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link — Comments Off on Solving all our problems through councillor expense reforms
11
Apr 11

Solving all our problems through councillor expense reforms

Surprising no one and keeping to the idea that you can solve most of the city’s budget problems by improving public perception, Doug Holyday will propose some new restriction on councillors’ office budgets at the next Executive Committee meeting. They’ll then go to Council in May.

According to the Star’s Daniel Dale, the new restrictions will prohibit spending public money on personal improvement services, parties, costumes, donations to community groups and sponsorships of sports teams. I hope there’s not an explicit restriction on “costumes” because that seems like something future historians will find hilarious.

Dale also reports on some of Holyday’s other proposed reforms:

The proposal would require councillors to have their newsletters produced by the city’s printing operation, Holyday said, unless they prove they’ve found a cheaper alternative. It would force them to use website developers from a city-approved short list. And to the chagrin of critics of Mayor Rob Ford, it would grant committee chairs sole authority to decide which councillors could take trips to conferences.

via New rules proposed for controversial council expenses – thestar.com. (Emphasis added.)

That last point is interesting, as it feels like an attempt to further centralize powers within the Executive Committee. With the way things work these days, that would essentially mean that council expenditures related to travel would be entirely at the whim of the mayor’s office.

link — Comments Off on Tumbleweeds in Toronto as federal election looms
07
Apr 11

Tumbleweeds in Toronto as federal election looms

The Toronto Star’s David Rider talks to the president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, who is pretty fired up about the need for increased federal funding for Canada’s towns and cities, especially as various programs are set to expire:

“It’s time for leadership — traffic gridlock is choking our cities, local police services are overstretched, and 175,000 Canadian families are on affordable housing waiting lists,” said FCM president Hans Cunningham.

“Municipalities just don’t have the funding tools other governments have, and they can’t afford to meet these national challenges all on their own.”

via Federal funds for cities set to expire, municipalities ask: What’s the plan? – thestar.com.

Hell yes. This is a cause we can all get behind, right? Our mayor, who just a few months back was threatening to unleash ‘Ford Nation’ on the provincial government unless they coughed up more funds, should be all over this kind of thing.

Let’s see what he had to say:

So far, Ford has not followed predecessor David Miller’s lead in being a leading FCM voice lobbying Ottawa. Cunningham said FCM staff have talked to Ford’s staff, but not to the mayor himself.

“At this point we haven’t heard from Toronto with regard to their goals with this election. We hope to do that shortly . . . ,” he said, noting he understands “the big issue in Toronto is subways.”

In other words:

link — Comments Off on TTC chair continues to be surprised by mayor’s transit plans
05
Apr 11

TTC chair continues to be surprised by mayor’s transit plans

Missed this last week, but the Sun’s Jonathan Jenkins’ report on last week’s transit announcements contains this bit at the end:

And Stintiz [sic] said while she had heard rumblings, Ford’s ambitious promise to build a Finch subway in 10 years was unexpected.

“I know that (Ward 1 councillor) Vince Crisanti has been actively pursuing a subway on Finch and I know that he had discussions with the mayor but I wasn’t apprised of the timeline,” she said.

via Province happy to hand Sheppard subway to Ford | Toronto & GTA | News | Toronto Sun.

Nothing says “team player” like surprising your TTC chair with your plan to build a subway line. (There’s been other stories about Stintz being left out of the decision-making process, as well.)

link — Comments Off on A shrug on Sheppard
05
Apr 11

A shrug on Sheppard

From his weekend column, the Toronto Sun’s Rob Granatstein:

The man is charge of making the business case for Rob Ford’s Sheppard subway admits the plan may never come to fruition.

“While everybody is optimistic about the building of the Sheppard subway, it could still not go,” said Gordon Chong, who is entrusted by the mayor with leading Toronto Transit Consultants Limited and putting together a business case analysis for Sheppard.

“It will either be yea or nay,” Chong said in an interview this past week.

Chong said pension funds are interested in investing and he’s optimistic, but there’s a real possibility the train is never going to hit the tracks.

via Rob Ford’s Sheppard hole: Granatstein | Rob Granatstein | Columnists | Comment | Toronto Sun.

I hope everyone who lives in the area around Sheppard East realizes that this administration just traded a sure-thing high-capacity transit line — due to open in three years! — with a roll-of-the-dice idea that no one, even the people working to make it happen, have much confidence in.

link — Comments Off on As Toronto looks to privatize everything “not nailed down…”
04
Apr 11

As Toronto looks to privatize everything “not nailed down…”

Earlier this year, the Toronto Sun’s Sue-Ann Levy quoted Doug Ford on privatization: “We’re going to be outsourcing everything that is not nailed down.” These days, this is what amounts to strategy at City Hall.

We need to elevate the discussion.

