Tag Archives: East York

Deputations And Disregard

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Let it be a given that annual public consultations on City Hall’s proposed budget are, always have been and always will be an exercise in, if not futility, let’s call it pretense. The people talk. City councillors (at least, those with a hand in crafting the budget) pretend to listen. A show trial of democracy without all the messiness of executions afterward.

So I hesitate to suggest that the consultations currently underway for budget 2011 are any more of a façade than previous ones but some councillors and the mayor seem to be jettisoning even the pretense of pretending. After hearing overwhelmingly from deputants telling him that they’d prefer no service cuts to tax cuts, Mayor Ford claimed that, “Obviously people want a zero-percent tax increase. I’ve heard it from all over.” Someone get the mayor a Q-Tip. Clearly he has some waxy build-up.

And after a particularly fractious and protracted process in East York, Budget Chief Mike Del Grande reportedly quipped that he “heard lots of numbers but at end of the day, I’m not sure it’s reflective.” Not reflective of what, Councillor Del Grande? The opinion of a vast majority of people who took the time to come out and have their voices heard? Or just not reflective of the opinions of those you agree with?

But, to be fair to the Budget Chief, he had endured what sounded like a grueling quarter of a day or so, defending the proposed budget out in East York. Me? I chose to attend the meeting up in North York as it was much easier to get to from downtown. I’m all about getting involved in the democratic process as long as it doesn’t put me out too much.

The proceedings in the council chambers at the North York Civic Centre were more placid than those, it appears, in East York. One might even call them somnolent. Presided over by a congenial even folksy Councillor Ford, deputants came and went, almost exclusively decrying the budget’s proposed cuts to both services and taxes without raising much of a stir from the other members of the budget committee. Councillors Milczyn, Parker, Shiner, Di Giorgio and Deputy Mayor Holyday rarely interacted with anyone other than themselves, asking few questions of the deputants or providing little to no feedback. Only when those stepping forward to speak heaped praise upon the proposed budget (I counted 4 of the 40 or so deputations doing so) did any of these councillors snap to attention or show even a lick of interest.

In fact, the four hours of deputations could’ve been completed in half the time if it hadn’t been for Councillor Shelley Carroll and, to a lesser extent, Anthony Perruzza. They, along with Councillor Ford, appeared to be the only ones from the council perspective who came to actually listen and react to deputations. Carroll did much more than that. Ask questions, tweet pictures, head up into the crowd to assist deputants who were having trouble figuring out the process. It was the Shelley Show, and when she finished up in North York, she made her way over to the East York location to pitch in there.

To be honest, these deputations are in many ways as much about Carroll’s time as budget chief as they are about the 2011 budget. While the proposed document sets out Mayor Ford’s plan for Toronto, it is also a complete repudiation of the previous administration. Tax and spend. A spending problem not a revenue problem. (Dis)respect For The Taxpayers. That which made The Gravy Train run. All of it (or at least the last 4 years) under Carroll’s fiscal watch.

She is the remaining face of the Miller administration’s power group. The mayor retired voluntarily. His Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone, Speaker Sandra Bussin, protégé Adam Giambrone, likewise all gone, less voluntarily. Carroll is the last one standing. She is doing so boldly and unwaveringly.

Carroll was at her best last night when she tangled with the few speakers who heaped praise on the budget for its attacks on spending and taxes but offered little in the way of helpful suggestions about which fat to trim. This includes the Board of Trade’s Carol Wilding who categorically refused to go on the record to say which services she would recommend cutting in order for the city to achieve a budgetary balance. Distancing herself from the dirty business of fiscal belt-tightening, all she would say when asked about cuts was that it was all in the presentation she’d handed out to the councillors.

It was especially invigorating to witness Councillor Carroll verbally pick up the representative from the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses by the scruff of the neck and point that, for all his squawking about tax relief for businesses, he had failed to inform his membership and the public at large about the special program the Miller administration had established to help smaller businesses offset property tax increases. Much blubbering and backtracking ensued from Mr. CFIB and no attempted assistance from Councillor Di Giorgio could rescue him. At least, I think it was assistance Di Giorgio was offering. It was never clear exactly what he was up to on the rare occasions he opened his mouth.

