Cityslikr