Tag Archives: Vehicle registration tax

You Can Have Your Subway, Sir. But It’ll Cost You.

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Pssst. Residents of Scarborough. You’re not falling for it, are you? He’s the Little Engine That Could. Mayor Ford (Secretly) Loves Transit City.

This story is so fucking messy and convoluted, 2 parts farce and 1 part tragedy, I don’t even know where to begin. It’s all stop, start. A good idea followed by a dud but then upon reflection, hey, that’s not too bad either. To paraphrase Gordon Chong, I have to confess that over the last few moments I have gone from optimism to deflation about this post but now I’m back on track.

Unlike transit planning in Toronto. Ba-dum-tsssh! I got a million of them, folks.

Watching Mayor Ford’s Scarborough press conference yesterday where he basically announced he would be no longer listening to his handpicked TTC chair, I couldn’t help wonder just how much gullibility remained in the pool of support Scarborough residents had toward the mayor. The former east side municipality showed a lot of love for candidate Ford in the 2010 municipal election, voting overwhelmingly for him. While such heady numbers have slipped in recent opinion polls, the mayor is still more popular in Scarborough than anywhere else in the city.

Despite reneging on at least one of his major campaign platforms (“No Service Cuts. Guaranteed.”) that has hit Scarborough particularly hard, Mayor Ford was there with his Grey Cup, just one of you folks’ football jacket to express solidarity with his peeps and let them know that he would not fail them on the matter of subways. He said he would rid their streets of the scourge of streetcars, and that’s what he was going to do. Subways were the only way to go, the only form of rapid transit according to the mayor. So burying all the Eglinton LRT was the only sensible, reasonable thing to do.

And with all the savings that wouldn’t be seen doing that, he would build the fine taxpayers of Scarborough a real, honest to god subway by extending the Sheppard subway east to the Scarborough Town Centre. I love you, Scarborough! Thank you and g’night!

Before all the sceptics out there could finish their first eye roll and mumble something about pixie dust, Mayor Ford had the hard facts to prove that his transportation plan was ‘doable’. Excerpts from the long awaited report from former councillor and both TTC and GO Transit vice-chair, Gordon Chong, began leaking out. Hells yeah, we can build the Sheppard subway extension. The private sector was chomping at the bit to get the party started. They might even pony up as much as 50, 60% of the cost in return for three to decades of air rights and such. Come on. What are you waiting for?

That only leaves, what, 40-50% left over for the city to pick up since the province has washed its hands off any involvement in a Sheppard subway. No problem, right? We’ll just start levying tolls, congestion fees, hiking parking rates, maybe get us some municipal sales taxing powers.

Wait, what? Where the hell did all that come from? Isn’t that kind of talk a little, I don’t know, war-y on the car? I thought that had been declared over and done with.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I would love to have that conversation but if we’re going down that road (or tunnelling under it to reduce the traffic), it changes everything. LRTs versus subways, where and how many. It’s, what do they call it? A game-changer.

If the mayor really wants to open that discussion, I’m all ears. But until he does, until he comes right out and says, yeah, I’m willing to talk about road tolls, then Gordon Chong’s report is an absolute non-starter, meaningless, not worth the paper it’s written on and certainly not worth the money paid to Mr. Chong to write it.

And how exactly does Mayor Ford approach that subject? Remember when he told us the city didn’t have a revenue problem, it had a spending problem? Remember how he championed the removal of the vehicle registration tax? Remember?

Now he’s going to turn around and try to persuade all those he’d convinced on the campaign trail that they were over-taxed and under-serviced that if they really wanted that subway he promised wouldn’t cost them an extra cent, well, they were going to have to chip in a little more to help out. And oh how they will look back on those wistful, innocent days of paying the VRT, and laugh and laugh at how they’d been fooled into believing the city didn’t have a revenue problem. Your basic case of lying to Peter to pay Paul.

But what’s the alternative for the mayor? Rejecting the notion of any additional revenue generation from private vehicle use leaves him with no ability to pay for a Sheppard subway extension into his beloved Scarborough. That means all he’s accomplished is unnecessarily burying the eastern portion of the Eglinton LRT while depriving many of the neighbourhoods of additional new transit lines.

At which point, many transit users in Scarborough would be right in asking, so why bury the Eglinton LRT? It won’t be the first time the question’s been asked. Certainly it’s one Councillor Karen Stintz, the TTC chair, wondered out loud. By any measure, Mayor Ford’s transportation plan without at least the eastward Sheppard subway extension amounts to less new public transit for Scarborough. No road tolls, congestion fees etc. means no Sheppard subway. There’s no getting around that fact.

And if the mayor can’t guarantee Scarborough anything other than a buried Eglinton LRT isn’t resurrecting Transit City from the dead the next logical step? Hey. It ain’t subways but it’s a whole shit load better than what’s there now, folks.

