All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

More Casino Dreams And Other Long Shot Gambles

Posted on March 26, 2015 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

I am agnostic, in the noncommittal kind of way, about a casino project going in at Woodbine Racetrack. Back last debate on the issue – what? 1, 2, 3 years ago now? – I was fairly adamant in my opposition to a waterfront/downtown casino as something that would bring no value with it. In fact, it might even detract from the new development going on from the Ontario Place site east through the Don and beyond.

With Woodbine? I don’t know. Gambling’s bare bones are already there. I haven’t heard any other ideas for enhancing the area. Reasonable people are making reasonable sounds about a casino helping to bring about jobs to an area hammered hard by lack of opportunities.

So, with the Executive Committee requesting a report on the prospects of a casino at Woodbine expect to hear renewed debate about the quality of those jobs, the positive and negative effects a casino will have on the area, new revenue windfall pouring into city coffers. Pretty much, the same old, same old. Essentially the same cast of characters, saying the same words only about a different location.

“This is not a pot of gold for Toronto,” Councillor Shelley Carroll said during the meeting (in all likelihood a refrain she made at the last casino debate). “It’s a sustainability strategy for the province.”

That’s one absolute we can make about a casino in Toronto. The city’s cut of casino money will not build us affordable housing. It will not build SmartTrack. It won’t even make much of a dent into the $86 million operating budget shortfall we’ve borrowed money to pay.

Whatever leverage Toronto had with the province to up the percentage take for hosting a casino somewhere downtown will not be in place for Woodbine. Location, location, location, am I right? We will take what the province offers and, if recent interactions are any indication, somehow the city will wind up owing Queen’s Park money in return for hosting a casino at Woodbine.

At best, I imagine, if a Woodbine casino does comes to pass, we’ll be left debating whether or not the revenue it generates for the city covers the social costs inherent in expanding gambling.

Similarly, such fiscal pros and cons will be front and centre with the TTC Chair Josh Colle’s Executive Committee motion about going the public-private partnership route when it comes to building the Scarborough extension of the Bloor-Danforth line. “It is our basic responsibility to look at other ways to manage these,” Mayor Tory said, as part of the administration’s scrambling response to the reports earlier this month about cost overruns and delays with the Yonge-University-Spadina subway extension. roulette The TTC, it has been concluded, is no longer up to the task of managing and overseeing these big capital builds.

Maybe…Maybe…

Another way to look at this particular situation is that maybe the city should shy away from building subways where subways aren’t warranted, building subways for purely political reasons. Let’s stop pursuing bad ideas with similarly bad ideas. Start following best practices and expert advice instead of the ideology of ‘deserve’.

If Mayor Tory and TTC Chair Colle were truly worried about money and excessive costs to the city, the latter would never have supported replacing the LRT extension of the Bloor-Danforth line with a subway in the first place and the first thing the former would’ve done after becoming mayor is reopen that debate and reverse the outcome. Colle did and Tory didn’t, so neither really is in any sort of position to caution us about fiscal responsibility or whatever reasons they’re touting for pushing the P3 model to finance subway construction that shouldn’t even be on the table.

So, whatever. Go nuts. Pursue the P3 dream. Everything else about the Scarborough subway is based on a finger-crossed wing and a prayer. Why not throw P3s onto that particular vanity bonfire.

But please don’t tell us it’s a sure bet. The jury is still out on the efficacy of the P3 model, just like it is on the benefits a casino delivers to municipalities.

The only thing we should know for certain is that politicians championing casinos and P3s are pitching us the lure of easy money and easy answers. We can have whatever it is we want and not pay the full freight. Nothing upfront, interest to be paid eventually, by somebody else.

— feeling luckily submitted by Cityslikr

How High Sir?

Posted on February 19, 2015 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it 17 million times.

You want to fix City Hall? Start electing better city councillors. Easier said than done, for sure, given the disheartening results of last year’s municipal campaign. Thirty-seven of thirty-eight incumbents returned to office including one still under the cloud of a police investigation. Another, Frank Di Giorgio in Ward 12 York South Weston.

