All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

Give Us The Business… Plan

Posted on February 26, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

Point 9.

(Here’s point 8, point 7, point 6 and points 1-5).

This is a tough one. It’s not my strong suit.

Business.

Municipal candidates need a business plan. A roadmap to chart out strategy for maintaining prosperity and spreading the wealth. Some fiscal nuts and bolts, to use the terminology of those clutching at straws on this particular issue.

One of the problems facing local politicians when it comes to steering the economic ship of state is that they’re really only able to operate at the micro level. All the macro tools like interest and currency rates, money supply, trade agreements, immigration policy are in the hands of the higher orders of government. Even the powers of specific, targeted taxation to generate predictable, sustainable flows of revenue aren’t at the easy disposal of most municipalities.

Toronto does have a little more access that way with the increased taxing powers granted it with the City of Toronto Act back in 2006. But as we have seen over the course of the past 4 years or so, a majority of members of our city council have been loath to exercise this authority, repealing the Vehicle Registration Tax almost right out of the gate in 2010 and another, the Land Transfer Tax under regular siege. And thoughts on revenue tools to build transit? Yeah, we’ll just nudge the property tax rate up a bit. Go with what we know.

Keeping taxes low is not really a robust economic action plan, to steal a phrase from a gang of low tax lovers. Maintaining competitive levels of taxation especially on a regional scale is probably part of a smart approach to municipal fiscal well-being but it’s really just a single aspect. It can’t be the alpha and omega, the be-all and end-all, the whole enchilada.

I pledge to keep taxes low.

That is all.

Anything else?

Problem is, you have to pay for stuff.

It’s like any enterprise. Money comes in. Money goes out. More of the former than the latter is necessary for any sort of long term sustainability.

So with limited financial tools on hand, municipal politicians must have innovative and strategic ideas about revenue generation. If that’s a dirty phrase to you, revenue generation or revenue tools, you don’t really understand the nature of governance. Tax and spending is exactly what a government does.

It’s just a matter of, to steal a line from a budget committee deputation late last year, taxing fairly and spending wisely.

And it has to go beyond simply arguments of this tax or that tax, increase one, eliminate another. How do you grow a tax/revenue base to match the expanding needs for infrastructure, services and programs which come with the growth of a city? Too often it’s only about approving almost exclusively residential development, in the form of condo towers downtown and sprawl in the outer suburban ring, for an immediate (relatively speaking) hit of tax returns and section 37 money. It’s basic math. More households = more tax revenue.

The inevitable magic of the free market, am I right?

Beware the charlatans pitching you the everlasting miracle of unfettered free markets.

What happens, and I don’t know the proper business jargon for it, but it comes down to too much of a good thing. A land rush. Residential housing going up everywhere. It offers the best return on investment to developers and cash up front to local governments. Win/Win.

But then suddenly, you’ve built a city where lots of people live and with no place to work. At least, no place nearby to work. Leading you into the morass of long commutes and travel times. Congestion. Lost productivity. Low liveability indexes.

From a planning perspective, the dreaded single-use communities that urban minds are desperately trying to fix and overcome.

It’s playing out right now in Toronto at the former location of Mr. Christie’s in south Etobicoke. Industrial land sitting smack dab on prime real estate under pressure to join its immediate surroundings in condo fever. If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home By Now, the inevitable billboard on the side of the nearby Gardiner Expressway might boast. Unless, of course, your job is in Milton or Kitchener or Alabama.

This goes beyond questions of zoning and land-use policy, out of the reach of local politicians. We are being abandoned by much of our manufacturing sector, lured away by the low costs of production opened up over the last 25 years by international trade liberalization. A mayor or city councillor can’t do a whole lot about that. We’ve seen very limited success with tax slashing approaches in efforts to compete on a global scale.

Fortunately, Toronto is home to a more diverse economy than just its manufacturing base. It has all the ingredients that make up both the so-called knowledge economy and service sectors. The country’s beating financial heart. A multitude of internationally regarded post-secondary education institutions and research hubs. People. People, people, people. Who come here looking for the opportunity to prosper and thrive.

To believe, however, that all governments have to do in this situation is to sit back and watch it all work out, just keep taxes low and cut the red tape is some sort of political wishful thinking. Lazy libertarianism that reveals a deep vein of sociopathy. If you can’t prosper and thrive in these conditions, you’re just not trying hard enough.

