Tag Archives: Toronto Public Library

Numbers Without Meaning

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Just after yesterday’s Executive Committee meeting lunch break, itself coming only 30 minutes after the 45 minute recess Mayor Ford hastily called when he became overwhelmed at the series of motions being put forth by his handpicked wrecking crew – Hey! Come on, guys! Didn’t we have this all worked out on Wednesday?! — Councillor David Shiner took to the overhead for a hand-doodled presentation.  He claimed it was scratched out on paper because he’s a technological Luddite. That’s another way of saying, yeah, this is going to be completely slapdash but in no way does that mean it should be seen as ill-thought out or anything.

What the councillor proceeded to show was that since amalgamation, the city has increased its spending on libraries and public transit quite substantially. A whole lot, in fact. I couldn’t quite make out the numbers (neither could Councillor Shiner at times) but I think he suggested the TTC’s received a 103% boost in funding since the late 90s.

There was no motion to go with it, nothing substantive at all. Councillor Shiner just wanted everyone who was watching to know that the city’s libraries and the TTC were doing just fine, thank you very much. A cut here or there, a little off the top and sides wasn’t going to make a lick a difference in the long run because, you know, we’d all be dead. The important thing for everyone to realize especially those clamouring to save library hours or to stave off reduced bus service way out in the middle of nowhere Scarborough was the city was still forking over a really big number of dollars for both books and buses. Really big numbers.

Really. Big. Numbers.

Got it?

What was missing from the councillor’s pitch, aside from any semblance of late-20th/early-21st technology, was context. It was just a set of numbers presented in the void of an administration trying to present itself as all reasonable, responsible, commonsensical and not in the least bit reactionary, radical, heartless. That’s a lot of money we’re spending, folks. They’ll barely even notice 5, 6, 7, 10% less.

No talk of how increased funding has both spurred and been caused by a record ridership on the TTC. Until we get fully automatic, multi-person jetpacks and drone driven propulsion tubes firing us en masse up and down Yonge Street, the more transit gets used, the more people we need to operate the heavy machinery. Ditto libraries. The more demand for their services and materials, the higher the costs.

That’s all a good thing. At least it is for those who think public transit and libraries provide a net societal benefit. Reducing service in either (especially while increasing the costs for using them) tends to dampen demand and who would possible want that? Only reactionary, radical, heartless ideologues and there’s none of those in these here parts. We are all reasonable and responsible, we are.

And as any reasonable and responsible person does when faced with such daunting, really big numbers, they cower, curl up into a foetal position and try not to understand or explain them at all. Almost as if it’s incomprehensible that a government, regardless of size or how many people it serves, should be dealing with numbers that big. A fiscal ideology, let’s call it, allowing for little understanding or conviction that those holding the public purse strings are capable of making sound financial decisions that benefit the most number of people.

Thus, big always equals bad. Never mind population growth. Never mind aging infrastructure. Never mind any mitigating circumstance that would wholly justify or warrant increased expenditure needs. It’s totally beside the point. If you believe that small governments are better, there’s absolutely no reason for their budgets to ever get this big.

At least, I think that’s what Councillor Shiner and his cave dwelling scrawlings was trying to tell us.

— by the numbersly submitted by Cityslikr

What Now?

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I’d asked him the question at least 5 minutes earlier with still no answer.

His beard had become excessively long, past Tolstoy length, approaching Gandalfian. Curiously, he had shaped his moustache into a handlebar transformation, both ends of which he was twirling currently as he sat, gazing out the window. “It’s a Movember thing,” he’d told me when I’d asked.

Which hadn’t been my question he was now ignoring. So I repeated it.

“So what now?”

Our resident protest expert, Acaphlegmic had initially been excited about the Occupy movement but had steadily become not disenchanted, just bewildered. Now that they were being moved from their spot in St. James park, the inevitable question was being asked. Repeatedly.

“Did you hear me?”

Acaphlegmic stopped fiddling with the ends of his moustache and clasped his hands together as if in prayer, turning from the window in my direction but without looking at me. He leaned in, still not saying anything. I followed suit, leaning toward him across my desk, hoping that this might help kick start the conversation. It did. Eventually.

“Who knows?” came the answer. Hardly worth the wait. I sat back in my chair in a huff, sighing exasperatedly. It was an all too common response for my liking.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. The situation is fluid. So I keep hearing.”