The councillor was on Metro Morning today along with another former budget chief, Shelley Carroll, to talk about the city’s need for more revenue, new revenue tools. “Do you think we need new taxes, Frank Di Giorgio?” asked the show’s host, Matt Galloway. Here’s how the councillor responded:

Not at this point. I think certainly, I think the one thing that’s important in the immediate future is that we have to support the mayor…

Say what?

That’s what’s important in the immediate future? City council needs to support the mayor? [Begins flipping frantically through the city’s Code of Conduct for Members of Council. Must support the mayor…Must support the mayor….] Nope. Not seeing that stipulation.

Councillor Di Giorgio has been a local representative for almost 30 years now, at City Hall in amalgamated Toronto since 2000. This is the sum of all his civic wisdom. “I think one thing that’s important in the immediate future is that we have to support the mayor.”

If the councillor actually believes that — and he’s not alone in that way of thinking, sadly, in talking to a candidate during last year’s election who was running against another deadweight incumbent, I was told that a few years earlier in discussing with the councillor why he had voted a certain way, he was told that, You gotta support the boss — why bother with city council races in the first place? Just elect a mayor, be done with it. No messy debates to deal with, rubber stamp city council meetings, items all passed with a waxed red royal seal.

Parsing Councillor Di Giorgio’s go along to get along logic a little further, consider his 2014 re-election. At Marshall’s Musings, Sean Marshall has done fantastic work breaking down the numbers October’s election. A look at the results in Ward 12 shows that less than one in five voters there voted for John Tory. The councillor fared little better, garnering under 30% of the popular vote where just over 1300 ballots separated him from the 4^th place challenger.

So, less than one in three voters gave Councillor Di Giorgio a mandate to unwaveringly support a mayor who fewer than one in five Ward 12 voters backed? It’s how first-past-the-post elections work, I get it, but it’s almost as if the councillor thinks we have some sort of presidential system at City Hall, though. The Big Guy wins. You fall in line behind the Big Guy.

Councillor Di Giorgio’s views on such ring-kissing fealty to the mayor also extends to city staff. As Jude MacDonald reminded me, back during the last administration when the councillor was still TTC commissioner and voted to fire then-CEO Gary Webster, he had his reasons. “Excellence in bureaucracy means the ability to perform tasks that are consistent with leaders of a corporation, the leaders of a city,” he declared. “It’s the ability to put forward positions that are consistent with positions adopted by the mayor.”

Your councillor for Ward 12 York South Weston, folks. Frank Di Giorgio.

So, city councillors are elected to merely to serve at the pleasure of the mayor. Such passiveness from Di Giorgio extends to the city’s dealings with the province evidently. During the Metro Morning discussion, he said exploring the idea of more revenue tools will simply let the province off the hook for paying their share of stuff like social housing. They’ve already stopped paying, Councillor Carroll pointed out. That’s why the city’s scrambling to plug the hole in its operating budget. That’s why we need to a discussion about new revenues. It’s all on us now.

The councillor was having none of it. No need to rush. We already have revenue tools in the arsenal, like the Land Transfer Tax which is bringing in substantial amounts of money to the city coffers. Maybe we could milk some more from that cash cow. If not, the City of Toronto Act is coming up for renewal in a few years, 2018 or so. Let’s revisit this discussion then. In the meantime, don’t ‘undermine the mayor’s initiatives’ because that would be ‘dangerous’. Loose lips sink ships, I guess.

Councillors like Frank Di Giorgio are throwbacks to an era when municipalities were little more than wards of the province, where we were given the property tax to play with, to largely pay for local initiatives, roads, sewers, maybe a portion of public transit. A time when the province contributed substantially more to the overall operations of this city than it sees fit to now. As Councillor Carroll (as well as the city manager, Joe Pennachetti) pointed out, Toronto is a big boy now, closing in on 3 million people. It’s time we put on our big boy pants and realize we’ve been pushed out of the nest.

