All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

Endorsing Chris Stockwell

Posted on October 2, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

For me the really interesting aspect of yesterday’s Etobicoke-York Community Council’s nomination process for its preferred candidate to replace Doug Holyday as city councillor for Ward 3 was just how predictable it all was. Much is made of how name recognition plays a major factor in voting at the municipal level. Well, it seems even our elected representatives are more than a little star struck when it comes to making their selections.

In the end it was all about the names. Chris Stockwell. John Nunziata. Even Agnes Potts, for those watching Etobicoke politics over the last 20 years, had a certain name recognition as a former school board trustee and pre-amalgamation councillor.

It makes sense. Savvy political operators take 5 minutes to wow the crowd with a rousing stump speech, outlining all the positive ways they will contribute to the community they’ve been appointed to represent. What’s a neophyte outsider to do in the face of that?

Yet, aside from Ms. Potts who stressed her work in the community over the time she spent as an elected official, the frontrunners fizzled at the mic. Never mind the forgettable performances of non-pols like Holyday’s choice, Peter Leon, or the Ford blessed Ross Vaughan. John Nunziata did little more than read off his CV and pledge not to run in Ward 3 in next year’s general election.

The community council’s eventual nominee, Chris Stockwell, was hardly more inspired. In what amounted to an extended shrug, Stockwell said, “I’m simply coming here saying, if you want someone who can hit the ground running and knows how politics works, I’m available.”

Certainly there’s something to that. With barely over a year left in the term, all a complete newcomer to City Hall would be able to accomplish is keeping their head above the water, what with the rope learning they’d be doing. A place holder in every sense of the word.

But aside from his experience — over 20 years in fact, first as an Etobicoke city councillor, then a Metro councillor before moving on to Queen’s Park — there was little talk from Stockwell about stepping forward as a public service. When asked why he wanted the job, his response? After 10 years as a private citizen, he ‘missed it’.

You’d think that kind of statement alone would disqualify him in the eyes of someone like Councillor Doug Ford who hates career politicians. Just another fat cat coming for one last slurp at the trough. Where’s your business sense, Stockwell? Your talk of Lean Six Sigma?

But Councillor Ford had other things on his mind during this whole process.

Along with his mayor-brother and newly re-allied Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, the councillor was still smarting from the grave injustice done to them Ward 3 by city council in voting against a by-election to replace Holyday. Leftists at City Hall were just itching to further deny them Ward 3 their rightful representation and were all probably gathering together in their coven, looking to impose their will on them Ward 3 with a downtown pinko elite cyclist appointee.

So deep was their suspicion that Councillor Mammoliti tried pushing through a referral motion until they could secure a guarantee that the Etobicoke-York Community Council’s decision would be supreme. Much of the motion was ruled out of order by city staff and the Ford Brothers reluctantly agreed that they had to push on with council’s July mandate in selecting a replacement, regardless of the ultimate will of the people to have a by-election. It was just yet another sad example of how downtown was sticking it to the suburbs.

Nothing would serve this narrative better than if council ignored the recommendation of Etobicoke-York Community Council and appointed someone other than Chris Stockwell as the new Ward 3 councillor. A narrative, coincidentally, the Fords seem to be pushing a lot in the run up to next year’s election campaign. For 4 years, Mayor Ford has been trying to serve the folks of Toronto to the best of his abilities but city council just keeps getting in the way. Not appointing Chris Stockwell would be a perfect illustration of this and give the mayor plenty of ammunition.

And who better to get the downtown lefties’ collective backs up than a former muckie-muck in the Mike Harris government that killed the Eglinton subway and forced amalgamation on Toronto? My guess is, the Ford faction didn’t give a shit about Stockwell’s qualifications or the reasons he wanted the gig. He provided the best opportunity for council to do their bidding and appoint someone else.

Which it shouldn’t, of course. If precedent has it that city council essentially rubber stamps a community council’s choice for appointment, that’s what should happen next week with Chris Stockwell. Not only for the crass reasons of denying Mayor Ford his perfect talking points going forward but because this particular by-election/appointment situation was highly contentious, its outcome rife with questions and concerns of Ward 3 residents as merely after-thoughts in the battle between the mayor and council. This won’t be the last time an appointment process will occur. Council should endeavour to keep it as orderly and grounded in rules as possible.

Besides, I think it’ll be interesting to see Stockwell in action again. By all accounts he was as funny and engaging as he was pugnacious. It’s not as if he can be any more right-leaning and mayor-friendly than the man he would be replacing. It’ll be fun watching someone who was part of the team that created so many of the problems this city faces now try and chip in with some solutions.

— positively submitted by Cityslikr

Bridge The Gap

Posted on August 23, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

Sixteen years into amalgamation, Toronto is still struggling with a strong sense of unified place. Six separate entities officially smushed into one but remaining defiantly, petulantly, antagonistically individual. That urban-suburban divide. The downtown gets everything. [Fill in your former municipality surrounding it here] gets nothing.

Don’t even think about introducing the 905 into that warring equation. An entirely different beast altogether. Their own local governments, transit systems, civic culture. Distant relatives in an already estranged family.

Yet you can take a 15 minute jaunt along Bloor Street West west west (although not a particularly pleasant one, what with the 4 lanes of speeding traffic shooting by you), from the Markland Wood shopping plaza in Etobicoke, past some apartment towers of mid-teen stories in height at most, past a park with a baseball diamond, more apartments, past the parking lot and clubhouse of the Markland Wood Golf Club, its fairways rolling westward to Etobicoke Creek, where you cross a bridge to find yourself in Mississauga. The blue sign on the roadside says as much. From the 416 to the 905 in a few hundred steps.

Not so distant after all.