The New York Times has a “Room For Debate” feature on their opinion page today. It starts off by noting that New York City recently saved 41 million dollars by in-sourcing their technology services:

Stephen Goldsmith, the deputy mayor of New York, recently said that its time to get rid of costly private contractors and have city employees handle more of the citys technology services. Mr. Goldsmith, known as “the prince of privatization” when he was mayor of Indianapolis in the 1990s, said he found $41 million in immediate savings by taking the work of the citys data center and wireless network back in-house.

via Is Privatization a Bad Deal for Cities and States? – Room for Debate – NYTimes.com.

What follows is a variety of points from a variety of people, most of which seemingly add up to this: privatization isn’t magic, can cost more and deliver worse service, and we in Toronto need to look at these things cautiously. (On the flip side, there’s a column by the Reason Foundation’s Leonard Gilroy, parts of which match up verbatim with the Ford Nation script.)

I’m going to excerpt a few items from the feature, as I’m pretty sure this kind of thing will come in handy over the next year. Plus I’m not sure when this feature will get swallowed by a paywall of doom.

Mildred Warner, professor at Cornell University, who has been tracking the issue of privatization-versus-public-delivery through the International City County Management Association (ICMA) surveys:

I.C.M.A. also tracks the reasons why local governments bring back in-house previously privatized work. The reasons are problems with service quality (61 percent), lack of cost savings (52 percent), improvements in public delivery (34 percent), problems with monitoring (17 percent) and political support to bring the work back in house (17 percent). It turns out citizens prefer local services to be locally controlled and publicly delivered.

Rigorous quantitative analysis of every published study from around the world of water delivery and garbage collection (the two most commonly privatized services at the local government level) finds no statistical support for cost savings under privatization.

via The Pendulum Swings Again – Room for Debate – NYTimes.com.

Nicole Gelinas, contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal:

In general, too, whenever cities and states sell or lease a big asset to the private sector to reap some short-term cash to cover budget deficits, as Chicago did with its parking meters, taxpayers get a bad deal. Bidders know when a government is desperate for money. They stand ready to enable government officials to enter into decades-long contracts, which only magnifies the effect of any mistakes in calculating potential profits and costs.

via Not a Cure for Incompetence – Room for Debate – NYTimes.com.

Elliott Sclar, professor of Urban Planning at Columbia:

We would do far better if we started with the recognition that the public sector is a highly complex and socially vital operation staffed by hundreds of thousands of highly trained professionals. Like all organizations, public ones require competent management and continuing investments in improving operating capacity. Utopian schemes to contract away these problems through privatization efforts is a form of magical thinking, which leaves taxpayers to pay for the mistakes.

via When Ideology Drives Decisions – Room for Debate – NYTimes.com.

Steve Tadelia, professor of economics at Berkeley:

Politicians like simple messages. Conservatives like to say that “privatization provides good services at low costs,” while many liberals will claim that “privatization reduces quality and costs jobs.” Both can be right or wrong, depending on the particulars of the service involved. The trouble is that political agendas seldom align with the cost-benefit analysis required for good privatization policy decisions. The tough part is strategically choosing the right projects and services for privatization that have a good chance of avoiding outsourcing’s pitfalls.

via Corporations Make the Same Mistakes – Room for Debate – NYTimes.com.

But, really, why even stop to think about this stuff? Let’s just plow through and get it done. Damn the torpedoes: let’s see everything not nailed down get screwed.

Hat tip to greenleaf on the Urban Toronto forums for bringing this to my attention.

link — Comments Off on Pop will sell itself
30
Mar 11

Pop will sell itself

News from yesterday that’s made the rounds: Councillor Doug Ford made quite the spectacle of himself at the Government Management Committee yesterday at the same time the committee voted against moving toward 100% healthy options in city vending machines:

In a 3-2 decision, the committee decided to maintain the status quo: vending machines should carry 50 per cent healthy choices. The proposal would have limited the available options to milk, fortified soy beverages and 100 percent juice or vegetable drinks.

An impassioned Councillor Doug Ford argued that government has no business dictating what kinds of drinks people can buy.

“This is socialism at its best,” he said, adding he was working at “socialist city hall.”

Ford went on to thank the cola industry for creating jobs and sponsoring city events. The mayor’s outspoken brother concluded by taking a swig from a Coca-Cola bottle.

via Pop will still be sold at city rinks – thestar.com.

On Twitter, Astrid Idlewild has done a remarkable job questioning Government Management Chair Paul Ainslie about his position on this issue. In an earlier Toronto Sun story by Sue-Ann Levy, Ainslie called the proposal a ‘pile of crap.’

I’ll be a little softer on this issue than some — I have a major weakness for Diet Coke. I’d be open to compromise solutions beyond the simple elimination of anything that’s not milk or fruit juice. Sad as it sounds, revenue implications are important to consider given where the city’s finances are going.

But let’s be clear about one thing: nothing about this is socialism. No one is talking about blanket bans of these items. This is about whether or not the city should be in the business of selling kids unhealthy things. I think that’s a question that deserves more careful consideration than it apparently got yesterday.

