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30
Jan 12

Toronto’s Transit Future: Responding to Rob Ford

On January 26, several days after TTC Karen Stintz mused openly about making substantial changes to current transit plans, Mayor Rob Ford made his first public statement on the subject. That statement was then quickly retracted because it was riddled with embarrassing factual errors, including a claim that the TTC had been building subways for 100 years. Toronto didn’t open its first subway line until 1954. The original message also claimed some degree of support for the underground plan by the Pembina Institute. To which Pembina quickly retorted: nope. (The original version, via Jonathan Goldsbie, is here.) On January 28, a revised version of the same message was posted to the mayor’s Facebook page. I decided to respond to it.

All quoted text via Rob Ford’s Weekly Report -Â week ending January 27, 2012.

Dear Friends,

Mr. Mayor! Hi. Sorry about how things have been going for you lately.

From 1910 to 2007, the City of Toronto has based its transit planning around subway lines (built or anticipated). It is now time that we get back to this sort of transit planning to make certain residents will continue to have rapid transit as a mode of commuting.

This is more historically accurate than your original claim that Toronto’s transit system has been based on subways for 100 years. But pointing to 1910 as the year the city started basing its transit planning around subway lines is still a little fishy. While a mayoral candidate that year did support subway construction, he was defeated. On New Year’s Day in 1912, the people of Toronto rejected the possibility of a Yonge subway line when it was put to ballot. The city didn’t get serious about subway construction until 1946.

It’d probably be more accurate to say that, historically, Toronto based its transit planning around streetcars. The TTC once operated a network of streetcar routes that crisscrossed the city, including very busy ones on corridors that later became part of Toronto’s subway system.

And it’s not like we’ve stopped looking at subways, either. There’s a subway extension to York University (and beyond!) currently in the works. And the Downtown Relief Line, which can only be heavy rail subway, is a critical infrastructure project for this city that deserves far more attention than it gets.

For the past 50 of those 100 years of planning transit around subways, the Yonge-University and Bloor-Danforth lines have continually served as arteries that take in thousands of people each day from near-by surface routes and get them to their destinations quickly.

No argument there. They’re great.

But just for the hell of it, here are some numbers you might find interesting: 714,000. 495,000. 48,000. 39,000. Those were, in 2010, ridership counts for the Yonge subway, the Bloor-Danforth subway, the Sheppard subway and the Scarborough RT respectively. The latter two figures are comparable with — and in some cases lower than — several bus and streetcar routes.

We are now at a juncture where we must expand on our established transit infrastructure to ensure people can continue getting to where they want to go in a fast and efficient way.

Great news! Glad that whole war on cars thing is over.

As you know, I have continually pushed for an underground LRT that will span from Jane/Black Creek to Kennedy Station. I have done this because residents have repeatedly stressed that they do not want streetcars that are marginally faster than busses and take up lanes of traffic. Lastly, it is important that Scarborough, the fastest growing region in Toronto, is finally provided with a rapid transit line that can help move its 625,000 residents faster.

Well, sort of. In your mayoral campaign, you pushed for no transit improvements on Eglinton at all. You told a crowd at a debate held at York Memorial Collegiate in September 2010 that the Sheppard Subway was “all we can afford.”

We’ll get to the speed of light rail transit (or ‘streetcars’ as you kind of derisively call them) later on, but let’s focus on the idea that you’re just doing what the people want you to do.

In a January 2011 Leger Marketing poll, taken at the height of your popularity, only one in four people believed that we should build subways because it’s what you promised during the election. One in four! Considering you won the election with just under half the popular vote, it’s probably reasonable to say that only about half of your base — of Ford Nation — saw your subways plan as an important driver of their support.

In the coming days you are likely to hear some comments from City Hall that will suggest we should go back to Transit City. Proponents will argue that Transit City is an effective way to get around Toronto. I argue, however, that the best way to move people across Toronto is with rapid transit – which you simply cannot have with the surface rail lines.

Sure you can. Speed is a function of design, not technology. Our subway system averages about 30 kilometres-per-hour across the whole system, but that figure is a lot lower if you look only at the downtown section, where stations are close together and the trains have to wait longer at stations due to crowding.

Similarly, speeds on the eastern part of Eglinton were designed to be a bit slower than they would have been on the western part, even though both were to be surface rail. In fact, the part of Eglinton that was to venture into Ford Country in Etobicoke was planned to run at speeds roughly equivalent to the Bloor-Danforth subway.

Metrolinx estimates that the average trip for a rider will be reduced by half on the underground Eglinton Crosstown. Scarborough transit riders on an underground line could travel from Laird Avenue to Kennedy Station in about 14 minutes. This is a vast improvement from the estimated travel time of 24 minutes on a surface rail line.

That feels a bit disingenuous. That section of the line had at least four more stops to service when it was on the surface. If speed is the priority, it’s well within your mandate as the mayor of Toronto to talk to Metrolinx about tweaks to the design that can achieve that. (By the way, here’s what’s decidedly not within your mandate: unilaterally deciding to spend $2 billion dollars to bury a section of rail track on Eglinton Avenue.)

And, even then: transit is inevitably about trade-offs. Does reducing travel times by ten minutes for some commuters justify leaving 50,000 riders on the Finch bus with no improved service?

It is also important to remember that an underground rapid transit line has considerable savings for taxpayers. Underground lines and the vehicles that travel on them require less maintenance since they are spared the wear and tear of Canadian summers and winters. This will result in infrastructure that lasts longer and keeps the capitalÂ replacement costs down.

Pretty sneaky, but I’m not sure this holds up. With underground transit, maintenance costs are mostly folded into operating expenses — after you or I take the last train home at night, the TTC lets loose with a phalanx of maintenance staff who work in the subway tunnels to keep things running smoothly on an ongoing basis. Our existing on-street rail, on the other hand, tends to be maintained through sporadic work paid for via the capital budget.

