All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

Transit Defiled

Posted on April 25, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

“If 30 members of council want to sign a petition to call a special meeting to raise taxes on the backs of citizens who can’t afford them, that will be the first campaign poster for the mayor’s 2014 campaign.” Mark Towhey, Chief of Staff, Mayor Ford.

For a bunch of reasons, the 2014 municipal campaign can’t come soon enough for me. But mostly I’m just eager for this angle to play out. Mayor Ford, steadfast in his respect for taxpayers, refuses to so much as even discuss options for transit expansion.

“I promised taxpayers I’d keep their taxes low. I kept their taxes low.”

“You also promised taxpayers subways,” counters a hypothetical opponent. “Subways, subways, subways.”

“City Council refused to let me build a subway. It’s their fault.”

“But you had 3 years [four years by the time the campaign rolls around] to come up with a plan to build subways. Where is it?”

“The private sector. P3s. P3s. The private sector. The private sector. Did I say, ‘P3s’? P3s. The private sector. The people want subways. Subways, subways, subways.”

Maybe Mark Towhey and the rest of the Team Ford brain trust are really, truly salivating at the prospect of running a re-election campaign on the mayor’s bread-and-butter issue of low taxes but the ground has shifted considerably since 2010. This time he won’t just be running against some easily smearable, downtown tax-and-spender. In his determined digging in of his heels and holding his breath until the transit conversation loses steam or Tim Hudak is elected premier, Mayor Ford is painting himself into a sad, lonely political corner with only the Toronto Sun (and maybe not even the Sun based on today’s transit talk with columnist Sue-Ann Levy) to keep him warm.

His continued transit funding intransigence (as a matter of fact, yes, I did have to go there) has left Mayor Ford running against not just a majority of his city council but the Toronto Board of Trade. John Tory and the CivicAction Alliance. Hazel McCallion and almost every other elected official in the 905 region. Hardly a left-leaner among them.

There is a significant difference between a lone wolf howling at the moon and a crazy person shouting the same thing over and over again on a street corner.

In the hopes of riding an anti-tax wave back into office next year, the mayor will have to cross his fingers that voters and his opponents will forget some of the other stuff he promised and claimed in 2010, and not just subways. The city didn’t have a revenue problem, remember? It had a spending problem. Yet, he’s spent considerable political capital pushing for a downtown casino because all of the revenue it would generate for the city.

Oh, I see. The city doesn’t have a tax revenue problem. It’s the other type of revenue we’re a little short on.

Expect a boatload of that kind of semantic hair-splitting going forward.

Mayor Ford’s also revived his 2010 campaign idea of cutting our way to a better city by joining the empty chorus of finding efficiencies experts who insist a little belt tightening will pop out the loose change we need to build whatever it is we want. Short on details, of course. Long on vague pandering populism.

Ditto the whole boondoggle angle being embraced by those trying to fend off new taxes. Add up your eHealths and your ORNGEs and your gas plants and your PRESTO fiascos, and you’re still well short of the funds needed to build the proposed transit. That’s not to condone these trip ups or simply shrug them off. Of course, there’s a huge trust issue with handing over more money for another major public infrastructure endeavour to a government whose track record in matters of oversight is somewhat sketchy. It still doesn’t mean doing nothing about congestion and our woeful lack of regional transit.

But that’s the thing.

Mayor Ford is simply looking for any excuse to do nothing on the transit file. The thought of actually doing something runs counter to every political instinct in his body. Outside of public safety, the government isn’t supposed to do anything. Certainly not if it means disrupting traffic flow or demanding drivers pay more for the privilege right to drive their vehicles.

While Team Ford disavowed any attachment to it back in 2010, it is very telling to read through the mayor’s chief of staff’s views on public transit and the TTC back in the day. (Captured for posterity by Steve Munro, and brought to our attention by yesterday by Jude MacDonald.) In short it reads: stop funding the TTC, sell off the assets and let the market decide how people get around the city.

Since coming to office, has Mayor Ford done anything in terms of transit that has been less indifferent than the attitude his chief of staff displayed three years ago? So why would we expect him to change now? Of course, he’s fighting tooth and nail against new revenue tools for transit expansion. He doesn’t give a shit about transit.

So Team Ford has to do its best to frame this as a pitched battle to keep taxes low because the flipside of that debate – government shouldn’t be involved in actually governing – is unwinnable. The mayor and those planning his re-election campaign seem to believe people will be content enough with the notion that their taxes have been kept low to return him to office. Moreover, voters will be ready to punish any councillor who even so much as raised the possibility of new taxes.

At this juncture, it seems more like wishful thinking than any sort of sound strategy. But that’s really all this administration’s ever been about, isn’t it.

— bay of fund it all readily submitted by Cityslikr

Payback’s Rarely Pretty

Posted on February 17, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

Say what you will about Toronto lacking things like an adequate transit system or good governance, what it does have in droves is cautionary tales. Hardly a day or two goes by when some new news flashes across our screens that leaves us shaking our heads and muttering. Well, who didn’t see that coming?

Just this past week, Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti was in the thick of it again over loans he received from some business interests whose requests he championed at community council meetings in regards to billboards in his ward. At this point it doesn’t appear as if the councillor did anything wrong aside from look a little greasy. It’s just, coming on the heels of the compliance audit committee report that alleges some gross campaign over-expenditures during his 2010 mayoral/councillor race, bad optics abound.

The cautionary tale bit?