This is what you might refer to as being between a rock and a hard place for the mayor. By building a subway, he’s going to have to find a way to re-define the so-called war on cars. Failing that, he faces becoming the poster boy for a transit plan he unilaterally tried to kill, doing what its supporters failed to do properly way back when. Promoting and championing it as a doable, more affordable way to get better transit to those lacking it.

— Barbarinoily submitted by Cityslikr

The Stintz Appeal

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Of all the braying defences that sprung forth from the mouths of various Team Ford members during Tuesday’s budget debate against salvaging $15-19 million in cuts by 23 of their councillor colleagues, none angered me more than the words of TTC Chair Karen Stintz. They weren’t the dumbest ones spoken during the day, not by any stretch of the imagination. They weren’t the most offensive either. I mean, come on. Councillor Mammoliti passed up no opportunity to claim both of those titles.

No, what be leaning on my last nerve yo about Councillor Stintz’s speech (aside from the flaming disingenuousness) was its thunderous, flintily passionate, clinically rehearsed call to do absolutely nothing.

We all want to build a better city. We all want to leave it a little stronger than how we found it. We all have goals and aspirations to make Toronto great. It’s just… it’s just… things are a little tight right now. I’d really like to help out but what are you going to do? Look how stridently and keenly I point all this out. It gives the impression that I really care while relieving me of the hard work of actually figuring out how to do all those things I claim I was elected to do.

What seemed to rankle Stintz most about Councillor Josh Colle’s big motion to save some stuff from the chopping block was the fact that she, as a more well-to-do resident of the city, would be receiving a childcare subsidy from the city. “Why should the people who pay property tax in Jane-Finch pay for my daycare?” Councillor Stintz asked. Uhhhh, councillor? That’s kind of how our tax system works. We pool our resources and spread fairness and opportunity around. I mean, since you’re asking, why should people who pay property tax in Jane-Finch pay for roadwork on your street?

The councillor wanted ‘targeted’ subsidies for those who truly need help with daycare costs. Never mind the inefficiency and increased costs of implementing that kind of system but why target just the cost side of city services? What about revenues? If Councillor Stintz is so offended having city subsidies for childcare foisted upon her maybe she can bring forth a motion that proposes anyone who can afford to pay the VRT do so. Tit for tat targeting, as it were.

But like most full-fledged members of Team Ford, the question of taxation came up only in passing during the councillor’s speech. The tale she spun was that after selling off rights to hydro poles and the ground under the science centre, the city secured the right to collect some additional taxes from the province. And then?

After imposing the land transfer tax and the vehicle registration tax and raising property taxes above the rate of inflation, the people stood up and, apparently, said, “What are you going to do now?” What indeed, Councillor Stintz?

She skipped over the first part of the answer, where she joined in to repeal the vehicle registration tax and freeze property taxes, and went directly to the part where the city was out of money and had no choice but to cut services and sell shit off.

Then there was the matter of being the TTC chair.

“You know what, lemme tell you folks, it hasn’t been a fun two years being chair of the TTC where I’m cutting routes and adjusting service.”

You know what, lemme tell you councillor, if the job’s too fucking hard and not, you know, very much fun, step aside and give someone else a chance who might try and come up with real solutions.

The TTC Chair went on to say that she’d love not to have to cut or ‘adjust’ but, unfortunately, we just can’t afford the same level of limousine service that has seen ridership in Toronto increase to record levels. Yep, after slashing general revenues and fending off anything but the smallest of fare increases, the TTC Chair had no alternative but to reduce levels of service. In the realm of rigid right wing thought options are always limited and possibilities left unexplored.

This is a constant refrain coming from many of those still marching in virtual lockstep with Mayor Ford at this point. Their helplessness in the face of what they portray as the inevitable austerity necessary owing to either 1) the previous administration’s profligacy or; 2) global economic uncertainty and bad things happening in Greece. If it weren’t for these, well hey, they would build us grand edifices and subways everywhere. All those nice to haves that the mayor talks about that suddenly include a viable, dynamic public transit system, they’d be ours. Times being what they are, however, we should dampen our expectations. Vote for unexceptional politicians and stop demanding they do anything beneficial for the people they’ve been elected to serve.

With great vigour and studied oratory flair, Councillor Stintz took her 7 minutes to speak on the budget to essentially tell us that she and the 19 other councillors who would ultimately wind up supporting the mayor were not up to the task of grappling with the serious issues we face. There was nothing to be done except attack the easiest targets and make things a little more miserable for everyone. Buses will be fuller and run a little less frequently. Other services the city offers too will be spottier and cost more.

In her bid to “… build a city that protects our values and makes it a place that our children can afford to stay and build their families and their futures”, the councillor urges us to make Toronto a little less liveable, a little less affordable, a little less… better. That way, to the modern conservative mind only capable of counting the dollars and cents right in front of them, we will be able to provide improved services and invest in much needed infrastructure further down the road when it’s more expensive and in more dire need. Or more concisely, we’re saving our money so our children will have to spend theirs.

