All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

A Second Chance To Get It Right

Posted on October 4, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

Hey Toronto.

What do you say we kill this Scarborough subway nuttery once and for all? With city council meeting next week to consider the City Manager’s subway report it requested back in July, there seems to be a real opportunity to put a fucking nail in the coffin of this nonsense. A silver bullet through its already malfunctioning heart.

We can chalk the underground madness up to a giddy summer revelry. The heat and mint juleps got to our better judgement. Our collective fever’s now broken and we can come to our senses. A little bit self-conscious about our embarrassing outburst of irrationality but, hey, who hasn’t at least once followed a very bad idea down the rabbit hole?

“The purpose of this report,” city staff writes, “is to inform Council that the terms and conditions for supporting the McCowan Corridor Subway have been met with the exception of the $1.8 billion ($2010) commitment from the Province [italics mine].”

“With the exception of”, in fact, negates the very claim that statement makes of all the terms and conditions for supporting city council’s preferred subway route in the McCowan corridor. Not all the funding from the two senior levels of government has been secured and, in an ideal world, that would automatically kill the subway plan and revert back to the LRT. There was a lot of chatter about the poison pill motions that were voted in favour of at the July council meeting that would ensure the city wouldn’t go ahead with building a subway without all the other money it asked for in place.

Taken at their word, a majority of council is obligated to vote against a Scarborough subway.

Yeah. My eye just popped a blood vessel writing that last sentence.

Even assuming that ain’t going to happen, the city manager’s table for the necessary property tax increases to pay for the city’s portion for the subway build, .5% in each of the next two years and .6% the year after that, dedicated solely to the Scarborough subway, should give many of the councillors pause.

Let’s call those numbers a best case scenario. It doesn’t include cost overruns, interest rate increases, credit rating changes, capital maintenances, etc., etc., that the city would have to assume with a subway (that it wouldn’t with the LRT). We’ll refer to the city manager’s numbers as ‘for starters’.

Even if they were spot on, these property tax hikes will pressure not only other demands for revenue tools to build more necessary transit infrastructure throughout the GTA as part of the province’s Big Move but for the basic ongoing operations of the TTC and its capital budget for things like state of good repair. The TTC chair is already demanding more money for the transit system after years of a flat lined budget from the city and fare increases. In an atmosphere where voters are still only very reluctantly willing to consider new taxes and levies to go to enhanced transit infrastructure, saddling the public with property tax increases for a vanity project of dubious need seems counter-productive to the wider goal.

Never mind the kind of pressure this would put on the rest of the city budget. You start with a .5% property tax increase for the Scarborough subway, how much more will council be willing to stomach to help pay for other basic city services and capital outlays? Going into an election year, it’s difficult to imagine many councillors signing up for the kind of bump needed in order to avoid cutting programs and other infrastructure needs.

And that’s what this is all about, all that it’s ever been about. Next year’s election. A handful of councillors have bought into the notion that being on the bad side of the Scarborough subway issue will imperil their political future. Fearful in the face of an angry Ford Nation, they’ve traded in common sense for a slab of red meat to feed their constituents. They’ve jeopardized the city’s transit planning prospects for nothing more than individual advantage.

But I truly believe they’ve miscalculated.

The biggest proponent for the Scarborough subway has put himself into an awkward position, re-election wise. Mayor Ford has held steadfast in his view folks can only afford a property tax increase of .25% and not one per cent more. Clearly, that’s well short of what’s needed. So, he’s either going to have to get behind a tax increase he’s made a career of railing against or be a subway supporter in name only, unwilling to cough up the dough to make it happen.

While logic hasn’t always been the strongest suit of those supporting the mayor, I think there’s another factor his council colleagues need to consider going into next week’s transit debate. Just how potent a force is Mayor Ford going to be in 2014? With the news of his occasional driver and full time friend Sandro Lisi’s arrest Tuesday on drug related charges and today’s whammie about the police following the mayor’s movement with air surveillance, it’s increasingly impossible to see him remaining a viable candidate outside of his hardest of hardcore support.

So let’s move beyond the crass political calculations of this transit debate where one of the variables is the mayor and his Scarborough Deserves A Subway legion. In a letter to the city earlier this week, Metrolinx once again points out that the preferred option remains the Scarborough LRT. More stops providing better access to more people. No property tax increases to build it. No money burned in sunk costs. All costs overruns and other financial changes picked up by the province. Ready to go now and not 5 years down the road.

Andy Byford, the TTC CEO, has been very emphatic if diplomatic in pointing out that the next subway Toronto actually needs is a relief line, providing transit users in the north and east of the city (including, yes, Scarborough) a less congested route into the downtown core that by-passes the already at-capacity Yonge line. It could easily be called the Scarborough Relief Line. Here, Scarborough. There’s your subway.

