Tag Archives: Councillor Michael Thompson

Buckle Up! It’s Budget Debate Time.

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So today begins 4 days of debate, bluster, posturing, finger pointing and maneuvering before the 2011 operating and capital budgets are voted on and put into action. After being fast tracked through weeks of committees, public deputations and PR battles, the day of reckoning is nigh. The expedited budget, Mayor Rob Ford’s first born, is prepped and ready to go.

To be sure, this budget will be passed, pretty well intact. I’m betting the final vote won’t be that close. Even councillors not aligned with the mayor, sitting nearer the mushy middle than the far right, will go along with the budget especially those representing the more suburban wards. They can’t ignore the big fat goose egg of a property tax increase their constituents will hold tightly onto as proof City Hall is finally listening to what they want. The increase in user fees and various ‘minor’ cuts will take some time to poke holes and deflate the belief bubble many voters insist on living within, convinced that yes, you can get something for nothing.

What will be interesting to watch are the votes that occur when various motions and amendments emerge. Again, the mayor will have his way almost certainly 100% of the time. But some of the votes will be much closer than the final yea or nay on the budget. While Mayor Ford has been on the kind of winning streak at council one expects from someone newly minted into the office, there have been times when his team has had to whip enough councillors in place to secure 1 vote victories. Expect to see some of those in the lead up to Monday’s big vote.

Also expect to see the mayor relatively quiet and sanguine throughout the whole process. Aside from the odd moment when his former boisterous councillor self has turned red-faced and threatened to erupt, he’s been congenial, amiable and seemingly happy to oblige. His brother, Doug, will probably bubble over in exasperation once during the course of the 4 days at all the lefties who simply refuse to understand that government’s just lousy with waste.

Deputy Mayor Holyday will riff on that theme as well, more regularly than Councillor Ford. Taking his glasses off, he’ll chide council to be more serious about taking up the challenge of fiscal responsibility. He may not start a statement with an ‘In my day…’ but that’s just what it’ll feel like. Every time he opens his mouth.

Budget Chief Mike Del Grande will grumpily inform every councillor who thinks the cuts in the budget are too draconian that We. Just. Can’t. Afford. anything. And Everything. Is. On. The. Table. He will also remind everyone that he’s got a thankless, dirty job but someone’s got to do it.

Speak Nunziata won’t be able to mask her contempt for those she disagrees with and will rule them out of order even if they aren’t and brush aside the city clerk who tells her she’s not following protocol. Protocol and procedures are not the Speaker’s strong suits. How many she ignores, steamrolls and/or disregards is anybody’s guess but the over/under currently is 11.

Councillor Mammoliti will rise often and patronizingly tell dissenting councillors that he understands where they’re coming from (he doesn’t) and implore them to just trust him and his newest, bestest friend, the mayor. Councillor Thompson will talk and talk and talk, sounding as if he’s not totally in the mayor’s corner but will invariably vote with him every time. Fingers crossed that councillors Palacio and DiGiorgio aren’t inclined to try and match councillors Mammoliti and Thompson verbosity for verbosity as, well, actually, let them talk. We’ll need time for the occasional pee break. Councillor Milczyn will counter every criticism of the budget with examples of atrocities committed under the Miller regime.

Councillors Vaughan and Perks (ably assisted by newcomer Josh Matlow) will all bug Speaker Nunziata, Deputy Mayor Holyday, the budget chief, councillors Ford, Shiner and Milczyn to no end. Perks and Vaughan will be the ones bringing forth motions and amendments that will send Team Ford scrambling to beat back. If anyone is denied a point of order or not voted an extension to speak, it’ll be either Councillor Vaughan or Perks. Someone will inevitably call one of them a Left Wing Kook which will leave things wide open for councillors Carroll and Davis to seem more than reasonable in pointing out the unreasonableness of much of the budget and its proponents.

Oh yes, it’s going to be 4 days of fun and games, made all the more circus-like because of the inevitability of the ultimate outcome. A budget vote with a safety net. Ironic since it will be the first step toward a more sweeping attempt by the administration to dismantle the safety net the city has carefully stitched together over the last 7 years, beginning with an entire budget review process that will start up almost immediately upon passage of this budget. So enjoy the frivolity, folks, because for here on in it just might get loud.

— prognosticatingly submitted by Cityslikr

Problems With Governing

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We have to stop overreacting to every mumbled declaration coming out of the mayor’s office. We really do.

