It’s the start of another new year, another new municipal election campaign and maybe, just maybe, a new way of thinking, a new approach to politics in this city.
How I Stopped Worrying and Learned To Love Democracy from Paisley Rae lays out an idea we should all pursue going forward into 2014. (And one I will explore in a post tomorrow, the official start of the election campaign). The race for mayor is only one race of 45 that will determine the make up of the next city council. Give it its due, for sure, but remember there are 44 other races of equal import going on.
And while elections can be a thrilling, engrossing spectacle, they aren’t the be all and end all of the democratic process. Civic engagement is.
There was a point of time during yesterday’s council meeting, in the afternoon, hours after the Morning of Apologies, one by Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti and two from Mayor Ford, both full of heaping disrespect for their colleagues and almost any sentient being listening in at the time, when the sensation definitely came upon me that it wasn’t my life I was leading. I’d been cast as an extra in a movie, some sort of Charlie Kaufman-The Truman Show mashup. Reality was under constant assault and I couldn’t just shake my head and clear a way back to normal.
“Recapping the past 10 minutes,” Paisley Rae tweeted. “McConnell confrontation. Dancing to One Love. Dale Drops a Nope. Integrity Commish presentation. Mammo shows.”
If I wrote it up in a script or tried to submit it as a short piece of fiction, it would be rightly rejected as too much, too outrageous, too unbelievable. A little over the top? Try, a whole lot over the top.
The sequence basically went as follows. For realz.
In between, I don’t know, either a vote or an item, one of the mayor’s young staffers approached her boss on the floor of the chambers. A protocol no no, no staff on council chambers floor, although Mayor Ford, 13 years into being on city council, insists it’s all good. It isn’t. Councillor Pam McConnell rose to ask the speaker to send the staffer back to her seat. Some back and forth ensues, even long after the staffer sat back down.
The tone rises above where it actually should be, through a combination of the mayor’s bull-headed insistence he was right and, I think, Councillor McConnell’s exasperation. Watching her, she seems tired and a little beaten down. Earlier in the day, she’d responded to the mayor catcalls during a vote about how she was in favour of tearing down a heritage building. She tried to explain what the vote was actually about but the mayor just tuned her out and repeated that Councillor McConnell was in favour of tearing down a heritage building.
Shaking her head, she turned to Councillor Jaye Robinson who sits beside her and said, Why do I even bother trying to answer him?
Why indeed, Councillor McConnell.
Anyway, when things settled down, the councillor walked over to where the mayor’s staff sat to apologize for putting the one staffer on the spot. Well, doesn’t Mayor Ford see this and comes bellowing out of his chair, telling Councillor McConnell to get away from his staff. He’s right up in her face, accusing the councillor of trying to intimidate his staff and advising her to walk back to her seat.
Now recollect, this is the very same councillor, tiny, older councillor who the mayor accidentally bowled over during one of the frays at last month’s council meeting. You remember, right?
Evidently, Mayor Ford doesn’t because there he is again, pushing menacingly into her space, yelling at her to back off. You want intimidation, old lady? I’ll show you intimidation.
Moments after Councillor McConnell returns to her seat, it’s the Jimmy something something jazz trio from Scarborough with a couple songs to lighten the council mood and instill a little holiday cheer! And wouldn’t you know it, first up is Bob Marley’s One Love. Let’s get together, it’ll be alright…
As we all know and have seen by now, Mayor Ford was immediately up on his feet, dancing like he’s never danced before or, at least, since Sunday when he was dancing in church. As if nothing unseemly had just transpired on council floor. One Love. One Love. Let’s get together, it’ll be alright…
It was sometime during the dance number that Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star let it be known that the mayor’s earlier apology for suggesting in an interview with Conrad Black that Mr. Dale was a pedophile was not going to cut it and that the libel suit against Mayor Ford was going to proceed.
On his own political grave? To dance his cares away? Because he’s a maniac, maniac on the floor?
And then, before you knew it, council’s on to a presentation from the Integrity Commissioner, all about incumbent campaign Dos and Don’ts. The mayor mopped his brow. Councillor Mammoliti reappeared to ask if it was alright with the Integrity Commissioner for him to hand out to his colleagues some panettone somebody had given to him. Hee, hee, hee. That’s funny because, well, yeah, panettone is the least of Councillor Mammoliti’s problems currently.
