Tag Archives: Ford For Toronto

Bad Mojo Rising

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How much weight is too much for even the strongest of Mayor Ford supporters on city council to bear?

I ask as the Executive Committee goes in to session today, dealing with such matters as a casino, property taxes, capital budgets and Mayor Ford’s bogged down in yet another football coaching related controversy, his ability to lead once again hampered by questions of bad judgement. Where’s the tipping point when even members of his own Executive Committee decide the city’s future, as well as their political fortunes, will be irrevocably harmed by a continued enabling of the Ford administration? When will good governance trump crass politics?

Now maybe everyone’s hoping that once the high school football season ends in a couple weeks or so, the mayor will re-focus his attention on the job he’s actually paid to do. But unless he vows to dial back on his involvement next fall and the fall after that, it will be on ongoing item of contention. (Could it be he’s all in now, working toward a championship season so that he can announce his temporary retirement and go out a winner? Stay tuned, Don Bosco Eagles’ fans).

But I think it’s safe to say that the mayor’s troubles aren’t really seasonal and the rate of such incidences is hardly declining as he gets more comfortable in his role. Sure, they’ve spiked this fall but it’s not like they return to an acceptable level of competency. It is truly a regression to the mean in the case of Mayor Ford’s ongoing transgressions.

Councillor Jaye Robinson announced earlier this year that she’s leaving the Executive Committee at the end of 2012. There are similar rumblings from Councillor Michelle Berardinetti. Councillor David Shiner is on the outs with the mayor after his motion to ban plastic bags made it through city council. Although highly unlikely to jump ship, councillors Milczyn, Minnan-Wong and Thompson have all been openly critical of Mayor Ford on various issues over the last couple months.

This is a leaky boat that can only keep afloat if the mayor stops punching holes in it. Mayoral clout is as effective as the power that wields it. The bully possesses strength through fear and intimidation. If Mayor Ford continues to piss away base support with these ridiculously preventable missteps and abuses of position, what’s to fear or be intimidated by? Sure, he can remove you as chair of a committee or boot you from Executive but so what? As his reputation sinks, there’s less and less upside for councillors to hitch their wagons to him.

This is go time for Team Ford. The debate over the 2013 operating and capital budgets is just starting and will not only determine the direction going forward but may define his term in office. (The 2014 budgets will be seen as little more than a campaign document.) If the mayor squanders this opportunity, either through an obstinate adherence to bad policy ideas or bad behaviour, he might not be able to reassume even the appearance of council leadership. That would leave him, going into the next election campaign looking like an out of control (gravy) train wreck.

 

— prognosticatingly submitted by Cityslikr

Ford-V-Vaughan

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Nothing it seems is capable of stirring the somnolent, summer-dazed state of the Ford Administration like a broadside delivered its way by Councillor Adam Vaughan. Like a dopey, grumpy bear kicked in the slats while still in hibernation mode – wait for it, I’m going for a seasonal grand slam here – Team Ford wakes with a roar of indignation whenever it sniffs a slight emanating from the direction of Ward 20. Springing into fight mode and shedding its leaves of inaction (Nailed it!), Ford Nation dons the magical Cloak of Victimhood and goes full on DefCon 2 when alerted to a Vaughanian attack.

From the mayor’s standpoint, it’s entirely understandable. Hoping to re-channel the spirit of 2010, suburban-versus-urban mojo into another winning campaign, nobody better summons the loathing of downtown elitism more than Adam Vaughan except maybe Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam. Whip smart, smart-alecky and familiar with basic concepts of city building, Vaughan is everything Mayor Ford isn’t. And the mayor and his most ardent supporters despise him for that. Since anger serves as fuel for Ford Nation, an object for their ire is what primes the pump.

Thus, the Toronto Sun columnist and former Ford PR flack, Adrienne Batra, had to engage in some pretzelling of logic to refer to Councillor Vaughan’s latest criticism of the mayor as a personal attack. The point of the councillor’s comments as I read them, Ms. Batra, was that because of Mayor Ford’s absence in doing anything, well, mayoral, the space is filled with his off-the-field antics. Or, involvement “…in an inordinate amount of unusual situations”, as you refer to them.

So the story then becomes all about Councillor Vaughan instead of the underperformance of Mayor Ford. The councillor’s angry, still seething about Ford’s victory. He’s a spotlight seeker, constructing a platform for a run at the mayor’s office in 2014. It’s just personal, just politics. There’s nothing of substance to his criticisms. The mayor’s performance is beyond reproach except maybe of the friendliest type from the likes of Adrienne Batra. All else is simply cheap politicking.

The curious thing for me, though, in this on-going saga is the councillor’s motives in all this. As a former journalist, he must be well aware of the optics at work. He’s the bête noire of this administration and with each critical utterance toward it only becomes bête-er noire-er. It has to be an intentional stance he’s taking, this outspoken gadfly who receives as much enmity as accolades every time he takes aim at the mayor.

Any publicity is good publicity as they say. Keeping visible while in opposition. Grooming himself to be the most logical opponent to Mayor Ford in 2014.

It’d be foolish or naïve to rule the possibility out. As Matt Elliott wrote last week, Toronto’s downtown core and East York didn’t play an insignificant role in Rob Ford’s successful mayoral bid. Any major shift against him there could further dampen his re-election chances. So perhaps Councillor Vaughan believes that relentless, merciless slagging of the mayor will so diminish him in the eyes of urban voters that the inner suburbs will have to swing even harder toward the mayor in order for him to have a hope in hell for a second term. A trend which is not yet materializing.