It’s hard to make direct comparisons between ongoing maintenance and operating costs and TTC budget data isn’t overly helpful in helping calculate costs.

Still, let’s look at an obvious cost advantage surface rail has over underground: when you run on the surface, you don’t need station infrastructure. This eliminates a number of ongoing expenses, including cleaning, security, building maintenance, heating & cooling, landscaping, and so on. A 2007 study that looked at station operating costs across 12 different transit systems (including Toronto’s), pegged the annual cost of a transit station at anywhere between $150,000 and $4.3 million. The median cost was about a million dollars.

But even ignoring station costs, let’s be charitable and say that putting all of Eglinton underground will save us $5 million per year over the long term. At that rate — ignoring interest — it would take only 400 years for your $2 billion investment to pay off.

The people of 2412 will thank you for your foresight. And then they’ll fly to work using their jetpacks.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Thanks. You too.

P.S. Hey, wait, isn’t it weird that, only a week ago, you were talking about how the city couldn’t afford to spend $5 million to keep bus routes operating and now you’re out in public arguing that we shouldn’t skimp on transit?

Just thought that was kind of funny. Anyway, take care.

P.P.S You have no chance in hell of winning a vote on this issue.

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Jan 12

Council builds a new transit plan: the pros and cons

That happened quickly. We got word last night that TTC Chair Karen Stintz’s musings about an above ground Eglinton LRT have given way to a full-blown alternative transit plan. One that’s significantly different from the scheme Rob Ford and Metrolinx have been pushing for the last year.

The Globe & Mail’s Elizabeth Church:

A compromise is in the works to relieve Torontoâ€™s transit headache for the new Eglinton light rail line and fulfill the mayorâ€™s election pledge for a Sheppard subway extension.

A group of Toronto city councillors that includes TTC chair Karen Stintz is proposing that the eastern leg of the new Eglinton Crosstown line run at street level as first planned with the money that saves used to extend the Sheppard subway two stops to Victoria Park. The proposal also would use some of the money to improve TTC service on Finch Avenue West with a dedicated transit corridor.

viaÂ Compromise would bring leg of Eglinton LRT back to street level | Globe & Mail.

The Toronto Star’s version of the story includes a helpful map, though it leaves out the coming Spadina subway extension for some reason. I’ve included their graphic at the top of this post.

So: Surface LRT on Eglinton East. A stubby extension to the already stubby Sheppard Subway. And a long Bus Rapid Transit line on Finch. Details are light, but — like with anything — there are some notable pros and cons to this plan.

PRO:Â This is a plan that’s actually sensible and realistic. It’s a design that serves riders, not the whims of a man with an irrational bias against transit he can see while he’s driving.

CON: Ignoring the fact that it was thrown in as an offering to the mayor, there doesn’t seem to be a strong business case for the one- or two-stop Sheppard extension included in the plan. The Star’s David Rider and Tess Kalinowski peg the cost of that extension at $1 billion, which seems like a high estimate considering that was the cost of the entire Sheppard East LRT, a 14 kilometre route.

PRO: The LRT, as planned as part of Transit City, would have required a similar underground connection to Victoria Park, because there’s a highway interchange standing in the way. In terms of design, a subway extension doesn’t greatly differ from what we would have seen under the original plan, and still leaves the door open to a future LRT line on Sheppard East from Victoria Park to the zoo….

CON: …or ANOTHER subway extension to Scarborough Town Centre. Without a firm long-term plan for transit in this corridor, Toronto risks spending another twenty years endlessly debating what to do on Sheppard. Meanwhile, other parts of the city that are crying out for transit infrastructure go neglected.

PRO: Finch finally gets some love. One of the most horrifically overcrowded transit corridors in the city, Finch needs something — anything — that can help provide higher order service.

CON: The ‘busway’ concept planned for Finch seems rather poorly defined. Rider and Kalinowski peg the cost at about $400 million, for a route that looks to be more than double the length of the 11km Finch West LRT. That LRT line was to cost about $1.2 billion, three times as much. The low cost-per-kilometre makes me wonder how much we’re sacrificing: is this ‘BRT’ just going to be some painted lines on the road or is the plan to build something robust enough that it can be easily converted to light rail in the future? More details are desperately needed here.

PRO: A return to the surface alignment on the eastern section of Eglinton opens the door to further on-street extensions of the line westward toward Pearson Airport. Over time, we may just get the kind of comprehensive network of LRT routes once envisioned with Transit City.

CON: On-street operation on Eglinton East means that the TTC and the City’s transportation department desperately need to get their act together when it comes to route management and transit signal priority. Staff tend to come up with an endless list of excuses for why the streetcars on Spadina and St. Clair continue to bunch up. But we don’t need excuses on Eglinton — we need a transit line that runs well.

PRO: With support from councillors like Karen Stintz, Josh Matlow and John Parker, this alternative transit plan will most assuredly sail through council. Both Dalton McGuinty and reps from Metrolinx have said they’re on board with exploring a new plan. Given growing political support for switching up Toronto’s transit plans, the mayor would have to be completely out of his mind to stand in opposition.

CON: The National Post’s Natalie Alcoba reports that Mark Towhey, Ford’s Director of Policy, has indicated that the mayor does not support any changes. “Residents donâ€™t want trains running down the middle of the street,” he said. Right.

PRO:Â Despite the questions and concerns on the table, this rethink is very welcome. Blowing $8 billion on a single transit line is the kind of bonehead decision that haunts a city for decades, similar to building an escalator to nowhere or the world’s largest magnifying glass. Going forward, the thing to watch is that we don’t jump from one half-baked plan to another. Council has to make sure that what they’re proposing is realistic, cost-effective and timely.

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Jan 12

That damn streetcar purchase: how Rob Ford made transit a budget scapegoat

The mayor, in his “Weekly Update” message, sent out the Friday before last week’s budget vote:

We are also going to take this year’s $154 million surplus and invest it vehicles for the TTC.

