All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

Toronto’s Taxing Problem, Part Infinity

Posted on May 27, 2016 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

I was in New York City earlier this week when this city’s City Manager, Peter Wallace, read the fiscal riot act to city council via Mayor John Tory and his Executive Committee in the boldest terms an unelected official could to his elected colleagues at City Hall. (Could I use the word ‘city’ and any of its derivations more times in one sentence? Probably. But, you know, overkill.)

What the mayor was told was the same thing the mayor and his predecessor have been told for pretty much 5 years now. Yes, there are probably more efficiencies to be found in the budget, efficiencies are always being found. Yes, the city can look at selling off monetizing some of its assets for a one time, payday infusion of cash. Yes, of course but… None of it will come close to narrowing the widening gap between the money coming in and money going out to pay for the services, programs and capital needs Toronto is responsible for. Not even close.

Mayor Tory was told all that but what he heard Jonathan Goldsbie highlights here in NOW. Essentially, the mayor heard what he wanted to hear. He heard what every self-serving, small-minded, pandering local politician hears when it comes to the city’s finances. Taxes bad. We already pay too much. Stretched to the limit. Hardworking homeowners. Nickel and dimed to death. Get off our lawns. Plow our streets.

A few years back, during a similar if not exact budget and fiscal discussion, I remember coming across a page listing the taxes and fees residents of other big cities throughout the world pay. For the life of me, I can’t find it now, and I’m too lazy and inept to actually track it down on the internetz but it did get me to thinking about a comparison I could probably present in a reasonable fashion. New York and Toronto.

I found this from 2009, a study of New York City’s taxation policy, funded by the Solomon Foundation, an off-shoot of the Solomon Company, a fairly substantial investment firm. Now, I offer it up with all the usual caveats. No comparison between cities is perfect, especially cities in different country and jurisdictions. This was from 7 years ago, so things might’ve changed. Moreover, I’m not much of numbers guy, my financial comprehension should be considered suspect and I am easily distracted.

That said…

Consider page 12, Exhibit 1, New York City Taxes and Other Revenue Sources.

Check out what I think could be called a laundry list of revenue sources the city taps into, taxes making up about 59% of all revenues. Personal income taxes, business taxes, sales tax, hotel tax, cigarette tax, beer, wine and liquor tax, horserace admission tax, vehicle tax, taxi tax. That’s before we even get to property taxes.

No wonder the city never sleeps! Everybody’s working 24/7 to pay all those taxes.

Now, look at this page [page 29], a pie chart from Toronto’s 2016 operating budget.

46% of our city’s revenues come from taxation, at least in name. Property tax, Land Transfer tax and something called “Supplementary Taxation”. Toronto already taxes residents and visitors to this city 13% less than New York did in 2009. So how is it that we’re overtaxed and “stretched to the limit” as the mayor claims we are, we being that mysterious group of “homeowners”?

And this is New York City we’re talking about here, not some zany, left-wing, socialist Scandinavian city. The Home of the Brave, Land of the Free, Tax Hating U.S. of A.

Mayor Tory and his allies do have a point, if they are trying to make a valid point that the city coffers are too dependent on property taxes to help pay the bills. Throwing in the Land Transfer tax, 44% of Toronto’s annual revenues come from property taxes. In 2009, “Real Estate Related Taxes” made up just 26.6% of New York’s revenues, 23.6% of that from straight up property taxes. So yes, especially given how we assess property taxes here, we probably rely too much on them to generate revenue.

So, let’s look for other sources of revenue then, shall we? Not just by selling off assets or ferreting out further efficiencies. The city manager, like the city manager before him, said that’s not going to do the trick.

We need to talk about revenue tools, taxes if you prefer. That’s not a bad word. At least, it isn’t in places that realize you have to pay for the things you want and need. Torontonians want, need and expect the city to provide these things. Somehow, if the words and deeds of many of the people we elect to represent us are any indication, we except to get all these things at impossibly low costs to us. Somebody else pay because I’m already paying too much!

It’s a tired line of argument, one with almost no factual merit. You get the kind of city you pay for. The bottom line is, we’re not paying for the city we say we want.

— repeatedly submitted by Cityslikr

Asleep On The Subways

Posted on January 31, 2012 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

I proceed on uncertain footing with this one, venturing into unfamiliar territory. Hallowed literary ground. It already feels ill-fitting and clumsy. I mean, five or six attempts to get this first paragraph sounding right should serve as proper warning sign that this couldn’t possibly work out well.

But, fuck it, throwing caution to the wind and blustering on through does seem to be the modus operandi around here these days.

So I give you an analogy.

Our last night in New York City, back in the hotel room, with some wine on board I should note, I finally conceded to the lure of the Crosley box turntable and decided to give it a… ahem, ahem… spin. Me being totally ignorant that Crosley was, you know, a thing, I wasn’t even sure it worked. It could just as well be a decorative touch, to give the place some additional ambience.