“The thing is, Damien,” Acaphlegmic continued, as usual getting my name wrong, “back in my day, it was easy to answer that question. The demands were concrete. Equal rights. Stop the war. Disco sucks! Now… now… How do you encapsulate into slogan form, ‘We’ve Gone Down The Wrong Path For The Last 30 Years?’ Wegodo..th..”

“How about this,” I interrupted, Acaphlegmic’s attempt at acronymizing always led down long, winding roads that could take hours to cover. “Resist Austerity. Reclaim the Economy. Recreate Democracy. It’s catchy and points us in a direction.”

It was also, apparently, completely new to my colleague who took some time letting it sink in before nodding his head and leaning back in his chair.

“That’s good,” he said. “You come up with that yourself?”

Hardly. It had been making the rounds for a couple weeks now down in the States but had struck me as something much more universal than Occupy Wall Street or Occupy the Banks. Not as easily and smugly shrugged off as those two had been here with the somewhat specious claim that Canadian banks had been good as gold during the black fall of 2008. Austerity measures were looming under the pretence that somehow government spending had gotten us into this mess in the first place rather than the result of backstopping a global recessionary economy brought on by a criminally reckless private financial sector.

“The McGuinty government has made its intentions known with the Throne Speech yesterday,” I told Acaphlegmic who now had his head tilted back into his hands and staring up at the ceiling. “Aside from health and education, it’s going to be belt tightening all round. Infrastructure needs? Up yours. Transit systems? Ha, ha. Ha, fucking ha. Growth is anaemic, job losses are mounting and this government’s response is to crawl into a hole and hope it doesn’t get too ugly? So yeah. Resist Austerity. Reclaim the Economy. Recreate Democracy.”

Acaphlegmic remained silently staring up at the ceiling. It was quite possible he’d fallen asleep. I leaned forward across the desk and tugged at the end of his beard. Nothing. Already on my feet, I circled around behind him and looked down into his face. His eyes were open. We stared at each other.

“Our already obscenely low corporate tax rates are still on target to go even lower,” I pointed out to him. “And what’s their response? The Chrysler CEO wants wage concessions from their Canadian workers. So government revenues drop doubly. How the fuck is that supposed to bring us out of recession?”

We continue to stare at one another. I’m not sure why exactly. Although a handle bar moustachioed, long bearded face at a 180-degree angle is very, very intriguing.

“Resist Austerity. Reclaim the Economy. Recreate Democracy.”

I went back to my chair, wondering what to do next. Me and almost everyone else, I guess. What we shouldn’t be doing is making a stand now in a park that had little bearing on the real battle at hand. I’d listened this morning (17’26” mark) to an occupier chained up in the camp’s library stress how important it was to defend it. Hopefully he’d also attended Toronto Public Library board meetings where deputant after deputant stepped forward to speak out in defence of the other free libraries in town under threat of closure and hours reduction.

That’s not to diminish what Occupy Toronto set out to do. Establishing dialogue is good, injecting the standard narrative with dissenting views is necessary. But now it’s time to bring the fight inside to where decisions are pending that will adversely affect those whose cause you’ve taken up. Dwight Duncan, the provincial finance minister, is talking about 33% reductions to some ministries. Occupy Dwight Duncan’s office. Next week the city’s budget committee and then full council meet to begin debate on what is being proposed as a slash and burn budget. A falsely hyped and manufactured funding short fall deliberately made worse by ill-thought out revenue cuts in order to gut of services that were promised to be untouched. Occupy the budget committee on Monday. Occupy City Council on Tuesday and Wednesday. Occupy councillors’ offices.

“Resist Austerity. Reclaim the Economy. Recreate Democracy.”

“Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz,” Acaphlegmic responded.

**sigh**

It seemed that maybe the fight had gone out of this old, one time rabble-rouser. The torch had been passed. I got up to see if I could make his nap a little more comfortable. Looking down into his face, I noticed his eyes remained open and he was smiling. I waved him off but he didn’t flinch. Putting my hand closer to his face, I waved more vigorously.

“Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.”

Sleeping with his eyes open and a smile on his face, I took this as a good sign. Maybe we were on the right track.

— as it happenedly submitted by Cityslikr

According to Sue-Ann Levy

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I wonder how often administrators over at the Rotman School of Business think of revoking Sue-Ann Levy’s alumna status whenever she writes out those words? “According to my calculations…” Beware conservative hack math. Numbers are meaningless. Conclusions suspect.