As I have said – the previous administration placed a $700 million order for TTC vehicles [new streetcars] with no money set aside to pay for them. That was irresponsible.

The $154 million surplus must go towards paying that $700 million debt as the bills come in. This is the responsible thing to do.

viaÂ My Weekly Report – week ending January 13, 2012 | Rob Ford’s Facebook.

This streetcar gambit was the second strategy the mayor’s team tried as part of their attempt to take back control of the 2012 budget narrative. In the face of an almost $200 million surplus, the whole “we’ve got to make a lot of cuts!” thing required some finesse. Their first idea was to frame any notion of using one-time “windfall” funds to maintain programs as totally and completely irresponsible. The kind of thing dumb consumers do.

That quickly fell apart, though, because the 2012 operating budget was always going to include so-called “one-time” funds. From the very moment Rob Ford stood at the podium and endorsed the staff-recommended budget, there was $80 million in non-sustainable reserve funds built right in. What became challenging for the mayor and his allies, then, was defending using some one-time funding but not any more than that.

They set an arbitrary line at $80 million but quickly realized they weren’t standing on solid ground. And so: streetcars.

Pointing to the streetcar purchase as part of the budget process was actually a shrewd move. It took something a lot of Ford opponents are passionate about — transit infrastructure — and dangled it precariously over a fiscal edge. The notion that the city might not be able to pay for its new transit vehicles if it didn’t devote more money to its capital budget at least had some logic to it. It gave proposed service cuts more legitimacy than they would have had otherwise in a budgetary surplus environment. We’re not cutting because we love cutting, they could say. We’re cutting to save transit.

All of this, of course, was mostly baseless scaremongering.

A brief history of Toronto’s streetcar purchase

Council Scorecard: New Streetcar Purcahse

David Miller's council voted to buy new streetcars twice. The first time, it was with the understanding that the federal government would cover a third of the costs. The second vote came after the federal government said no.

PART ONE: Having looked at various options for rebuilding the current fleet of Canadian Light Rail Vehicles (CLRVs) and and Articulated Light Rail Vehicles (ALRVs), the TTC decides that the best course of action is to replace the entire fleet with new streetcars. As an added bonus, the new vehicles can be made low-floor so they’re more accessible, theoretically lessening some of the demand on WheelTrans.

Leading into a design and tender process, the TTC includes 204 new streetcars in their capital budget request to council in 2008. The full cost is about $1.2 billion and the wording in the budget indicates that council’s approval is contingent on both the provincial and federal governments each paying one-third of that figure — about $400 million each. The City’s portion is to be funded with debt.

No one passes any amendments objecting to the purchase of new streetcars. (Though Rob Ford does attempt to pass amendments eliminating both 311 and Toronto’s bike plan.) The capital budget as a whole passes 29-11.

PART TWO: There’s no delicate way to say this: the federal government — through Conservative MP John Baird –, upon receiving Toronto’s request for streetcar funding as part of the 2009 federal stimulus package, literally tells Toronto to “fuck off.”

Yes, despite the province tabling no objections to funding its share of the vehicle purchase under its stimulus program, the federal government objects to paying for the purchase on a technicality and sends Toronto scrambling. At this point, the contract for the new vehicles has already been awarded to Bombardier and the clock is ticking before their bid — significantly lower than a comparable bid from Siemens — is to expire.

PART THREE: Council holds another vote to preserve Bombardier’s streetcar bid and keep things on schedule. The plan is to cover the federal government’s portion of the purchase price through debt financing. Room is made in the capital budget by deferring items like the Eglinton Bus Terminal replacement, the station modernization program and other capital projects. By doing things this way, the City is able to finance the purchase without increasing its net debt beyond what was originally planned and approved.

Council votes overwhelmingly to continue with the streetcar purchase, making the necessary changes to the TTC’s capital budget. The contract is signed with the first new streetcar set to debut in the city sometime in the next year or so.

Where we are today

As of this year’s capital budget, the streetcar purchase is still on the books, part of the ongoing capital plan that was approved by council last week. The only change is that the number of streetcars ordered was reduced from 204 to 189 as part of some cost-saving measures this past summer. The plan to use debt to finance the purchase won’t result in any kind of doom scenario, as the capital plan on the books keeps debt service charges below council’s self-mandated 15% limit. Even working from the almost stupidly conservative assumption that there will be no future surplus money or revenue from asset sales to devote to capital payments, the city has a fiscal strategy to meet its capital obligations.

That’s not to pretend that there aren’t serious issues related to TTC funding, however. Yes, the TTC has many capital needs beyond the limits of the approved capital budget. And, yes, they could absolutely use more funding to provide infrastructure to improve service across the city. There continues to be a need for all levels of government to sit down and figure out a long-term solution for transit infrastructure in this city.

But never in this budget process Â — or in any other — was the city’s ability to pay for its new streetcars threatened. Following tales of $774 million deficits and 35% property tax increases, this was just yet another example of a mayor who tends to use fear as a means to build support for his agenda.

The streetcars we desire roll on.

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Jan 12

Eglinton LRT resurfaces as Karen Stintz breaks with the mayor

The Globe & Mail’s Adrian Morrow:

Karen Stintz argues it makes more sense to put the LRT underground only along the most congested part of the route, in midtown, while building it on the surface in the spacious suburbs.

â€œIf the decision is to go with an LRT, it should be at-grade,â€ she said. â€œIf thereâ€™s a decision to put it underground, it should be a subway.â€

viaÂ TTC head favours surface LRT on suburban stretch of Eglinton | Globe & Mail.

At this point, this issue seems to have enough critical mass to make some serious waves at council. I don’t believe the mayor would win the resulting vote if he worked up the courage to ask council to endorse current transit plans.