In fact, continuing on a few blocks, this slight slice of Mississauga doesn’t feel that far flung at all. The strip of apartments continue, a little older, shabbier around the edges. By the time you reach Fieldgate Plaza, east of Dixie Road, there’s a diversity of residents going about their business that equals many places you’ll find throughout the city of Toronto. Certainly this ward 3 of Mississauga feels much more urban than the leafy neighbourhoods a few traffic lights back to the east in Etobicoke’s ward 3.

Funny thing, the Fieldgate Plaza and surrounding area has more than a passing resemblance to the downtown Toronto high rise, traffic filled, green space deficient existence of a certain Li’l Ginnie deplored by Doug Holyday earlier this year when he was at council, representing Etobicoke Centre.

In his own backyard, just beyond past the ol’ creek there, life was being conducted in a manner completely foreign to our former Deputy Mayor. Where folks didn’t need their leaves hoovered and windrows cleared. Within an easy evening stroll.

Having yet to move past our own myopic parochialism in Toronto, it seems a waste of time to call for a wider, more regional cohesion but we cannot continue battling one another, treating every other surrounding municipality as some competing interest and a threatening, mysterious entity, looking to steal our jobs and children. Our civic and political differences have been used by politicians at every level to undermine our best interests. Suburban voters pandered to by vilifying urbanites. Suburbanites viewed as an occupying force, laying siege to the core of the city with their cars and loud leaf blowers.

And the result? Every municipality within the GTHA is left to fend for itself, begging and scratching for the crumbs tossed our way by upper levels of government that seem only interested in the region when it comes to collecting votes. The feds shrug off cities as a provincial matter. Queen’s Park is forever looking over its shoulder not wanting to be seen as too Toronto-centric.

This calculated indifference can only happen when we stand around, pointing our fingers at one another and speaking out with separate voices. In a region as interconnected as this, no one city should hope to prosper at the expense of others. That would be counterproductive to the whole. As hoary a cliché as it may be, the GTHA’s commonalities are much more prevalent than the differences. One place is simply not just this while another is just that.

If you think that’s little more than hyperbolic boosterism, try taking a stroll sometime across what are nothing more than boundaries on a map.

— brotherly submitted by Cityslikr

A Tale Of 2 Community Councils

Posted on June 19, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

The downtown versus suburbs pissing match flared up again this week, ignited by the usual suspects, councillors Doug Ford and Giorgio Mammoliti, over the redevelopment of a northern portion of St. Lawrence Market.

“When it comes to the downtown part of the city, it freaks me out,” Councillor Mammoliti spouted, “it freaks me out that everybody can find money to be able to do these things when the rest of us are told no.”

“We’re going out and we’re spending (a) disproportionate amount of money downtown all the time,” Councillor Ford mouthed. “Etobicoke North we get crumbs,” the Toronto Sun’s Don Peat quotes the councillor saying, “people out in Scarborough get crumbs.”

It’s a very easy political fight to pick. All appearances would back the councillors’ claims up. Attending the North York Community Council meeting yesterday, it was wrapped up before lunch. On its agenda were some 56 items, accompanied by about 10 deputations from the public.

This allowed for enough time to get back downtown to City Hall and take in the Toronto-East York Community Council meeting when it resumed after lunch. Its agenda included 128 items with over 20 deputations for one item alone. (For the record, the Scarborough Community Council meeting dealt with 37 items and the Etobicoke-York Community Council, which both councillors Ford and Mammoliti are part of, had 52 items before it.) If you’re counting along at home, the 3 suburban community councils had just 17 more items combined than their downtown counterpart.

Certainly the Toronto-East York Community Council represents significantly more of the city’s population than the other three, with just under 1/3 of the entire population of Toronto. And without question, it’s the area of town getting the lion’s share of the development, what with the business core within the boundaries while sitting on a good chunk of the waterfront. This is where a majority of the action’s at, baby.

But that somehow this translates into receiving a disproportionate piece of the total budget pie? The claim never really comes with any concrete proof or reliable sources. It’s cache comes purely through the repetitive chant not any actual facts.

We’ve written a few times about the study commissioned back in the day by Councillor Norm Kelly, Fair Share Scarborough. Ostensibly it set out to see if Scarborough was getting its fair share of city services under amalgamation. Turns out there was no solid proof Scarborough was either getting ripped off or making out like bandits in the situation. A wash, let’s call it.

Nothing since that study has surfaced to prove otherwise.

Yet that doesn’t stop the likes of Doug Ford or Giorgio Mammoliti (Councillor Frances Nunziata is also a avid proponent of the divisive tactic) from trying to make political hay out of it.

Oh, but what about all that Section 37 money the downtown gets and the suburbs see nothing of? The slush fund. The dirty bribe money. Why does it only go to the wards where the development is?

“Distribute the money equally to all the boroughs not just downtown all the time,” Councillor Ford demanded.

Fair’s fair, right? All for one and one for all, yeah? We’re all in this together.

Except for the development part of the equation.

Seems the likes of Councillor Ford is all for section 37 funds as long as the development that provides it goes elsewhere in the city.

Next time the councillor from Ward 2 Etobicoke whines about his share of section 37 funds ask him about Humbertown.

“We’re all in consensus, we’re going to kill this thing.”

So spoke Councillor Ford at a public meeting about a proposed development in his neck of the woods.

It seems that you can suck and blow at the same time.

There are many residents of this city who can rightfully claim that they are being left out of the politics, the planning, the development of Toronto. Their claim is legitimate. But politicians like Doug Ford and Giorgio Mammoliti are simply piggybacking on that grievance, attempting to leverage it for political gain. They’re looking for others to do the heavy-lifting of governance and city-building while they just squawk away noisily in their little corners of the city.

— submitted by Cityslikr