A genuine do-over has presented itself to city council next week. An opportunity for councillors to re-right a previous mistake, made with the worst of intentions but under a lot of self-inflicted duress. That’s a situation that doesn’t happen very often in life. Let’s make the most of it and put this sad, sorry spectacle behind us.

— hopefully submitted by Cityslikr

Welcome To The Hot Seat, Mr. Budget Chief

Posted on September 4, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

Anybody else pause a moment reading the Toronto Sun’s Don Peat write that our budget chief, Councillor Frank Di Giorgio, suggests the process of balancing the 2014 operating budget might ‘require a few miracles’? The man in charge of the $10 billion (more or less) purse strings casts an eye heavenward in hopes of some divine intervention to make sure revenues match expenditures because actual math might not do the trick this time round. Fingers crossed. Say your prayers. Hope there’s a rabbit to pull out of the fiscal hat.

I’m sure it was just an expression and the budget chief isn’t really that concerned. He has no choice but to balance the budget. The province mandates that he does so. It could even be he’s simply ramping up the concern, clearing the way for either service cuts or tax increases as necessary in order to meet the zero bottom line. He won’t be the first budget chief to do so.

But it could also be that Councillor Di Giorgio, in his first kick at the can as budget chief, is now staring into the hard reality of Mayor Ford’s voodoo economic model for running the finances of the city. Cut revenues, cut the gravy but whatever you do don’t cut services the public actually wants. Those are much tougher numbers to crunch. And if all that easy waste wasn’t nearly as prevalent as the mayor claimed?

Well, that’s enough to make any budget chief look for a little guidance from the big guy upstairs.

The almost impossible task the budget chief faces was made glaringly apparent at yesterday’s budget committee meeting. City staff reported a $58+ million projected surplus after the 2^nd quarter of 2013, made up largely of bigger than expected revenues from the Land Transfer Tax and money saved from unfilled staff vacancies, now in excess of 2500 positions including in vital departments like Human Resources, Planning, Health and IT. In order to keep the city in the black, it seems, the budget chief is going to have to keep that tax revenue coming in and maintain a freeze on making new hires.

The problem arises, however, when his boss wants to reduce that particular tax by 10% and preserve the façade of putting customer service first and foremost which entails keeping departments properly staffed up. Cut revenue and increase costs. It’s a difficult equation to keep in balance. Less money in + more money out = the same 0 it has to be every year.

To be fair to this administration, not filling staff vacancies – ‘gapping’, to use the euphemism — didn’t start in 2010. It has been an ongoing issue for some time now as an unobtrusive way to keep costs contained that isn’t immediately felt by the general public. A slight delay here. An unreturned call there. An accumulation of neglect owing to fewer and fewer bodies present to do the jobs that need getting done. Kicking the can down the road, essentially, in the name of fiscal prudence.

Things become acute however when such gapping is combined with a downward pressure on revenues. Never mind hiring to fill in the gaps. The gaps just get bigger, deeper.

Under questioning from councillors, City Manager Joe Pennachetti admitted that maybe they had cut a little too much in the Human Resources department at City Hall over the last few years. So there aren’t enough people to hire other people in other departments. The gaps just get bigger, deeper.

Team Ford stalwart and budget committee member Councillor Frances Nunziata tried to suggest that many of these unfilled vacancies were unnecessary management positions that didn’t affect front line services. The city manager gently disagreed, saying the bulk of the vacancies were front line workers. He will deliver a report to next month’s meeting setting out the numbers in more detail.

But it’s hard to believe that the 36 vacancies in the planning department, say, are unnecessary management type positions. The understaffing in that vital department has long been decried, going back to at least the Miller years if not before but it’s staggering to think that it’s continuing all during the building boom that the city has been experiencing, not to mention the fact that we’re also reviewing our Official Plan… with a depleted planning department.

The city manager did point out that Toronto isn’t the only municipality experiencing problems hiring qualified people to fill its bureaucratic ranks. Competition is tight from competing cities as well as the private sector. It’s not as easy as just topping up your human resources department and telling them to go out and get hiring.

It’s going to take opening the wallets up and creating a desirable work place environment in order to successfully recruit candidates here. Both conditions seem to be the exact opposite of how the current administration operates. Dedicated to the best customer service that the money we refuse to spend can buy.

If that unworkable kind of Dr. Doolittle, push me-pull me approach wasn’t evident to the budget chief before yesterday’s meeting, it certainly should be now. How he’s going to straddle that divide, God only knows. So far, there’s no indication the budget chief does.