Morrow states rather emphatically that “anyÂ rethink on the [Eglinton] line, however, would lead to further delays.” But a report by the Star’s Tess Kalinowski disagrees: “if the TTC returned to the original environmental studies for surface LRT â€“ part of former mayor David Miller’s Transit City plan â€“ there would be no delay.”

For what it’s worth, Steve Munro seems to agree with the Star. Last week, he speculated thatÂ the province “wantsÂ to keep their options open as long as possible depending on whatever position Council eventually takes.” Because, for them, not having to do new design work for the tunnel and stations along the eastern section should actually save time and money. And with an in-median route, there’d be no question about how to deal with those sneaky goddamned valley crossings which are vexing the hell out of engineers.

The best — and most obvious — outcome of all this would be for council to endorse moving the eastern section of Eglinton back to the surface and using the savings (which should approach anywhere from $1 billion to $2 billion) to build some form of higher order transit on Finch West. The LRT design for that corridor is sitting on a shelf somewhere and it wouldn’t take much to put those wheels in motion once again. (Last year, David Miller described reactivating the project as like flicking a switch, which is probably overly simplistic. But not too far off.)

Still, there’s reason to be concerned that we’ll just go from one goofy transit plan to another with this move. In her interview with Kalinowski this morning, Stintz floated the idea of using the savings from un-burying Eglinton to build the mayor’s desired Sheppard extension.

Not only does the Sheppard subway offer far less in terms of cost-benefit than the Finch route — any subway extension will add way more to long-term operating costs than surface LRT –, such a move would also seem to require the city to renegotiate the agreement they made with the province last year with their Memorandum of Understanding.

In that memo — which famously was never approved by council, even though it was supposed to be — the province pegged their maximum contribution to the Sheppard project at $650 million. And they said that the money would only materialize should Metrolinx come in under budget on the $8.4 billion Eglinton project. (This past summer, the mayor sat down with Dalton McGuinty to try to get him to release that money ahead of schedule. The premier, more or less, told the mayor to get bent.)

But Rob Ford can be stubborn, and reports out of the mayor’s office are that he’s not shown much willingness to compromise on his Sheppard Subway campaign pledge. Trying to get the province to agree to devote more funds to Sheppard is likely to cause further undue delays as things get sorted out. Meanwhile, riders on crazy overcrowded bus routes will continue to suffer.

Another reason to worry: there’s a small-but-terrifying chance that the province — which is flirting with big-time austerity measures at the moment — may seize on this debate as a golden opportunity to decrease their total financial commitment to transit in Toronto. Queen’s Park has to be getting nervous about their capital commitments beyond 2015, when the bulk of this spending is due, and a fractured and indecisive council is only going to embolden Metrolinx to swoop in and start tinkering with Toronto’s transit plans.

So here’s the plea to council: get the transit file in order soon. Find a plan that works for a strong majority of people across Toronto and that fits within the current funding envelope. Then tell the province, unequivocally, that this is what Toronto needs.

Then just build the damn thing.

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Jan 12

Two ways Rob Ford’s budget comes up short (despite council’s victory)

The outcome of this week’s council meeting is assuredly good news for all those who oppose the mayor. Despite some who will try to claim that the amendments moved by Josh Colle, Raymond Cho and others amount to only ‘minor tweaks’, the significant thing is that Rob Ford looks to have lost his grip on council. From here on out, every major vote in the chamber will be a heart-thumping adventure climaxing in a cool fight scene and a twist ending.

Still, even though the outcome at council was positive, it would be wrong to assume that this budget is necessarily a good thing for Toronto. Not only does Rob Ford’s first real budget as mayor fail to provide any indication of what our long-term civic priorities are, it also kind of sucks at addressing some of the core principles stated again and again during Ford’s mayoral run.

Failure #1: Customer Service

Ford made customer service a major campaign plank last year, but the 2012 budget is suspiciously light on any details as to how his administration actually plans to make service any better. Instead, the budget was crafted via an arbitrary 10% cut to every department. (Though not all achieved it.) It’s a move that raises a ton of questions about service going forward.

For example: is service supposed to improve now that Â 311 — a department that has recently taken some flack for dismal call response times — has 7% fewer approved positions on its payroll?Â Is it reasonable to expect that the City Planning department, which has long been overworked because this city is throwing up buildings faster than any other city in North America, can increase their productivity with 10 fewer people working in the department?Â Is it feasible to expect paramedics and the fire department to improve their response times when new hiring continues to be deferred?Â And how exactly does a reduction in the frequency of street cleaning count as better customer service?

Back in October, Ford reiterated that “customer service excellence is a priority for my administration.” He still needs to prove it.

Failure #2: Actually Finding Efficiencies

After it became clear to Ford allies that they were about to lose a major vote at council on Tuesday, new arguments began to emerge regarding planned cuts to things like arenas, pools and childcare spaces. Suddenly the focus wasn’t on fiscal prudence but rather all aboutÂ efficiency.

The Globe & Mail’s Marcus Gee summarized some of those arguments in his column yesterday. The non-peak arena hours on the chopping block, he says, aren’t really used anyway. The daycares slated for closure were half-empty. The city-funded school pools were located too close to other pools. And so on.

Some of that seems somewhat logical — some if it doesn’t — and, of course, finding efficiencies and streamlining programs are very good goals. If the city can serve the same people for less money, they should totally do it.

But here’s the problem: this city was not able to have a clear-eyed conversation about rationalizing service levels to more accurately meet demand because the mayor’s team forced everyone into apocalyptic crisis mode. You can’t talk to someone about long-term capital costs when you’re threatening to close the pool their kid swims at. It’s all well and good to discuss evolving childcare needs given the new realities of all-day kindergarten but no one wants to listen to the details when you’re musing about locking the doors to daycare facilities. And well-done citizen-led proposals to examine user fee costs at recreation programs won’t matter if it feels like the mayor would rather just cut those programs altogether.