Run government like a business, we’re told by too many of our elected representatives. OK well, businesses invest in order to create a successful business climate, don’t they? Councillor Doug Ford crows about taking the bull by the horns and investing his time and money in opening up the Chicago branch of his family’s Deco Labels and Tags business, doesn’t he?

Well, a city too has to invest to create opportunity and positive conditions for its shareholders (everybody who lives there) to succeed. That means investing in ways to move people quickly and efficiently. It means creating conditions for all kinds of work places to be close to home. It means ensuring people can afford to live throughout the city so they don’t have to spend unhealthy amounts of time getting to where they need and want to be.

It means having a plan. Keeping taxes low is not a plan. It’s a fucking slogan. And as we’ve all witnessed over the past 4 years, a slogan doesn’t get transit or affordable housing built. It doesn’t bring jobs to the city. It only serves to get do-nothing politicians elected to office.

We don’t deserve better. We need better.

— all businessly submitted by Cityslikr

Trist And Zara

Posted on November 26, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are — an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.

— To Make A Dadist Poem

Dada – I’ll let Wikipedia explain it if you aren’t already familiar with the concept, Wikipedia lifting a snippet on the topic from a book by Dona Budd, The Language of Art Knowledge – “… was born out of negative reaction to the horrors of World War I … Dada rejected reason and logic, prizing nonsense, irrationality and intuition.”

I thought of Dada as I sat watching the mayor and his councillor-brother perform at yesterday’s launch to the 2014 city budget. Definitely a rejection of reason and logic. Lots of irrationality and nonsense.

Their whole scatter-shot outrage seemed created, Dada-style, campaign slogans and rhetoric, picked out randomly from different pockets and blown out through a megaphone. Gravy Train! Tax and Spend! Respect For Taxpayers! For Gravy! Taxpayers Spend Tax! Train and Respect!

None of it has to make any sense. It just has to be loud and repeated, repeatedly. Add any context and almost everything that came out of the two brothers’ mouths was little more than monkey babble.

As was quickly pointed out by the media, the 2.5% (oh, I’m sorry) the 2.52% staff proposed property tax increase that the mayor/brother cited as proof that the tax-and-spend floodgates had opened wide without his/their oversight that council stripped away last week is almost exactly the same as the 2.5% property tax increase the mayor himself oversaw and approved just two budgets ago.

Let me write that out in capital letters so no one misses the glaring inconsistency and blatant hypocrisy in the fast one Mayor Ford is trying to pull off.

2012 2.5% PROPERTY TAX INCREASE = 2014 2.5% PROPOSED PROPERTY INCREASE.

The math hasn’t changed. Each number in the equation has the same value in 2014 as it did in 2012. Team Ford was for a 2.5% property tax increase before they were against it.

On top of which, this year’s 2.5% comes with money for the Scarborough subway the mayor so vigorously championed and was so quick to claim credit for when city council approved it last summer. So, in effect, the 2012 Mayor Ford was the kind of gravy loving tax and spender the 2014 Mayor Ford is off railing about and campaigning against.

But consistency is not your goal when you’re simply pulling ideas from your pockets, hat or ass. Or, at least, consistency of thought isn’t. To give him credit, the mayor has maintained his consistency of performance for the past 3 years. Always the outsider. Always looking out for the little guy. Always angry.

And always, always wrong.

One thing that seems to go largely unnoticed during these budget debates is that residents of the city of Toronto (as of this year’s proposed budget) pay nearly $1100 less in property taxes [page 14] than the GTA average. Yes, there are matters of mill rates and property values. Property taxes aren’t the only funds we hand over to live in the city. But to stagger around, beating your chest and bellow how over-taxed we taxpayers of Toronto are displays a certain detachment from reality.

(I hesitate to present further data that might not give all the salient factors but graph two here would suggest that even compared to 7 other Canadian jurisdictions, Toronto has not been in the grips of crazed tax lovers intent on picking every last nickel from our pockets.)

Especially if you take a look at the admittedly hard to make out picture on page 34 of the city manager’s Strengthening Toronto’s Fiscal Health, Investing for the Future report and see what we get in return for the taxes and fees we give to the city. You’d just have to hate the very notion of government, of a collective sense that some things are worth paying for and are cheaper to pay for if we all chip in, to look at the picture and not conclude that we’re getting pretty good bang for the buck here in Toronto. There’s nothing rational or logical in thinking otherwise.

That’s what makes the Fords and their followers political Dadaists. They react negatively to what they see as the horrors of government and the murderous demands others make upon them. Unable to combat such expectations with sound reasoning and thoughtful opinion, they resort to utter nonsense and incoherent gibberish.