Councillor Carroll is emerging as the voice of sanity at City Hall in the face of the Ford juggernaut. She has been relentless in not only defending the spirit of the Miller administration but in insisting on reasonable debate and discussion, conducted in the proper manner using established protocol. She is standing firm in front of the bulldozer Ford and his boys want to take to our municipal government.

She is being assisted certainly by the likes of Councillors Vaughan, Perks, Davis and McConnell. The difference is, the mayor’s supporters will all dismiss these as downtown, pinko, left wing, elitist kooks. That’s a smear they can’t use on Carroll. Despite her high rank in the Miller administration, she has serious big L liberal pedigree (which we don’t hold against her) and represents a suburban ward, deep up in Ford Country. She should be one of them. She’s not. This makes her a formidable foe of the mayor which we should remember and hold onto when things begin to look bleak.

And there will be times over the course of the next 4 years when things will look bleak.

— fan boyishly submitted by Cityslikr

One Councillor And One Mayor Are Not Enough

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Early on at last night’s Ward 19 council debate, it became clear to me that Toronto’s post-amalgamated governance structure is woefully lacking in delivering us the representation we need and deserve. As the questions piled up (both prepared from business and residents association as well as the audience’s more free form stylings), most expressed concerns about purely local issues. The moratorium on restaurants and bars on Ossington Street. Park upkeep and organization at Trinity-Bellwoods. Traffic congestion in Liberty Village and parking at the CNE.

Undoubtedly, some of these have city wide implications concerning matters like density and park management, but it still felt awfully parochial, if I can use that term non-derogatorily. The debate was held in a parish, after all. So why not `parochial’?

Local matters should be the main duty of those seeking a council seat. To look out for the interests of their constituents. Councillors represent the peoples’ voice at City Hall.

But this leaves the city wide view in the hands of the mayor and the mayor only. Councillors sit on various committees that oversee municipal aspects for the entire city like transit, police, planning but they remain councillors first and committee members second. Leaving us with one voice in the face of 44 who must straddle the line between city building and ward defending. Sometimes these two roles not only don’t jibe but are in direct opposition to one another.

Which may explain some of the palpable anger and discontent at the debate last night toward outgoing councillor for ward 19 and mayoral candidate, Joe Pantalone. He was accused by many of non-responsiveness and unilateral decision making. Perhaps this was always the case but I can’t help thinking that as a high ranking official in the Miller administration, Pantalone stopped looking out for the concerns of those who had elected him while he was concentrating on the bigger picture of Toronto as a whole.

A city of this size and diversity cannot be properly represented by one official and a handful of councillors who are secure enough in their ward positions that they can attend to wider city matters. We need another municipal level of government (yes, I said another level of government) whose sole purpose is for the greater good of the city and to coordinate its place within the entire GTA region. A Board of Control, say, elected from the ashes of the former cities of Toronto, York, East York, North York, Scarborough and Etobicoke. Call it, oh I don’t know, Metro Council. But this thing with a mayor and 44 fiefdoms doesn’t really seem to be fully functioning.

It’s a dilemma I’ll be facing when it comes to deciding where to cast my vote for ward 19 councillor. On one hand, there’s Karen Sun. From her, I get a sense of someone looking to contribute to the building of a better city. That’s not to say she won’t stand tall for the people of this ward. She just seems to have a bigger vision. One that goes beyond the Trinity Spadina border.

On the other hand, there’s David Footman. Having just encountered him last night, it would be presumptuous of me to make sweeping generalizations about his campaign but what I saw at the debate (and read from his campaign literature) is a bull terrier in defense of ward 19 and the people living here. Mr. Footman very likely possesses thoughts about the city in its entirety. Upon first impression however, his strengths seemed to be very much local, on the ground.

Toronto voters should not have to make such a choice. Or rather, there should be a second option. To vote for someone like David Footman whose primary job is to look after our neighbourhood needs. And to vote for Karen Sun as our representative for matters encompassing the entire city. Such a system was in place back before we were all one city. Nothing about amalgamation has ameliorated the situation to the point where we don’t require a similar set up again.