And I don’t say this, casting aspersions. I am the worst culprit. Whether the mayor (or his official mouthpiece and brother) pronounces Transit City dead or calls for an NFL team to make the city world class or sketches out half-baked subway plans or demands dictatorial mayoral powers, I trend outrage. Can you believe the shit coming out of their mouths?! What are they up to? My god, the sky is falling!!

It’s understandable, this reaction. The boys ran a near flawless election campaign, playing both to their candidate’s strengths and expertly exploiting the gaping weaknesses of his opponents, and installed a stratospherically improbable outsider into the position of mayor. Geniuses of the darkest kind.

So naturally we assume Ford & Co. are bringing that A-game to City Hall. We see machinations with every maneuver, political scheming at the heart of everything that comes out of their mouths. Earnest vigilance must be maintained as we comb through the nuances, trying to read the tea leaves of what is surely a diabolical plan to destroy Toronto as we know it.

I’m beginning to think that as much as we underestimated their power to elect Rob Ford, we’re now overestimating the team’s ability to run City Hall. Having convinced themselves (and enough voters) that the solution to our woes was as easy as fiscal restraint, they have run face-first into the complex.. y glass of actual governance. And the degree of outlandishness in the statements issued from the Ford brain trust is directly proportional to the confusion and scattered thinking going on behind the scenes.

It’s a thought that came to me as I spent a day watching the Executive Committee in action. As ideologically and geographically rigid as it is, the mayor’s cabinet is not functioning like a well oiled machine. Not surprisingly as these are early days yet and this is their first budget process, made all the more manic by the expedited time frame that all signed on to. That some of the team now rail about the lack of quick answers, decisions and reports coming from staff and other committees is indicative of the lack of foresight running through the group. You cut the budget time in half, there are going to be hiccups and stumbles. To expect otherwise is simply admitting you don’t really know how things work.

Many members of the Executive Committee have been out of power positions for a long time if not always, so they’re just getting their sea legs. It also doesn’t help that those councillors who signed on to join Team Ford share, to varying degrees, the mayor’s simplistic view of governing. Stopping The Gravy Train, and all that. So, they aren’t the sharpest tacks in the carpet.

This is one of the drawbacks of the stronger (but not as strong as Doug Ford would like) mayoral system that was ushered in with the City of Toronto Act in 2006. Given the power to now pick an Executive Committee (as opposed to having it emerge from the elected chairs of the standing committees as was previously done), it’s all about buying into and running with the mayor’s vision, let’s call it. This is not unique to Mayor Ford. David Miller did the exact same thing in his 2nd term. The wider geographic and ideological representation of the Miller Executive Committee probably reflected a wider political view in the mayor rather than a less ironclad grip.

While purer, Mayor Ford’s committee is not without divergence. There are the star/power magnets. None more so than Giorgio Mammoliti whose slavish deference to the mayor is exceedingly creepy especially given the often times antagonistic relationship that existed between the two when they were both just lowly councillors. Mammoliti’s devotion, however, is in all likelihood about an inch deep and predicated almost solely on how popular the mayor remains. Ditto Denzel Minnan-Wong.

Increasing their respective profiles also might explain the presence of councillors Ainslie, Berardinetti, Robinson and Thompson. None seem to be hardcore ideologues. Peter Milczyn is the administration’s apologist, countering every criticism of his crew with examples of how bad David Miller et al were. His list of grievances against them is as long as the councillor is short.

Then there’s the ineffability of Norm Kelly and Cesar Palacio. Who knows what’s going on with those two? One’s practically mute and the other, well, he asks questions that baffle more than they clarify. It’s not a language issue. Councillor Palacio seems genuinely confused and out of his depth much of the time on the Executive Committee.

The hardcore believers are Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday and Budget Chief Mike Del Grande. These two are Fordites through and through, believing whole-heartedly that all this city needs is some tough love and fiscal discipline to straighten it out. It’s almost endearing, in a doddering, grandfatherly way in the deputy mayor whose inevitable outburst at the table is always followed by a little nap.

The budget chief is the one to watch, however, as much as he claims to be out of the loop sometimes. Proudly bearing the badge of Michael Del Grande, Chartered Accountant, he appears convinced that he can vanquish the budgetary beast with the simple math one uses in running a household. Don’t spend more than you earn. Anything else is simply an extravagance which We. Can’t. Afford. As he so tells anyone who thinks otherwise. Government’s just like a business. It’s. As. Simple. As. That.