If you insist on being an unrepentant jag off, an epic asshole, drunk with power from sitting beside the mayor and flashing your thumb up or down to help forward his agenda on the council floor and signal you’re part of the in-crowd, expect a little pushback. Keep your nose clean, all your ‘i’s dotted and ‘t’s crossed if you’re intent on going out of your way to draw unwanted attention to yourself and openly bait those you disagree with. People are bound to start looking for dirt. And if they find even a speck of grime… Well, who didn’t see that coming?

Blatant opportunism doesn’t win you many friends either. Councillor Mammoliti’s about face from Rob Ford’s mortal council enemy to best friend forever as Ford’s popularity rose on the 2010 campaign trail didn’t go unnoticed. His dying fidelity when the mayor got into a little legal trouble manifested itself with Council Mammoliti bolting from the Executive Committee, and then awkwardly trying to shrug the move off with a bizarre conspiracy tale of covert left wing operations being conducted against him.

Now, in a tight spot himself, he’s left to dangle. Yeah, love to have your back, Giorgio, but, you know, you kind of abandoned me in my hour of need. With friends like that… Well, who didn’t see that coming?

Grace in victory goes a long way in smoothing ruffled feathers and soothing bitter feelings. Being amenable to people when you’re on top because you never know who you might encounter on the way back down, and all that. While Councillor Mammoliti may’ve been the most egregious offender, Team Ford, pretty much to a player, couldn’t contain frequent noisy chest beatings and score settling, soured by their perception of being kept in the wilderness during the Miller years. In taking that low road, power must be maintained because, once lost, the crowd’s a little less forgiving, more inclined to help pull the rug out from under your feet rather than reaching out to keep you upright. That Kick Me sign on your back is a little hard to resist. And who didn’t see that coming?

Of course, a cautionary tale only really serves a purpose if its lesson is learned. There’s very little evidence the intended audience has been following along, taking notes, modifying behaviour. Any problems or missteps are not of their doing. It’s all the work of sore loser left wingers still unable to accept the outcome of the 2010 municipal election, yaddie, yaddie, yaddie.

And so, the beat goes on. An endless loop of new allegations, denials and rebuttals that begin to sound the same after a while. Didn’t we hear this song-and-dance before? Our cautionary tales grow into epic sagas.

— told-you-soly submitted by Cityslikr

Mayor Obvious

Posted on January 31, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

So late yesterday afternoon Mayor Ford called a press conference outside his office. Hmmm. Big news perhaps? A new budget chief? A confab with the incoming premier about transit strategies? His Super Bowl pick?

As per usual with this mayoralty, there was to be nothing as mundane as all that.

“Ooh, we are going IN the mayor’s office,” the Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale tweeted. “This is not common.”

Along with the gathered press, TTC chair Karen Stintz had dropped by to see what the mayor had to say. This is not all that unusual at City Hall. Councillors frequently hang back and listen to their colleagues’ scrums with the press, many times with the intention of adding a counterpoint when the cameras and mics turn in their direction.

What transpired yesterday however was unusual.

“Ford’s aide tries to bar Karen Stintz and her assistant from his office,” Dale tweets. “’Mayor’s protocol.’ She just confidently walks past him.”

A short time later, Dale continues:

“Stintz to Ford aide Earl Provost, loudly: ‘What am I doing? I just want to hear what the mayor has to say. I don’t hear from him directly.’”

By all accounts from those present, Mayor Ford eventually appeared with nothing much to say, made a pointed reference to the TTC’s sole-sourced deal, announced he disagrees with three previous mayors who just came out against a casino in Toronto, took some questions and exited. Done in a matter of minutes. Just like that.

NOW magazine’s Ben Spurr basically summed it up: “So that was odd. Mayor calls scrum, has no prepared statement, cuts off questions after 2.5 minutes.”

The antics and naked machinations would be laughably cute if they were coming from a six year-old but from the mayor of Toronto?

I mean, C’MON!

All week we’ve been hearing from the mayor and his brother about the sole sourced deal the TTC commission signed off on with current operators, Gateway Newstands, to extend their contract on concession stands throughout the system. “This is what happens from a person in my opinion that has never run a business in the entire lives chairing the TTC,” Councillor Ford bleated. “What happened last week was absolutely appalling if you ask me,” the mayor said. “It’s absolutely an embarrassment.”

He went on to say he’d called the TTC chair to get to the bottom of things. She responded that she’d returned the call and left a message but hadn’t heard back from the mayor. No, she didn’t. Yes, he did. No, he didn’t. Yes, she did.

So like anyone with acute leadership skills would do at this point, Mayor Ford slaps together a press conference just in time for the evening news with the sole intent to publicly blast away at a colleague who also could be a rival for his job next year. Except she shows up to hear what he has to say, kind of cramping his style. So, he doesn’t say much. Certainly nothing that everyone hasn’t already heard from him.

It’s so much easier to lob grenades at people from the comfort of your own cloistered radio show.

So much for Mayor Ford being humbled by his recent adventure in the courtroom. He’s seized onto an issue that breaks down easily into campaign catch-phrases. Sole sourced deal. Another Tuggs? Corruption and skullduggery. Deliberately creating a rift in perhaps the single most important aspect of the city’s business – transit – at a critical juncture when everyone else is preparing to talk about how to finance a much needed regional expansion solely for his own political future.

That’s cancerous governance, pure and simple.

It seems Mayor Ford knows no other way to conduct himself.

If we haven’t already, we just need to accept that fact and push on without him.

— onward-ho-ly submitted by Cityslikr