Provincial contributions to the well-being of this city will be grudging and probably when it is only politically advantageous for them to do so. We can act like two year-olds and hold our breath until we turn blue in the face in hopes of changing their attitude but, well, umm, I wouldn’t…hold my breath. But that’s what Mayor Tory has in mind, and loyal foot soldiers like Councillor Di Giorgio see it as his job to follow the mayor’s marching orders.

After all, that’s what he’s been doing for three decades now. That’s what he was elected to do.

— at your servicely submitted by Cityslikr

One Bright Spot

Posted on December 4, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

It’s my contention that twice now Toronto has missed the opportunity to elect truly progressive leadership when Shelley Carroll was overlooked as a mayoral candidate in successive elections. In 2010, she was in the best position to campaign on the Miller administration mandate yet got squeezed out between Liberal and NDP party machinations. This year, she sidestepped the stampede to support Olivia Chow’s anointment as the left of centre representative on the ballot. Both times, a low recognition factor as well as, I speculate, internal party politics deep sixed any aspirations she might have had for the position of mayor.

So, it’s interesting to note that in the scramble for committee, agency and board appointments, her name has emerged for several key positions in the John Tory administration. The Police Services Board, the TTC, the Budget Committee, Economic Development Committee, the Disabilities Issue Committee, Toronto Arts Council, (am I missing anything?), as well as the Deputy Speaker of City Council. Granted, in many of the more high profile spots – budget and TTC, say – she will not form the majority opinion but it is a far cry from how frozen out she was by the administration last term. Frozen out by the Fords only to emerge as one of its most effective critics.

Has the Tory administration realized this and calculated that it’s probably more prudent to bring her in closer to the power centre? Friends close, enemies closer and all that. No matter. It offers Councillor Carroll a bigger platform to push her ideas and policies.

Let’s not lose sight of that opportunity especially over on Budget Committee where the councillor has been a huge proponent of the notion of participatory budgeting. She might not have the clout to institute the idea this time around (the committee is also populated by a number of perfunctory councillors as well, starting with the chair, Gary Crawford, along with the likes of Michelle Berardinetti, James Pasternak and two unknowns, John Campbell and Justin Di Ciano) but we certainly should expect to hear discussion of it going forward.

Regardless of any calculations at work, the new mayor should be applauded for acknowledging Councillor Carroll’s serious credentials and vast knowledge of how the city works, and at least putting her in the room and at the table where important decisions will be made. handsoff Clearly, during the campaign, Tory made friends in high provincial places with the Liberal government. The fact Carroll is an avowed big L liberal probably helped ease any concerns the incoming administration at City Hall might have had with her designation by the Fords and their cadre as being some sort of enemy combatant.

For her part, Councillor Carroll stayed out of the mayoral fray this year, just going about her business getting re-elected as Ward 33 councillor, not picking sides. She gave a barnburner of a speech at a fundraiser I attended late in the campaign where she expressed some annoyance that the idea of progressivism had somehow become synonymous with the NDP brand. Her work at city council over the course of an 11 year (and counting) career there easily puts to rest the claim that your politics can be defined solely by the party you’re part of. I mean, both Carroll and her council colleagues Mark Grimes and Cesar Palacio are active in or have been members of the Liberal party. One of these is not like the others.

The fact John Tory was not willing to give any power to Councillor Shelley Carroll tells me all I need to know about the limitations he’s put on his administration. It will be more than curious how their relationship develops. I doubt she intends on becoming a head-nodding yes man, going along to get along. There’s little to be gained for her currying favour with the Tory crowd. But she has been given something of an inside voice now to question the direction the mayor intends to take on such big ticket matters like the budget, the TTC, the Toronto Police Services.

It’s not much for those feeling sidelined right now by Team Tory. Still, there are few other councilors I’d be as confident in to remain independent and outspoken as I expect Councillor Carroll will be. If we search really hard for the silver lining in this dark cloud, maybe it might be that the councillor’s upcoming adventures in Torytown will serve as a map for building a better progressive movement.

— ever hopefully submitted by Cityslikr