The outlier on the Executive Committee is the disagreeable David Shiner. He seems much more aware of the reality than any of his compatriots. At least twice yesterday, he plaintively bemoaned the lack of provincial funding for the operating budget of the TTC. What’s that you say, apostate? Surely you don’t mean to suggest that the city actually has a revenue problem! Take that back and chant along with the mayor: the city has a spending problem. Combine that with the proposed plans from the city’s finance department to ask the province for a piece of the HST and things at the committee were beginning to sound downright Millerite.

Which could go to explaining at least some of the motivation behind Councillor Doug Ford’s outburst in the Globe yesterday about the mayor needing increased powers to run roughshod over the council. It may be borne of frustration and a growing realization that running City Hall is nothing like running a business. Not even close. Instead of seeing ulterior motives in such assertions, we should see admissions of, if not failure, than recognition on the part of the administration that this isn’t going to be as easy as they’d originally thought. Slogans drive campaigns. Slogans get slaughtered in the halls of power.

That is not to suggest we let slide the crazy notions that get floated from the mayor’s office. Let’s just stop immediately assuming that they’re part of some devious, Machiavellian plot. Chances are, they’re signs of commotion, disquiet and desperation in the ranks as they come to terms with the possibility that they’ve bitten off more than they can chew and are severely under-equipped to deal with the enormous task at hand. Accepting that, we can than adjust our response accordingly.

— calmly submitted by Cityslikr

You Don’t Mind If We Keep These, Do You?

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Maybe I was a little preoccupied last week, what with decorating the place for our Super Bowl party, ushering in the year of the rabbit and getting all hot and bothered about that revolution over there in Egypt, but it seems to me that the police services’ matter-of-fact announcement that they had decided to keep those sound cannon thingies they got for the G20 confab last summer went kind of unnoticed. Catherine Porter took an impassioned stance against the decision over at the Star on Friday. But that seems to have been about it from the mainstream press.

Maybe it’s not that big a deal, the police still a little on the hot seat for their (man)handling of protesters at the G20 meeting, deciding to keep 4 Long Range Acoustic Devices for the bargain basement price of $30, 000. Two of them will be used for ‘hailing’ practices only, one by the marine unit and the other lent out to the fire department. The other two will be tucked away just in case.

In case of what, you ask? If the police didn’t feel the need to use the LRADs during the G20, under what circumstance exactly do they forsee needing them in the future? I think one of the takeaway lessons from the G20 was not that the police required more crowd control weaponry at their disposal. Restraint seemed to be more in order and it’s hard to imagine how giving them access to an apparatus “originally conceived to support the protection and exclusion zones around U.S. Navy warships” is going to encourage any semblance of moderation or self-control. How will they know it works if they don’t try it out every now and then?

It immediately brings to mind the late, great Bill Hicks’ bit about the turkey shoot that was the Gulf War. U.S. soldiers reading from the manual as they try out the latest kill machines at their disposal. Take a moment and watch it here. And then watch this one which has nothing to do with this but it always makes me laugh. Watch it and think about the Black Eyed Peas or Christina Aguilera.

Give boys toys and they will play with them. (Sorry about the commercial before the video. Ain’t that Betty White funny?)

It seems to me the police and their chief Bill Blair could’ve used this opportunity to make a gesture of goodwill to the people they ostensibly serve and protect. To show everyone that, in fact, the police aren’t all about bully boy, military tactics and repressive measures chalk full of constitutional dubiousness. A friendly overture. A peace offering. I know, I know. It doesn’t make up for what happened last summer but at least you can rest assured that if we meet up again under similar circumstance, we’re not going to try and make your ears bleed.

Instead Chief Blair informed the Police Services Board that, along with the security cameras they received for the G20, they’d be keeping the sound cannons too. Done deal. Let’s move on to the next order of business, shall we? This elicited responses ranging from ‘shocked’ (Judi Cohen) to confusion (Councillor Nunziata… get used to that) to yet another excuse for bloviation (Councillor Thompson) on his way to handing off responsibility for making a decision.  Once more, the concept of civilian oversight mocked and slapped around a little.

Now I don’t want to go making spurious and possibly trite comparisons between what’s going on in Egypt currently and our police deciding to keep LRADs as part of their arsenal. But a security state starts somewhere. In that early mix comes an unquestioning deference toward those in positions of authority and power. If we can’t make a fuss and decide what instruments of coercion and surveillance our police are allowed to use, I’d say we’ve already handed over an uncomfortable degree of our personal sovereignty.

— timidly submitted by Cityslikr