What was needed was a long-term approach to finding efficiencies, in consultation with users. What Toronto got was a rushed and haphazard process that, by design, pointed mostly to wholesale cuts.

If Rob Ford is looking to rebuild some of the political capital he lost during this budget process, a renewed focus on improving customer service and finding real efficiencies would be a good place to start.

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Jan 12

City Council Scorecard: The night Rob Ford lost big

January 17, 2012:Â Google DocsÂ (Best View) -Â Download (PDF)Â Â -Â Download (PNG)

There’s no other way to say it: last night, Rob Ford lost. After two months of spinning his budget as a smart and reasonable approach to improving the city’s financial situation, council quickly and decisively voted to overrule the mayor on a variety of items, adding millions of dollars back into the operating budget to preserve services that were on the chopping block.

This result wasn’t driven by a few lucky motions, but rather by a coordinated approach by a majority of councillors working against the mayor’s agenda. The strategy included careful messaging designed to court middle-aligned councillors, who would end up leading the charge for preserving programs and services. For those involved, the result of yesterday’s meeting was a foregone conclusion.

In the end, what was supposed to be a fractious three-day debate on a contentious budget wrapped up in less than twelve hours. After losing a number of key votes, the mayor was left to give a subdued — and short — press conference, wherein he did his best to save face, claiming he had had a positive impact on the budget, even if the outcome wasn’t what he wanted.

These results are important not only because they stave off what would have been some pretty devastating cuts to city programs, but also because they put the city into unprecedented political territory. Council has now shown a willingness to ignore and overturn key mayoral directives. The question going forward isn’t whether Rob Ford will be a good mayor or a bad mayor, but whether Rob Ford will be relevant at all to the important day-to-day decisions that matter in Toronto.

New Votes

The votes added, all of which were individual motions on item EX14.1 — the 2012 Capital and Operating Budgets:

Motion 1, as moved by Councillor Josh Colle, was the centrepiece strategic move of the day. Colle moved to take about $15 million from the 2011 operating surplus — which stands at more than $150 million and will be higher when all is said and done — to preserve TTC service, restore daycare funding, prevent pool closures and retain a number other services. The full text of the motion is here. This motion was engineered so that it could receive enough support to pass, and it did, with votes from councillors Gloria Lindsay Luby, Chin Lee and James Pasternak making the difference. It passed 23-21, sinking any hope the mayor’s team had left of emerging from this process with their pride intact.
Motion 5, moved by the aforementioned Lindsay Luby, killed what would have been a foolhardy plan to charge two bucks to use all public pools (indoor and outdoor) in Toronto — read all about it. The scheme would have required new staff to operate, and any revenues would have been tempered by the huge cost required to set up and maintain payment infrastructure. Still, this was another narrow vote.
Motion 6 came from Mary-Margaret McMahon, who has fashioned herself as a staunch environmentalist. Her motion preserved three positions at the Toronto Environmental Office that were on the chopping block. It also asked that the city continue to implement its Climate Change Action Plan. (Full text.) Her motion won with support from executive committee members Michelle Berardinetti and Jaye Robinson.
Motion 9Â served as the motion that stopped the library board from having to make near-impossible cuts to its operating budget. As moved my Raymond Cho (full text), this vote saw 22 councillors recognize that, really, Toronto’s library system has been run really damn well for almost a decade now. (Of note: Pasternak abstained because of a conflict of interest.)
Motion 21aÂ revealed just how willing council was to tinker with Ford’s budget. Council voted 23-21 to maintain the Live Green Toronto Community Animators program (text), which sees people work within communities to create greenspace and promote environmental initiatives. Ford-ally Gary Crawford along with Robinson were the difference-makers on this item.
Lastly, Motion 21bÂ was Ford’s sole major victory — the mayor also lost numerous other minor votes, including a bid by Karen Stintz to kill the city’s partnership with TDSB for community pools — as Mihvec was unable to muster enough support to stave off consideration of contracting out custodial services at Facilities Management and Real Estate Services.

All told, Ford was on the losing end of Â five of six major votes related to his 2012 budget. Council grew the mayor’s operating budget by about $20 million.

Trend Watch

As was inevitable, Councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon has fallen below the 30% threshold and is now in the “opposition” category.

James Pasternak and Jaye Robinson both saw their Ford Nation percentage decline. Because she’s on the executive committee, I expect Robinson to continually hover around her current level. Pasternak, on the other hand, is likely only a few votes away from statistically joining the ranks of the “mighty middle.”

And, yeah, the biggest trend coming out of yesterday’s meeting? Council’s middle earned that “mighty” label. There was nothing mushy about them.

Batting Average

The mayor hit a sad 17% yesterday on major votes. For this term overall, his success rate is just over 60%.

Questions

Questions about the Council Scorecard? Read myÂ notes on methodology. Also, you canÂ email me.

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Jan 12

Budget Week 2012: What to Watch For

From way back in November, when Rob Ford first unveiled what he has been calling a “smart, reasonable and responsible” budget, as reported by the Globe & Mail’s Patrick White, Elizabeth Church andÂ Tu Thanh Ha:

â€œFor the first time ever, folks, we will spend less next year than we did this year,â€ Mr. Ford said during a morning press conference. â€œThat is unheard of.â€

…

Budget chief Mike Del Grande hailed the document, telling the budget committee: â€œIt’s too bad the rest of the world doesn’t have the courage to do what we are doing today.â€

viaÂ Ford’s 2012 Toronto budget includes hikes in property tax, transit fares | Globe & Mail.

But that was then. This is now.

With council set to meet tomorrow to kick off what will probably be a three-day-long budget debate — packed with yelling and screaming and wild accusations of extremist political ideology — the piece I’m watching most closely is whether the mayor emerges from the fray with that key talking point in his jacket pocket: after all is said and done, will the 2012 gross operating budget actually be smaller than the 2011 budget?