Turns out, the turntable was in very good working condition, far better than I expected. Like I said, Crosley is a thing, a digital contraption with an analogue throwback, designed, at least in part, to hit the nostalgia button for those of us who grew up on the vinyl. With the reminder wine had been consumed, I can tell you that I was captivated.

Yes, there was a little bit of my obsessive 14 year old self plugged into listening to music that doesn’t happen very often anymore. Who’s got the time, right? You slap something on in the background while going about your daily business without taking the time to pour over the album cover and liner notes. Besides, CDs kind of killed that thrill long before the advent of cold, clinical, distant downloading.

But there I was, sitting at the end of the bed as the record rotated, the arm gently undulating I guess you’d call it. Watching as well as listening. It was a much more inclusive experience, a bigger connection to the music. Nowadays it’s mostly about clicking. Click to download, double click to play. Done and done. To listen to Bill Evans’ We Will Meet Again on vinyl, I opened the box, turned the unit on, slipped the record first out of its cover, then out of the paper sleeve, set it gentle onto the turntable, lift the arm from out of the cradle and moved leftward toward the album, the turntable began to turn. As gently as possible set the needle down into the groove. The first sound is that familiar crackle and pop. And then the music starts.

I should totally get one of these, I thought as I poured out another glass of wine. Listen to how rich that sound is. I could start making mixed tapes again, reacquiring the skill of placing the needle just right in that groove between songs. Can you imagine?

Seriously. Can you imagine?

Yet another piece of machinery to house somewhere and maintain. And what about collecting LPs again. Where the hell are you going to keep them? I wouldn’t even know where to begin to look for those plastic milk crates. Never mind having to get up and push things along when the needle gets stuck which it did twice, once per side. The first time probably due to the fact of guys like me trying to set down the needle just so and scratching the record up while doing so. The second seemed to be the ball of dust that the needle had collected.

In fact, truth be told, I’m not even sure the music was that much better sounding. It’s just something I’ve read along the way. A myth propagated by elitist audiophiles and the vinyl industry that fronts them and benefits most from a record revival.

On that note, let’s talk about subways. (Yes, folks. That there is the awkward clumsy segue toward a hoped for analogy.)

Having spent 4 days in a city chock full of them, up and down, right to left, under bodies of water, above ground in places, there is no argument that they aren’t great, perhaps the best mode of urban public transit there is. In places with extensive lines like New York and Paris, you can get from one corner of a big city to another in the matter of minutes, the blink of an eye. Here’s to subways. We all should have subways.

Except maybe not, not always, not everyplace.

Like the long playing albums of yore, for all their appeal and plusses, subways have their drawbacks. The expense of not only building but operating them is one especially in these days of cutbacks and austerity. It’s interesting to note that some of the more ardent fiscal hawks around City Hall seem hell bent on foisting such a costly system on the city’s taxpayers when less expensive options are already in place. I guess to them, subways just sound better.

Subways will also affect future development in ways parts of Toronto will resist. Build it and they will come? Eventually but is everyone prepared for the kind of density needed to make it feasible? Returning to Brooklyn from Manhattan on Sunday night and I was struck by the fact that if was one of the very few trips I took on the subway that I actually found a seat. The trains were full throughout the day and night. You know why? Because New York City is dense. Dense, dense, dense in a way we won’t be for decades if ever.

Not to mention that they have a subway tradition, actually dating back over a 100 years rather than the imagined century of subways Mayor Ford claims for Toronto. So there’s the infrastructure in place there. A turntable, if you will, still capable of churning out subways. Ours is a much more torturous, push-pull relationship. We love subways in theory (and out on the campaign hustings where nuance and detail take a back seat to empty rhetoric) but when it comes to implementation we’ve proven to be more than a little tone deaf.

Like vinyl records, subways sound great initially. Crisp, clean with a full sound that is entirely pleasing. Subways? Nothing beats them. But then upon a closer, second, third listen, there’s that hiss and pop right before it gets stuck on that almost imperceptible scratch. And, of course, have you ever tried to get around town while listening to an LP? Pretty much impossible.

Beware the pleasing sounds and easy listening of the call for subways. Nice to have but at this juncture and for the parts of this city in most need of rapid transit, they seem to be highly impractical and out of place. A novelty item almost. An expensive novelty item at that, providing less benefit for fewer people. Not a transit strategy so much as building a collector’s item.

— stereophonically submitted by Cityslikr

The Mayor’s Bid For Greatness

Posted on May 10, 2011 by urbansophisticat

There is another possible explanation, of course.

While everyone (especially around these parts) simply assumes our mayor is, at heart, an monstrous anti-(sub)urbanite, intent on nothing more than making the city the best place in the world to drive in, perhaps there’s more to it than that. Perhaps Mayor Ford has a far broader reaching and comprehensive agenda in mind. Perhaps in a sheer act of mad genius, he is playing long ball on us, poised to elevate Toronto to New York and London status. Perhaps, we’ve got him all wrong in terms of city building.