It doesn’t have to make sense. Just noise. Incomprehensible, disordered, absurd noise.

— artfully submitted by Cityslikr

Keep It Quiet, Kelly

Posted on November 21, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

I’m trying to get inside Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly’s head. It’s not easy, what with all that new staff scheduling and numbers crunching going on in there, fighting for space with the massive amounts of climate change skepticism material, much of it from Russian researchers. There’s just not a lot of room.

So I remain stumped as to why it is he, in his new found position of council appointed power, would want to make the island airport expansion a priority. “I’ve always been a strong supporter of the City Centre Airport,” the deputy mayor told the National Post’s Natalie Alcoba. “So, if that comes on the agenda I will do my best to garner support [for Porter’s proposal to lengthen the runway].”

Personally I’ve never been a strong supporter of the island airport, for many of the same reasons laid out early on in All Fired Up in the Big Smoke’s existence in a post by then contributor, Urban Sophisticat, I Got The TPA Porter Air Blues. The backroom influence by monied interests. The constant project creep by incremental stealth.

And nothing about the current expansion plans makes me feel any different.

But I’m willing to be convinced otherwise. It is a debate city council will have to have. Again. Possibly as early as the next council meeting in December.

I just don’t get why the deputy mayor thinks it’s a priority.

Surely he must be cognizant of the trauma, let’s call it, this city’s recently gone through at a political level. He’s supposed to be the steady hand bringing a calming influence in his caretaker role. Why would he squander the opportunity to display all that when Ms. Alcoba asks him, What will be your priorities, policy wise, for this year that we have left?

The deputy mayor could’ve said:

My priority, Natalie, is to continue on with Mayor Ford’s agenda of low taxes, customer service and transparent and open government.

All eye-rolling bullshit, of course, but hardly controversial or divisive at this point of time. Eminently shruggable. Yeah. OK. Steady as she goes. Let’s get on with it.

Instead the deputy mayor takes a stand in front of what might be the most combustible item left on this council’s agenda and begins waving a red cape in front of it. Hey. I know what this council needs right now. A highly contentious, combative debate that’ll really goose the downtown-suburban divide that has been absent from our civic debate for at least 24 hours now.

While he’s at it, Deputy Mayor Kelly might as well revive the Sheppard subway battle too. Summon the private sector! Attention Dr. Gordon Chong!

What’s the man’s angle on this?

Is he looking for something special to mark his time as pseudo/kinda/sorta mayor of Toronto? A signature piece of infrastructure that will scream, Norm Kelly Was Here! Others said it couldn’t be done but Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly got it done. Jets Now Be Flying From Here.

Or maybe he’s just found a cause where he can thumb his nose at all those climate change extremists who haven’t taken the time the deputy mayor has in thoughtfully reading through all the literature that poos poos the work done by legitimate scientists on the subject. Surely you don’t think jet travel contributes in any way to the change in climate that may or may not be actually happening. I hear the weather’s quite pleasant in Tennessee this time of year.

A more likely explanation is that after, I don’t know, 90 years on the political scene, most of them as a city councillor, Norm Kelly doesn’t have the foggiest idea of what his priorities are in terms of governance. Nobody’s ever asked him that question before. If they had, well, maybe, hopefully, he wouldn’t still be in office. Do you think his constituents in Ward 40 Scarborough-Agincourt, about as far away from the island airport as you can get while still living in the city of Toronto, consider the runaway expansion to accommodate jet travel from the island to be some sort of priority?

The deputy mayor needs to remember that he’s found himself in this peculiar position not through any sort of merit or exemplary service in the line of duty. He was a second choice by guy running out of choices, with a track record of displaying monumental bad judgement. That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement to go out there and give `em hell.

No. Deputy Mayor Kelly needs to do nothing more than speak only when necessary, in that somnolent tone of his that usually signals bathroom break to those in the crowd looking on, and ruffle absolutely no feathers. Be that kindly grandfather we always see in Christmas commercials who, if not wise, at least understands the grandkids have just been dragged through a messy divorce, their warring parents knifing their marriage right there on the kitchen floor. They need nothing more than a little consoling, a little peace and quiet, still prone to startling at loud noises as they are.

Your priority, Mr. Deputy Mayor, is to restore a little sanity at City Hall. Nothing flashy. No sudden moves and certainly no picking at the scabs of recent wounds. The mark of success of your tenure at the helm will be if, come next October, nobody remembers that you were actually there.

— soothingly submitted by Cityslikr