Early indications say maybe not. At the beginning of this process, Ford’s gross budget was a slim $50 million below the 2011 level. Earlier this month, approximately $2.5 million was added to that budget to stave off cuts to community centres and student nutrition programs. Another $3 million was added at executive committee to reduce the number of requested cuts to the Toronto Public Library, joined by $1 million to save sidewalk snow clearing in the suburbs and $2 million to preserve some community grants. Other assorted tweaks also increased the total.

All told, the margin between the 2011 and 2012 budgets is down to about $41 million.

And now, via the Globe & Mail’s Patrick White, we learn that members of council’s opposition along with several middle-aligned councillors have been working on a plan that could inject anywhere between $20 million and $40 million back into the operating budget to preserve services:

While the core of the Ford budget remains intact â€“ $350-million in cuts and efficiencies, a 2.5-per-cent tax, increase, nearly 1,200 layoffs â€“ members of City Hallâ€™s centre and left factions have been plotting for weeks about whether theyâ€™ll support the budget and, if not, how theyâ€™ll unravel it.

Many have been using Google Docs online to analyze and share strategies for portions of Mr. Fordâ€™s budget that remain in play: TTC route cuts, reductions to community grants, terminated swimming-pool funding, three homeless shelter closings, a trim to priority centres and a cancelled leaf-collection program in Etobicoke.

One plan from middle councillors would stave off most of those cuts $20-million cost. Left-leaning councillors want to go even further with a plan to undo about $40-million worth of the mayorâ€™s budget, according to several councillors speaking on background.

viaÂ Mayorâ€™s team scrambles as moment of truth approaches | Globe & Mail.

So council may just go and overrule the mayor’s spending priorities to the tune of $40 million. Not only would that be unprecedented, but that kind of outcome would threaten to push Ford’s reputation away from what he most wants to be: a hardline budget buster. Instead of cutting back on overall city spending, he’d be the mayor who has essentially maintained spending levels set by his predecessor and the previous council. The people he derides as socialists.

The Revenue Game

Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday has told the Toronto Sun that he plans to ask council to approve next year’s property tax rates early on during tomorrow’s meeting, to avoid games later on where councillors might seek to slightly increase rates to preserve certain services. Councillor Gord Perks tried something like that last year, when he moved an amendment that would have increased residential property taxes by 0.155% to preserve bus routes and other programs. (It didn’t pass.)

With a prior-year surplus that will total almost $200 million when all figures are calculated, I don’t see councillors looking to the property tax base to preserve programs and services. Nor do I see them messing with staff revenue projections. Instead, all eyes will be on that surplus. It’s ripe for the taking and, despite claims to the contrary, hefty enough that it can serve double duty as a life preserver for programs and a capital debt killer.

As this strategy has gained steam, opponents have been pulling out lame household budget analogies to Â caution against applying any of the surplus toward operating costs. The Globe’s Marcus Gee characterized the move as “like relying on sofa-cushion money to pay the mortgage.” Councillor Doug Ford said it would be like using a Christmas bonus to buy toys “like a drunken sailor.” (Sailors, as we all know, love toys.)

None of these analogies work, of course. Calling the 2011 surplus “one-time money” is disingenuous, because the city has seen continued surpluses going back at least six years. This year’s surplus was widely expected by everyone who rightly scoffed at the mayor’s scare-tactic figure of $774 million. And if someone was finding money in their sofa cushions as regularly as the city finds year-end surpluses, they would really Â need to take a good look at what the hell is going on with their couch.

When it comes to the surplus, the real question can’t be boiled down to some oversimplified household budget analogy. What councillors have to consider is this: does the near-term value of preserving services (like transit) outweigh the long-term value of paying down debt on capital purchases slightly faster?

Budget Ideology

Let’s end with this: last week, the Toronto Star’s David Rider reported on a recorded conversation Budget Chief Mike Del Grande had with a constituent this past summer. In it, Del Grande reflects on some of the thinking that apparently shaped this budget:

Del Grande defended a proposed $400,000 cut to student breakfast programs â€” he recently and unexpectedly started to oppose the cut â€” during an hour-long, Aug. 10 city hall chat with then-constituent Hakim Kassam, who recorded it on his iPhone.

â€œI donâ€™t support the way thatâ€™s funded because if weâ€™re going to do breakfast in schools, to me personally, if you have children youâ€™re responsible for children,â€ Del Grande said in the recording provided by Kassam to theÂ Star.

â€œThe nation is not supposed to be in the bedrooms of the people. But then when you come out of the bedroom and you have children, why is it the stateâ€™s responsibility to look after your children? I didnâ€™t tell you to wear a condom or not wear a condom or how many children â€” you made that decision.â€

viaÂ Toronto budget: Mike Del Grandeâ€™s candid chat about social programs | Toronto Star.

Kind of puts all that “radical conservative” talk in perspective, doesn’t it?

I don’t think what Rob Ford ultimately presented as his budget is a purely ideological document, but I do think it was informed by the kind of ideological thinking Del Grande talks about in the recorded conversation. But that ideology was tempered by the mayor’s famous populism and a political reality that demands certain services be kept. The end result is a fiscal stew: a cobbled together collection of arbitrary cuts and decisions.

Indeed, the budget’s greatest failing is that it lacks any kind of unifying purpose. There is nothing in these pages that reveal a coherent theme for this city going forward. There’s no indication of what our collective priorities are — are we a city that values transit? The environment? Revitalized neighbourhoods? A better business climate?

Who can say? There’s very little in this budget that tells us what kind of city we actually want to be.

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16
Jan 12

Toronto’s Library system is a model of efficiency (so why does Rob Ford want to cut it?)