This thought struck me as I read through the Financial Times article, ‘Livable v. Lovable’ (h/t @dylan_reid). “We need to ask, what makes a city great?” urban development professor Joel Kotkin tells the FT. “If your idea of a great city is restful, orderly, clean, then that’s fine. You can go live in a gated community…”

Any city with a mountain backdrop or the ocean lapping up at its toes or laid out in a well designed grid pattern that enables an efficient transit system can claim to be more livable. But that doesn’t necessarily make it a city great. Great cities breathe paradox. Obscene wealth brushes shoulders with abject poverty. Traffic snarls, giving the inhabitants the edge they need to survive in the concrete jungle. Neighbourhoods rise and fall and rise again to accommodate the forever changing face of a city.

Great cities aren’t just lived in. They’re loved. They can’t be planned. They just happen. Like a civic flash mob.

Maybe the mayor’s up to creating a little less livability in exchange for an added dose of lovability. He’s looking to take the Swiss out of Peter Ustinov’s descriptor of Toronto and make it more New York. Not current day New York, mind you. New York City circa mid-1970s, near bankruptcy. Zurich is cute and well run and all that. It can have its way on the livability index but where’s its NFL franchise?

So the mess Mayor Ford seems determined to create is deliberate, only not in the bad way most of us have been ascribing to it. It’s to put us on the road towards greatness. If it’s ‘friction’ that gives great cities their spark, the mayor’s prepared to start a bonfire of impressiveness here in Toronto.

Neglect leads to deterioration which leads, inexorably, to renewal. That’s what urban planners say. Maybe the problem in Toronto is that we’ve tried too hard to maintain things and it’s all ended up half-assed. Maybe it’s time to really let things go to seed. Infrastructure, transit, heritage, parks. Build us some really dodgy neighbourhoods, one or two of our very own favelas even. I’m thinking somewhere in Scarborough. It’ll become really cheap to live there. When that happens, artists and bohemian types move in. That’s the trendy stage and gentrification is sure to follow.

In the article, Mr. Heathcote opines that great cities mix beauty with ugliness. “… beauty to lift the soul, ugliness to ensure there are parts of the fabric of the city that can accommodate change.” Arguably, Toronto has contributed more than amply over the years to the ugly front. But that’s not to say we can’t do better. Take for example the proposed Fort York pedestrian bridge. Too arty for the likes of Councillor Shiner, it seems. Take it back to the drawing board and gussy it down. Uglify it so to attract the less desirable elements of society. Have them establish a troll like community under the ugly bridge. Hipsters will inevitably displace them with their edgy bars and galleries. Next stop, a great city.

Now, my theory on the possibly positive approach Mayor Ford is taking to re-imagine Toronto falls down somewhat in his war on graffiti. What says ‘gentrify me, please’ more than graffiti? To be fair, though, the Financial Times does worry about the affect of violence on a city’s capacity to be great. The mayor may just be adhering to the Rudy Giuliani view of stopping small crimes stops big crimes. So I think you could stuff his anti-graffiti crusade into the thought of helping make Toronto great.

Of course, some might consider this putting all your eggs in one basket based on one article from a writer clutching at straws to explain how his hometown always seems to be left off other Best Of lists. Or, more generously, one particular school of thought of what makes a city great. There are other metrics to make such judgments. Like, say, this one for instance. The World’s 26 Best Cities for Business, Life, and Innovation.

“We’re measuring what makes a city successful,” Merrill Pond, vice president at the Partnership for New York City told The Atlantic. “Success as we define it cuts across business opportunity, cultural opportunity, and education opportunity. We use ten indicators [including Transportation and Infrastructure, Intellectual Capital and Innovation, and Lifestyle Assets], each made up of smaller variables [within Lifestyle Assets: share of green space, skyline impact, hotel rooms].”And how did Toronto do? #2. Just behind New York City. “Toronto is a ‘beta’ city…because it’s not considered a part of the conversation with London, Paris, and New York for greatest city in the world. But it has all the building blocks of a superlative international city, beginning with smart ideas about sustainability and innovation.” [bolding ours]

Yeah but, innovation’s hard. It takes lots of… innovative ideas. As for sustainability? Well, that costs money upfront, and just in case this Merrill Pond hasn’t been following along here, Toronto’s got a spending problem. Rather than building on those so-called ‘building blocks’, it’d be so much easier just to knock them down and start over again. With no more thought put into it then off-the-cuff remarks based on rumours and gut instincts.

An organic mess, let’s call it. That’s the mayor’s plan for this city. It’s quicker, cheaper and requires only part time participation. Football teams aren’t going to coach themselves, you know.

Sometimes you just have to think small to build big things. If there’s one thing Mayor Ford is good at, it’s thinking small. We need to stop criticizing him for that and start realizing that maybe, just maybe, great things can grow on such shallow, fallow land.

— hopefully submitted by Urban Sophisticat