It’s a strategy that comes with considerable risk for the councillor. For every downtown vote he swings away from Mayor Ford, there could be a suburban vote that hardens in the mayor’s favour. The numbers still favour the politician who can swing a majority of suburban votes their way. Besides—

IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT THE FUCKING 2014 ELECTION, FOLKS!

Why can’t we extend the same, I don’t know, courtesy toward Councillor Vaughan as we did then councillor Rob Ford, and assume not everything he says and does is about running for mayor? Maybe he’s just another straight shooting, telling it like is, Johnny that we all viewed Rob Ford to be back in the day. Maybe, like Rob Ford circa 2009, Adam Vaughan is just fucking angry with the current direction the mayor is trying to take the city and has trouble keeping a lid on it. Folks loved Rob Ford’s frankness. But somehow Adam Vaughan’s is smug, self-serving, angry vitriol?

But before I take the Rob-is-Adam, Adam-is-Rob, I Am the Walrus comparison too far, it’s worth pointing out that Rob Ford’s angry tirades have proven to be largely illusory which is the source of the doldrums the mayor currently finds himself in. The out of control, tax-and-spending Gravy Train was little more than the figment of his blinkered small government mindset. It was what we would crudely refer to as pissing into the wind.

So far, nobody’s been able to prove Councillor Vaughan wrong on his anti-Ford administration screeds. There has been an appalling lack of leadership from the mayor’s office. Mayor Ford’s needed no help from Councillor Vaughan in having his antics overshadow his accomplishments in governance.  The mayor has only himself to blame for being sidelined and perhaps the only motivations in Councillor Vaughan’s continued verbal assault on him is to keep it that way. It’s just better for everyone concerned.

— wonderingly submitted by Cityslikr

Fighting Entropy

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It’s not as if city council voted to secede from Ontario and go it alone as a province. Or to institute sharia law. Or legalize pot. Or rid Yonge Street of all cars for all time.

Last Thursday, city council voted to ban plastic bags beginning January 2013. Political implications about our mayor’s relationship with council aside, it was no big deal. Get in line and join the club. Toronto is not the first municipality in Canada seeking to enact such a ban. Not even close.

Yet some who aren’t necessarily against the idea of banning plastic bags found the process with which council went about it detrimental, let’s call it. “Irresponsible,” Torontoist’s Steve Kupferman suggested. “There’s a real chance this move could prove to be a disaster,” Matt Elliott wrote for Metro’s Urban Compass.

Really, guys? Really?

I get that how the vote came to be was out of the ordinary. Oh yeah, I’ll admit that it was impulsive even. Items are traditionally studied before coming to council. Staff delivers reports. They are put through the committee wringer.

All for very good reasons. Councillors should have all the facts there are to have before them ahead of making decisions. To be as informed as possible in order to facilitate easy implementation.

I get it.

But strange times call for strange measures. There’s a gaping agenda hole that needs be filled. Mayor Ford seems intent on whiling away the next couple years campaigning and repealing much of what council achieved over the course of the Miller years. It’s legislative entropy. Without some pushback from the rest of council, the entire apparatus might collapse into itself.

It wasn’t as if it all came right out of the blue, out of left field. They weren’t talking bike lanes or economic development and – boom! – suddenly there’s two plastic bag ban motions. The mayor brought plastic bags to the table. He wanted to rescind the 5¢ fee retailers were supposed to charge for them. As the Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale pointed out in his calm, even-handed article, “…once a proposal is brought to a meeting of the whole council, any councillor can propose an amendment to the policy in question — and have the amendment decided upon once and for all on that same day.”

Shit happens in other words. Mayor Ford came to council unprepared for any sort of possible curve in the road. Caught flat-footed by an audible called at the line of scrimmage, he had no back up game plan. It was a rear-guard fight he didn’t have the forces at his disposal to fend off.

This should come as no surprise. Since the bruising transit battle in the spring, the mayor has cast himself in the role of opposition. He’s reactive not proactive; rejecting not building. All with an eye toward finding that one thing that’ll get him in good with ‘taxpayers’ again, that one issue to re-ignite the ire of Ford Nation.

It’s a game of counter-punching now. Unless or until council seizes control of some of the key committees at midterm this fall, we should get used to legislation being made in an extemporaneous manner. As John McGrath wrote back in March, “Every. Single. Decision. From here on out everything the city does is going to be decided on an absurd, ad hoc basis…Toronto’s going to lurch from one battle to another as the two sides at council try to poach votes from the centre.”

But I don’t see this as necessarily a bad thing or an institutional crisis. (Do I think our municipal governance needs some tweaking? Absolutely). This is simply a crisis of… no, let’s not use such catastrophic language… a failure of leadership. Up until the mayoralty of Rob Ford, the amalgamated city of Toronto admirably muddled through for 13 years. Our current cris—predicament is about one guy and the strictest of his ideological adherents.

And as Mr. Dale points out in his article, we’re not in uncharted waters with the plastic bag ban. “Unlike the federal and provincial legislatures, which take months to turn an idea into law,” Dale writes, “council regularly makes policy changes on the fly.” City staff will still write up a full report. If council’s smart, they’ll make time for public deputations. “Since the actual bylaw has not yet been approved, only a council motion,” Dale goes on to say, “the city could still hold public meetings or otherwise allow for corporate feedback. But spokesperson Wynna Brown said ‘it’s premature to speculate on next steps at this point.’”

Leave the speculation to Mayor Ford. That’s really all he’s got. For the rest of us, as the t-shirts and fridge magnets recommend, Stay Calm and Carry On. The wheels of municipal government must keep turning even if it’s unclear who’s at the wheel.

— improvisationally submitted by Cityslikr