Let’s play a game. Pretend you’re the CEO of a 10 billion dollar corporation with 50,000 employees spread across dozens of departments and subsidiaries. Because you’re a vigilant, waste-fighting CEO with a finger on the bottom line, you’re always reviewing your corporate make-up to ensure across-the-board efficiency.

One department — the eleventh biggest item on your general ledger — looks like this: key performance metrics are up. Per capita costs are down. The department has seen a dramatic increase in the number of users while adding about a dozen staff to its payroll. Adjusted for inflation, it’s seen less than a 10% budgetary increase over six years — half the increase other departments have seen over the same period.

And, oh yeah: this department is also recognized as the most popular of its kind. Worldwide.

So what would you do? Probably nothing, right? Move on and focus your waste-fighting efforts elsewhere. On programs that aren’t so efficient and beloved.

Which is why we have to ask: why the hell does Rob Ford’s administration continue to demand cuts from the Toronto Public Library?

Numbers, by the book

The Ford administration has been relentless in their drive to find library cuts, pushing for 10% despite repeated assurances by the Library Board that a cut of that size inevitably means cuts to library hours. When the Library Board finally and categorically rejected the demand for a 10% cut — they’ve already found 5.6% in so-called efficiencies — the budget committee, led by Mike Del Grande, refused to let things go, demanding the board find the remaining 4.4%.

(A pause here to note that TPL is not unique in its inability to meet the arbitrary 10% threshold. Several departments, including Fleet Services, the City Manager’s Office and — really — the Mayor’s Office also failed to meet that target.)

The saga continued at last week’s Executive Committee meeting, when perpetually drifting councillor Jaye Robinson moved that TPL only look for about $4 million in cuts, down from the budget committee’s request for $7 million. Her motion also stipulated that the savings be found without cutting library hours.

And while it’s commendable that councillors want to avoid cuts to hours, they’re really into blood-from-a-stone territory at this point. The library, at its core, provides two things: resource material and service hours. To save real money, you have to go after one or the other.Â There is not some magic pool of savings just awaiting discovery somewhere in the stacks of the Reference Library.

Responsible budgeting means being able to differentiate between the programs that are wasteful, inefficient and underused and those that are well-used and well-run. Every indication is that the Toronto Public Library fits into the latter category.

Continued attempts to raid TPL’s budget serve only to reveal the dangers of Rob Ford’s arbitrary fiscal strategy: it threatens the parts of the city that actually work.

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Jan 12

In 2011, Council’s middle got less mushy, more lefty

A selection of middle-ish councillors and how their voting patterns changed over the last six months of 2011.

As a follow-up to this week’s City Council Scorecard Update, here’s a look at how various on-the-fence councillors saw their overall “Ford Nation” score shift between June and December. Remember that the June meeting was the last one before things really got heated — after it came Pride, Jarvis, the Core Service Review, the marathon Executive Committee meeting and a handful of 911 calls.

Of the eleven councillors listed above — all of whom float in the council “middle” to varying degrees — only two grew closer to the mayor’s agenda through the latter half of the year. Of the two, Councillor Moeser is more inscrutable — and quiet — so his motivations are harder to pin down. (But he clearly decided to embrace this administration in a big bear hug.) Councillor Berardinetti, on the other hand, seemingly made a conscious choice to double down on her support for Team Ford, and has been very public in her role as a flagbearer for the administration.

The remaining nine councillors on the list all backed off from Rob Ford as the budget process began. Some, like Gloria Lindsay Luby, Mary-Margaret McMahon and Ana BailÃ£o, saw their score drop precipitously as council started voting on cuts to service.

James Pasternak’s eight point drop is probably the biggest surprise. As a new councillor, he positioned himself as a guy with a decidedly right-of-centre approach. And unlike some of the other councillors on the list, he hasn’t had any high profile public disagreements with Ford policy. But in recent months he’s shown himself to be open to independent thinking and, more importantly, independent voting. It will be interesting to see if the trend continues.

How does council as a whole look?

For the sake of completion, I’ve also compiled theÂ same table as above showing data for all 45 members of council. There’s not a whole lot to glean from this — does it really matter that, for example, Giorgio Mammoliti’s Ford Nation score dropped from 100% to 97%? — but, really, it’s not like it’s possible to have too many charts or anything.

Does any of this matter?

For a few reasons, I think it does. First, the eleven councillors listed at the top of this post make up, under the broadest definition, council’s middle. They’re the guys you need to call if you’re trying to swing an issue in a certain direction. That so many of them are trending solidly away from the mayor’s agenda is important.

Second, one of the big knocks against the whole idea of Rob Ford as Mayor of Toronto was that he’d never be able to command enough support at council to pass anything. Howard Moscoe famously said that Ford wouldn’t be able to pass gas at council, much less get his agenda through.

That Ford and his team have managed to broker the support they have is a hugely significant political achievement for this administration.Â But it’s fragile. Teetering on the edge. All it’ll take is one good push.

Lastly, we’re heading into a council budget debate in a week’s time that has real potential to be a total catastrophe for Rob Ford. He was already handed several defeats in September when council voted on various Core Service Review considerations. He lost seven whipped votes during that meeting. He could lose a hell of a lot more next week.

It’s a good bet that a lot of people are doing a lot of scrambling right now to ensure the council votes are in place to get the 2012 budget through without serious alteration. For those of us watching, January 17 is shaping up to be one hell of a show.

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Jan 12

“Radical” Rob Ford’s Sinking Budget

The City issued a press release this morning touting the budget committee’s decision to approve the 2012 capital and operating budget yesterdays. It’s about what you’d expect:

“It has been Council’s policy since 2004 to use surplus funds to pay for capital costs. We immediately need a good portion of the $154 million surplus to go towards funding buses, streetcars and subways,” said Budget Committee Chair Mike Del Grande (Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt). “The City’s efforts in permanently reducing $355 million from its annual expenditures coupled with additional efforts to introduce $700 million in non-debt financing for the capital budget and plan has allowed us to reduce the City’s reliance on one-time surplus revenues from $346 million to $77 million. This is a major breakthrough in bringing the City’s expenses more in line with its revenue.”