— undecidedly submitted by Cityslikr

How’d We Become The Enemy?

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Lying in bed on Labour Day morning, with the CBC’s The Current on the radio — welcome back from your summer vacation, Anna Maria Tremonti! Looking forward to ignoring you once again for most of the 2010/11 season. – listening to former Ontario Progressive Conservative MPP, Janet Ecker, talk about the new wave of Canadian conservative populism. When she referred to the typical adherent of this movement as ‘Mr. & Mrs. Front Porch’, I thought to myself, “Wow! Could she be any more patronizing?” How exactly is it that we’ve become the enemy?

We, of course, being the so-called downtown, intellectual, liberal elite. Or, to put it in Ms. Ecker’s vernacular, ‘Mr. & Dr. 3rd Floor-Deckers’. So far in this municipal election campaign, we have become the target for the ire coming from Mr. & Mrs. Front Porch due to the unflagging support we show to “our” mayor down at “our” City Hall. Apparently, “our” taxes haven’t risen while “our” services have. “Our” free spending councillors have lavished all their attention and money on “our” downtown wards especially for things like “our” bike lanes which squeeze out the cars coming in from the city’s inner suburban ring when everyone there steps off their front porches to drive downtown to work.

None of which is true, of course. It is only pronounced loudly and often. Downtown taxes have increased along with everyone else’s and, from my own, very anecdotal evidence, while services might not have declined over the past few years, I’m certainly paying more for many of them than I did in the pre-amalgamated Toronto.

But here’s the thing. I’m not blaming those who live in the former cities of Etobicoke, York, North York, East York and Scarborough for this turn of events. We’re all in the same boat here on this one, now paying the unexpected costs we were not told about by those who enforced amalgamation on us. Despite some urban experts saying that the economies of scale not always applying to bigger cities, we were sold a bill of goods about lower costs, lower spending, lower taxes in the megacity by the Harris government, consisting of members like Janet Ecker and Rob Ford’s father, Doug Sr., who defied the wishes of his own Etobicoke constituents to not be absorbed into a bigger Toronto and sat on his hands except to vote ‘yes’ on amalgamation.

And now Ecker’s invited onto the radio to explain grassroots anger, using a clearly test marketed term like ‘Mr. & Mrs. Front Porch’?! Or Rob Ford is championed as looking out for these little guys as he campaigns vigorously to be the hatchet man who will carry out the cuts that were inevitable in light of amalgamation and the downloading that accompanied it? (Or, to put it more poetically, doing the dirty work of his beloved late father.) If there’s any resentment I bear towards Mr. & Mrs. Front Porch, it’s the misdirected rage and anger. Do they have reasons to be angry about the way the city’s working? Sure. Just rage against the ones that actually were really responsible for bringing about this turn of events and not the easiest scapegoats being handed over to you on a platter.

I’m not one to ascribe much to conspiracy theories especially on the part of our elected officials. While a proponent of the power of government to do good, I just don’t think they are capable of pulling off grand schemes to hoodwink the population at large. So there was no alien crash landing near Roswell, N.M. or a 2nd gunman on the grassy knoll. Both are too big a secrets to go unsolved for decades.

But I am beginning to think that maybe the Mike Harris government did come close with the amalgamation of Toronto. It was said at the time (and many times since) that along with helping the provincial ledger sheets with a non-neutral revenue neutral swap of services with the city, the biggest boon for the province with their amalgamation sleight of hand was to water down the progressive core with the more Tory friendly inner suburbs. At worst, the city would become ungovernable due to the constant squabbling between the two factions.

Well, kudos to you, Mr. Harris and Ms. Ecker and Mr. Ford Sr.’s son. We have swung from the right to the left and are now threatening to lurch heavily right once more with fingers being pointed in every direction and accusations of mismanagement and corrupt governance thrown around for good measure. Dysfunctional is the label Toronto’s getting and no one benefits more from it than our overlords smiling smugly at Queen’s Park. Yes, it is no longer the Conservatives but as Dalton McGuinty can most definitely attest to, amalgamation is the gift that just keeps giving. At least, to him and all those who rule from that particular roost if not the citizens of the city.

— wonderingly submitted by Cityslikr