How many times can you watch such a travesty and say, You can’t make this shit up? You want more? During the lunch break before all this transpired, Mayor Ford’s lawyer advising him about the libel action, appeared at City Hall and told the media that his client had lost 26 pounds in 5 weeks and then he left toting two bags of the new batch of Mayor Ford bobbleheads.
The complete disconnect with reality sets in because you can’t believe that adults would really and truly act like this. There’s nothing about their behaviour that seems reasonable at this point. Nothing has prepared us for such an assault on civility, decency and personal responsibility.
The mayor has clearly given up governing, his clown prince sidekick Mammoliti has joined him in doing little more than pissing on the carpet of council chambers. I’d argue that councillor-brother Doug was never interested in governing as much as he was ruling.
All it is to them right now is theatre. Not even political theatre as it’s utterly devoid of anything political. It’s purely personal. We’re witnessing three charlatans pretending that everybody else is the problem. Play acting.
And we’re caught up in their weird psychodrama, tragicomedy. This can’t be real, can it? Sadly it is but, fortunately, it’s only for a limited run.
Councillor Doug Ford statement started yesterday at day one of the budget committee’s 2014 program review. It echoed similar sentiments that Councillor Vincent Crisanti made earlier in the meeting when he asked city staff when all the tree planting was going to end.
I love the trees but… I love nutritional programs for the kids but… I love extended library hours but…
It’s what follows the but (and my inner 10 year-old boy snickers) that’s important here. I love [fill in your program or service of preference here] but I don’t want to pay for it. Having stuff in the city is all fine and dandy but, please, stop reaching into my pocket where I keep my hard-earned dollars.
This, I think, is what’s referred to as the tragedy of the commons. The demand and use of public services and programs minus a willingness to pay for them. Or, the belief that, in fact, you more than pay your fair share. You want something else? It’s on your dime.
Which explains why, while the budget committee members are relatively comfortable (short a few notable exceptions) with a below the rate of inflation increase in property tax, they’re totally cool about user fee increases far exceeding it. A whopping 6% (inflation plus 3.75%) in fact, on the various user fees discussed yesterday. We’re becoming a pay as you go city, folks. That’s respect for the tax not fee payers.
And, you know, if that’s your particular bent, so be it. I’d just say let’s be fair and apply that reasoning across the board. So we can bring back that vehicle registrations tax fee, right? Nickel and diming. Nickel and diming.
As it stands, the proposed budget is pretty much status quo given the last 3 years. Very few enhanced or new services and continued attrition and reductions around the horn. Certainly no noticeable overall improvements and the corrosion continues at an almost imperceptible pace.
Still that’s not enough for some on city council. The mayor and his brother have been very adamant about only wanting a 1.75% property tax increase as opposed to staff’s 2.5%. Seemingly out of the blue, budget committee member Councillor Ron Moeser wanted staff to go back and give him the numbers for a 2% property tax increase. To his credit, Budget Chief Frank Di Giorgio gently guided his colleague away from that line of questioning by pointing out, that staff had worked very, very hard for many, many months on this particular budget. The time for that kind of drastic ask had passed.
This was the same budget chief, however, who a little while later took a break from the meeting to meet with the mayor in front of the cameras to announce he’d be introducing a motion later on to reduce the Land Transfer Tax by 5% this year. That’s something like $17 million in lost revenue – poof! – just like that. Sorry about that hard working staff. Maybe we need to rethink that $14 million in new and enhanced services.
Because, technically speaking, cuttingeliminating not introducing new or enhanced services is not a cut which this administration guaranteed it would not do. We all love the new and enhanced services but…
For a group of people who spent an inordinate amount of time trying to ferret out the profligacy of providing breakfast and nutritional programs to children who may not actually need it, it’s obvious the only thing a majority of this particular budget committee really love is paying as little money as possible into the pot that we use to build a stronger, more vibrant, equitable and healthy city. The public good is for suckers. You want to make things better? Don’t look at me. I’ll just come along for the ride.