“This is simply best practices in financial management,” said City Manager Joe Pennachetti.” With the uncertain global economic outlook, we need to safeguard and restore City reserves to respond to the needs of Toronto residents and withstand the greater occurrence of extreme weather events.”

viaÂ City of Toronto on track to build a sustainable, affordable and well-managed city | City of Toronto Press Release.

The whole thing is just an echo of what we heard again and again at yesterday’s budget committee meeting: futile attempts to justify budgetary decisions that are, at this point, almost purely ideological. After spending a year telling us about doom scenarios Â — $774 million! 34% property tax increases! Becoming GREECE! — we’ve ended up at a place where the city’s fiscal situation justifies virtually none of the major cuts on the table.

With the surplus figures we’re looking at, the city has enough money to maintain services, keep property taxes low and still set aside significant cash for capital projects and reserve funds. Absent a compelling financial need to cut programs, all we’re left with is the impression that the group of councillors running the city are cutting mostly because they just really like cutting.

Austerity-as-ideology, not austerity-as-necessity.

But don’t take my word for it: just look to the actions of the budget committee yesterday. With the stroke of a pen, they took several items off the chopping block: child nutrition programs, school-based community centres and two pools conveniently located in the wards of executive committee members. There’s no doubt that other programs — like, say, Bellwoods House or the 17% cut to the Toronto Environmental Office — could be reversed the same way.

What’s missing is not the money. It’s the will.

“Radical Conservative Agenda”

Sometime over the holidays, a bunch of left-leaning councillors decided to make use of the phrase “radical conservative” to describe the budget and pretty well everything the mayor does. As cloying and simplistic as this type of repetition can feel to people who actually spend their time nerding about politics, this kind of message discipline isn’t rare and it tends to be more effective than people think. (“Gravy Train” sure worked pretty well.)

Still, let’s ask the question: is there really truth behind the messaging here? Are the mayor and his council supporters behaving in Â a way that’s, you know, radical?

Yes and no.

Yes, because there’s definitely an undercurrent where the mayor is cutting simply because he wants to cut. The 2012 budget was seemingly designed with two key mayoral priorities in mind, neither of which seem particularly relevant to people who actually rely on city services: first, that its gross total be less than the previous year’s and, second, that the property tax increase be kept to 2.5%.

That the 2012 budget may be a touch smaller in gross terms than the 2011 budget is totally irrelevant. It’s a stat that only appeals to those who get all excited by right-wing boilerplate. Ford was elected to spend money in a less wasteful way, not to just spend less money. (Anyway: there’s a good chance Ford will lose his ability to claim the gross budget shrunk year-to-year after councillors propose amendments next week.)

The 2.5% figure is similarly arbitrary — it doesn’t seem any analysis was done to show why 2.5% is a more desirable figure that, say, 2% or 3% or even higher.

These type of arbitrary financial decisions — made to fit an ideology that just believes government should be smaller and do less, full stop — Â do seem a bit radical. Or, at the very least, kind of radically dumb.

But on the other hand, this is kind of a milquetoast budget. It contains a series of compromises and half-measures to the point where it looks little like the kind of city budget Rob Ford would have approved of when he was a councillor. Perennial Ford targets seem mostly untouched. And every indication that even more cuts will be reversed at council.

There’s no doubt that Ford and his team had their sights set on a budget more radical than the one we ended up with. If the intent was radical conservative budgeting, the outcome isn’t.

Quick Hits: Budget Edition

Library Must Cut More:Â The big news coming out of the budget committee yesterday was a further request that the library committee cut another $7 million from their operating budget in order to meet the arbitrary 10% target. It’s worth noting that several other departments and boards failed to meet the 10% target but only the library has been asked to go back and cut more. The decision came after a weird speech from the Budget Chief in which he expressed the view that some libraries may be duplicating the services provided by schools and community centres and so there’s room for cuts. Okay.

Ford’s Arts Cuts Will Hurt: Quick Quiz! Guess which councillor said this:Â â€œIf the cuts go through, things could go into a tailspin.â€ It was Ford-ally Gary Crawford, who has been a pretty steadfast supporter of the mayor’s agenda thus far. The arts cuts in this budget — like a lot of things — are kind of stealth cuts, as they’re hidden in general 10% reductions to various budgets. In any case, any cuts to the arts fly in the face of the Creative Capital Gains report council unanimously endorsed this spring.

Ford The Program Saver: As Ford has backed off some of the cuts he presented with the budget in November, he’s developed a strategy in which he points to city staff as the ones who wanted cuts to things like nutrition programs. With this narrative, Ford becomes the guy who “saved” these programs from the budget axe. Councillor Josh Matlow summed the whole thing up pretty well, when he tweeted this:

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/JoshMatlow/status/155433596939812864″]

Credit Where Credit Is Due: In his weekly Facebook update, Ford also took some credit for the city’s mounting surplus. In his weekly Facebook message, he wrote, “much of the surplus is a direct result of smart management, as City staff implemented millions of dollars in efficiencies this year.” Which is a true statement, I guess, as long as you indicate that the smart management must have emerged way back in the David Miler era. The city has enjoyed big surpluses for years and Ford’s 2011 budget — which essentially held the line on David Miller’s 2010 budget — didn’t do anything that would directly lead to this year’s surplus.

Cuts On The Table: For those looking to make sense of what’s being cut and what’s been saved, the Toronto Star’s Paul Moloney has a great rundown.

Ford For Toronto A Broken City, A New Mayor, Crazy Antics

Toronto’s Transit Future: Responding to Rob Ford

Council builds a new transit plan: the pros and cons

That damn streetcar purchase: how Rob Ford made transit a budget scapegoat