She was at it again yesterday, yapping about free passes to various Toronto cultural venues by the Toronto Public Library. Never mind that the Sun Life Financial Museum and Arts Pass program $200,000 is a “donation Sun Life gives… [that] covers the printing and promotion of the passes and the money to hire an administrator [bolding ours].” Just remember that it’s a program initiated under former mayor David Miller, ‘Mr. Culture and Creativity Himself’. Don’t you just hate it when our mayor is all culture-y and creativity-y? Himself.

Despite the fact that Sun Life covers the cost of printing and promoting the passes as well as hiring the administrator to oversee such things, TPL staff puts in all that time to organize and supervise the weekly draws. Toronto taxpayers have to foot that bill which must amount to… well, Sue-Ann doesn’t take the time to calculate those numbers. But they must be huge because Ms. Levy sniffs at the $200,000 Sun Life donates. “That’s it”, she concludes, implying that the real money is paid out come draw time, what with all those slips of paper, pencils and cardboard boxes necessary to pull off such complicated manoeuvres.

No, Sue-Ann has bigger numbers to cook, taking her Jethro Bodine guzinta skills to calculate the money lost by all those money losing organizations these library using freeloaders are trying to crash.  “According to my calculations,” Levy scribbles, “the Toronto Zoo’s involvement in the program will add up to nearly $600,000 in foregone revenue this year while Casa Loma will not collect $530,000 due to these passes.” Gasp! Such big numbers!

But wait, it gets even juicer.” Toronto’s eight historical museums will give up $3.2-million in potential revenues.” Gravy! Sue-Ann Levy sees gravy!

When asked to comment about such outrageous non-spending, the city’s Chief Librarian, $205,720/year (no one in the public sector is worth a 6 digit figure salary) Jane Pyper was not available for comment.  She was just back from vacation – what? 200K a year and she goes on vacation?! – and, according to Sue-Ann, was “overwhelmed”.  Also, “TPL Board member Paul Ainslie couldn’t be reached for comment either,” whined Levy. I imagine he was simply too embarrassed to go on record commenting on such drivel.

Not so Budget Chief Mike Del Grande. This is just the kind of profligacy that “… makes his ‘hair stand on end’”.  “It’s very interesting when you consider that some of the venues (donating passes) are losing money … yet we’re giving out freebies to everyone and their uncle,” Del Grande said.

Now, no one should be surprised by such fiscal fatuousness coming from Sue-Ann Levy despite her Rotman MBA. But from someone overseeing a nearly $10 billion annual operating budget? A loud and proud chartered accountant no less? Head shaking in its myopic simple-mindedness.

Does the budget chief actually believe that people who wait in line to enter a draw to win passes to places like the zoo or Casa Loma – some as long as 4 hours according to Sue-Ann’s calculations, so take that as you will – are somehow gaming the system? Deadbeats with the time on their hands to stick it to all the hardworking taxpayers of Toronto and score themselves some freebies? Perhaps the more logical conclusion is those who would put in that kind of time in the hopes of winning an entry into some of our cultural institutions do so out of economic necessity. Without the passes, they would be unable to go. So they’re not freebies at all. The millions of dollars Sue-Ann Levy cites as giveaways are, actually, never-would-bes, nothing even close to lost revenue.

And don’t many service oriented businesses offer up these kind of ‘giveaways’ in order to bring customers to them? A certain percentage of those who come with their free passes might fall in love with the zoo or Casa Loma and decide it’s worth budgeting for a return visit. They might bring some other family members or friends with them next time. Failing that, with the money they’ve saved on admission, they might spend it on souvenirs or concessions. That would be found money. Simple good business sense. Something this administration is all about, right?

“[Del Grande] says this is not part of the Library’s core responsibilities, nor should it be.” Just how much of a backward philistine is the budget chief anyway? Introducing people who might not otherwise be exposed to a wider array of cultural institutions is not a library’s core responsibility? That’s exactly a library’s core responsibility. Saying it isn’t simply shows a monumental ignorance of the purpose of having a public library system in the first place. It helps enhance the public sphere by building a better informed, enlightened citizenry.

Instead of railing about phantom gravy and making grand pronouncements on topics you know little about, Sue-Ann Levy and Mike Del Grande should really do the city a favour and spend more time at their local libraries. We’d all benefit having more knowledgeable newspaper columnists and broad-minded budget chiefs.

— davidly submitted by Cityslikr