And when they ask, our children, what we did when the chips were down, when the going got tough, Councillor Stintz and those supporting her and those of us enabling her, we can proudly claim: Us? We stood firm, stuck to our guns and did nothing.

— bravely and proudly submitted by Cityslikr

Self-Service Or, You’re On Your Own

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“We set service standards by making budget cuts.”

— Councillor Gord(on) Perks

Or maybe that should’ve read:

“.stuc tegdub gnikam yb sdradnats ecivres tes eW”

In Mayor Rob Ford’s Toronto, we do things all back-asswards like, and call it, ‘Thinking Outside of The Box’ as if nobody’s ever, ever used that phrase before. Cut first and ask questions later. Because everyone knows City Hall is bloated. No one’s even going to notice a 10% cut across the board. That’s just how much fat there is.

So we spend millions of dollars on outside consultants to outline what we’re allowed to cut. We use that as a rationale to cut. Then we go back to the same consultants and ask them to tell us what we should cut. Ooops. Too late. That’s already gone. What’s next on your list?

It’s what’s been called making policy through the budget process. You can’t govern what you don’t have, right? Daycares? Yeah, we did that once, a little while back but… you know, we kind of ran out of money. The province totally screwed us. So we don’t do that anymore. What are you going to do?

Libraries? Yeah, they used to be really popular. People would line up outside some branches before the doors even opened. But for no particular reason, we hacked away some 10% from them and, funnily enough, not as many folks use the facilities as before. Who’dve guessed? There seems to be some co-relation between number of hours open and usage. The numbers are down. Numbers don’t lie. What are you going to do?

As for the TTC? Don’t get me started. Cut back there and people still kept coming. It’s almost as if they needed to use transit or something. But we’ll keep at `er. Delay having that subway built. Hit a few snags unnecessarily burying the Eglinton LRT. Sooner or later people are just going to have to get back into their cars.

What might seem haphazard or maybe even bordering on outright incompetency at first blush, takes on a much darker hue upon closer inspection. A method to the apparent madness. Why risk negative political fallout entering into a full on debate on the council floor about your intentions when you can back door it in a committee room, packed full of your hand picked supporters?

Where once Mayor Ford stood tall, proudly proclaiming his libertarian view of limited government, what it should be in the business of, essentially roads clean, roads safe, now he cowered behind a lacy veil of financial constraint. Financial constraint brought on by his own doing, no less, keeping property tax bumps under the rate of inflation and repealing a tax his very own brother’s 2nd favourite city after Chicago is now about to jostle the province to allow them to institute. Less an ideological warrior prepared to fight and die on the hill of principle and more of a craven, political schemer.

Seriously. If I told them what I was really up to, they’dve never elected me in the first place.

It’s the proverbial death by a 1000 backroom cuts. Never coming out and officially deep sixing anything, nothing that bold. It’s just a slow bleed. We didn’t kill anything. People just kind of lost interest, I guess.

At one point during Tuesday’s 2012 budget wrap up (which really wasn’t because many items got booted to the next meeting on January 9th), Councillor Paul Ainslie strolled into the room. Since he wasn’t a member of the budget committee, he couldn’t introduce an item himself. So fellow Team Ford teammate and budget committee member, Councillor John Parker did his bidding for him.

What bidding was that, you ask? Well, what with all the flurry of proposed cuts happening, arch-conservative Ainslie couldn’t stomach the idea of a pool in his Ward 43 being axed. But to save it from the chopping block, the rule is, you have to offer up an offset, an equal reduction in spending somewhere else, so as to keep the balanced budget in place.

Well, alright then, thinks Councillor Ainslie. Why don’t we just take the money needed to save my pool right out of the city’s Environmental office? Why not indeed. While on the surface such a trade off seems to make absolutely no sense – pool? environment? huh? – to those looking to get the city out of the environment business, it’s so deliciously obvious. An added bonus for Councillor Ainslie as it will help nip in the bud any further talk from the city of that crazy wind power business.

“You will have made the choice not to be able to afford these programs,” Councillor Perks told the budget committee.

That’s the core of the idea of making policy through the budget process. Intentionally drain the coffers, render programs, agencies, departments ill-operational. Kill their ability to function properly. When they no longer are able to adequately serve the public, you can rationalize putting the final nail in the coffin. Why the hell are we putting money into this? It’s not helping anyone. Let’s get rid of it.

Small government by stealth. Keeping your hands clean as you cause increased hardship to those who thought you were in it looking out for the little guy. So with a straight face you can claim you’d love to fund all this stuff. Your hearts bleed for anyone who depends on these services but the fact is, at the end of the day, (it’s always at the end of the day) the money’s just not there. Sorry, folks. Wish we could help.

— record straighteningly submitted by Cityslikr