— celestially submitted by Cityslikr

Missed Opportunity

Posted on August 8, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

You guys know me. I’m partial to municipal politics and politicians. It’s not that I’m disinterested in the other two levels of government but I approach them with much suspicion. In the end, we’re not even voters to them but just votes. Our interaction comes almost exclusively at the ballot box.

And yet, nearly everything any elected official does ultimately affects us at the local level. Immigration, transportation safety regulations, healthcare decisions, all have an impact where we live. Our streets. Our schools. Our homes.

In spite of that, our municipal governments have the least amount of control over these decisions than either their provincial and federal counterparts. They have limited access to the purse strings. Their jurisdictional reach is likewise stunted. Municipal politicians have all sorts of responsibilities but very little power in conducting their business.

Not surprisingly, local government doesn’t always attract the best and the brightest to its ranks (with exceptions, of course). Why would it? There’s more money to be made, more glory and exposure to be had, for, arguably, less work as an MP or MPP. Even in a big city like Toronto with lots of media swirling around, the lure of the backbenches at Queen’s Park and in Ottawa is considerable for many toiling away in the relative obscurity of City Hall.

This creates one of those chicken-or-egg scenarios where it’s impossible to answer the question: Do municipal politics get the politicians it deserves or do municipal politicians deserve the politics they get?

I mean, how many times have you found yourself in a conversation, bemoaning your city’s inability to bring about some change in your day-to-day life owing to the fact it doesn’t have the proper powers to do so, and the response is always, You want more power in the hands of these jokers?

No?

Really?

That’s a discussion I have, like, a couple times a day on average.

Clearly I need to get me some new friends.

It certainly doesn’t help my Up With Municipal Politicians cause when they pass up a golden opportunity to prove their worth, to show those who’ve cast a ballot for them that, in fact, they are competent public officials with the best interests of the city’s residents at heart.

I’m talking about Toronto city council’s most recent Scarborough LRT subway decision / indecision / debacle / clusterfuck, natch. As outlined in last week’s letter from Metrolinx honcho Bruce McQuaig to city manager Joe Pennachetti, all work on the Scarborough LRT will now grind to a halt, pending council’s search for the extra cash needed to convert it to a subway. Money, so far, not evidently forthcoming from either the province or the feds which, according to a flurry of amendments at last month’s council meeting, would be absolutely necessary for the subway dream to remain alive.

Now look, I’m not letting either of the senior levels of government off the hook on this. There’s little question the provincial government, facing the August 1^st by-elections, played footsie with city council and didn’t discourage talk of re-opening the Master Agreement with Metrolinx in order to promote a Scarborough subway. Their winning candidate in Scarborough-Guildwood, Mitzie Hunter, proclaimed herself a ‘Subway Champion’ and joined the ranks of the other Scarborough Liberal MPPs who’ve marched in lockstep demanding equality of treatment that can only be provided by a subway.

And the federal government? MIA when it comes to any sort of transit discussion.

But this was a chance for our local politicians to step up and be the adults in the room. To set aside thoughts of political ambition or survival and decline opening up this debate once again. Thanks but no thanks, they could’ve collectively said. We’ve thought long and hard about this and have decided the LRT option is the way we’re going to go. The money’s there. The plan’s in place. Let’s keep those shovels in the ground.

While it’s easy to blame the mayor for this unwelcome turn of events, it wasn’t his fight to win or lose. He’d been relegated to the sidelines on the transit debate over a year ago. Only the echoes of his Scarborough Deserves Its Subway chant remained and council could’ve just plugged their ears and stopped listening, recognizing the mayor’s contribution for nothing more than what it was. A politicized, ill-informed view of public transit planning that has resulted in massive delays and unnecessary costs.

Instead, a majority of council chose to follow him down that particular rabbit hole, succeeding in only more delays, more costs and, most importantly for my purposes here, cementing their reputation as bumbling, inept, dithering, irresponsible local representatives. You want more power in the hands of these jokers?

I know, right?

It’s hard to argue with that, listening to Councillor Josh Colle’s interview with Matt Galloway on Metro Morning. Oleaginous is the word I want to use to describe it. But that’s not quite right. Evasive. Disingenuous. Not exactly forthcoming in a smarmy fashion, if I’m free to use more than one word. In no way contributing in any positive sense to building transit in this city. Pointing the finger rather than stepping up and accepting responsibility to provide leadership for this city on a matter of vital importance.

Unfortunately, there have been too many Josh Colles on city council lately especially on the issue of transit. It’s a willing acceptance of the supplicant role of municipal politicians in our governance framework. Don’t look to us for answers. We’re just here to help further gum up the works. Never seizing the initiative. Only looking to wipe their hands clean of it so they never have to accept the blame for anything.

Misrule by don’t rule.

Making it hard for us municipal politics boosters to continue throwing our support their way.

— sadly submitted by Cityslikr