Ainslie is now talking about rescinding the city’s earlier ban on bottled water sales on city property, something that was moved by two of his allies, Councillors Del Grande and Di Giorgio.

Worth noting: Doug Ford also commented that the city should sell cigarettes in vending machines if there’s a demand for it. He also accused the Toronto Star of stalking his mother and being a ‘ruthless’ paper. Yet he’s widely still considered the calmer, more intelligent Ford brother.

link — Comments Off on The problems with privatized services
29
Mar 11

The problems with privatized services

Tomasz Bugajski at BlogTO has a great little interview with Councillor Gord Perks today, discussing the construction on Roncesvalles and the associated delays and headaches. Perks’ comments strike an important chord considering we’re a city that seems very likely to head down a road toward increased privatization:

Because of the history of the way road work is done in the city of Toronto we’re bound by a couple of problems. One is that it’s a privatized service, so these are not municipal employees and we can’t just tell them “you’re falling behind, bring in five more guys, and get the work done.” That’s one problem with privatized services, you can’t control their day to day decisions.

The second problem is because of a long history of people to the right of centre arguing that everything costs too much. We are required to take the lowest bid on a contract, so it doesn’t matter what your history is on completing other work for the City of Toronto, so if you’re a licensed, competent, legal bidder, we’re sort of required by law to take you as the guy who wins the bid.

via What went wrong on Roncesvalles?.

The belief that ‘privatization’ is some kind of magic that can lead to better services for lower cost is dangerous. There’s always a downside.

link — Comments Off on A ploy named sue: Lawsuits over lawsuits over lawsuits
29
Mar 11

A ploy named sue: Lawsuits over lawsuits over lawsuits

This story of lawsuits over lawsuits over lawsuits gets complicated fast. Let’s start with Daniel Dale at the Toronto Star:

Deputy mayor Doug Holyday personally sued the city to challenge a controversial 2008 council decision to use taxpayer money to cover two councillors’ campaign-related legal fees. He said he was willing to take a financial hit to stand up for an important principle.

He won. But now, more than a year after he filed the lawsuit, he is asking council to use taxpayer money to cover most of his own legal fees.

via Holyday wants city aid to pay for lawsuit against city – thestar.com.

Here’s what I can gather: Current councillor Giorgio Mammoliti and former councillor Adrian Heaps successfully defended themselves against allegations related to their campaigns following the 2006 election. (Heaps was actually sued for libel by Michelle Berardinetti, who went on to defeat him in the 2010 election.) City Council, ignoring the advice of the City Solicitor, voted to pay for these legal costs. Doug Holyday got mad about this and brought his own lawsuit against the city, alleging that it was improper for the city to pay for legal costs related to things that happened when Heaps and Mammoliti were acting as candidates, not councillors. He won.

Now Holyday is asking that the city reimburse him for his legal bills. The bills he racked up suing the city over his belief that they had wrongly paid legal bills.

It gets weirder: The Toronto Party, a weird right-wing organization that ran a slate of candidates in the fall (none of whom did very well), in response to Holyday’s request, is now threatening to sue the city if they pay Holyday’s legal bills.

The Toronto Party, which has used its website as a platform to rail against this kind of thing repeatedly, also released a newsletter in February asking for donations to cover its own legal costs. (Left column.) So you can help pay their legal bills, if you want to contribute to this twisted Hall of Mirrors.

In short: a political organization is threatening to sue a councillor if he persuades the city to reimburse him for money he spent suing the city over their reimbursement of legal expenses for councillors. Someone should probably diagram all of this.

link — Comments Off on City sued for alleged “war on cars”
29
Mar 11

City sued for alleged “war on cars”

The latest chapter in the St. Clair Right-of-Way saga isn’t exactly thrilling, as it seems most along that stretch have moved on and accepted a new reality. (Councillor Joe Mihevc, while admitting the process kind of sucked, has pointed out several positive outcomes now that the ROW is in place.) There’s still the small matter, however, of a class-action lawsuit, led by lawyer (and author) Stephen Edell. They’re trying to get 100 million dollars from the city, an outcome that would almost double the cost of the project.

This article by the Post’s Natalie Alcoba points out that Edell is using some of the mayor’s campaign talking points as part of his case against the city:

Beyond allegations of negligence, the suit also accuses the former council of engaging in a “war on cars” that “is not a proper exercise of authority of a government in a public works program,” said Mr. Edell.

He alleges the city “turned a blind eye” to the businesses in peril in what he described as a “negative twist on the concept of gentrification.”

City officials “may not have started intending to destroy St. Clair West, west of Bathurst, but as the project started to drag on, and businesses failed, it dawned on them that this was a good opportunity to turn St. Clair around, to improve the tax base,” said Mr. Edell.

He expressed surprise that city litigators are seeking to throw out the case, given that Mayor Rob Ford has often referred to the St. Clair “fiasco” on the campaign trail.

via $100M St. Clair right-of-way case heads to court | Posted Toronto | National Post.

It should be noted that this is a lawsuit partially in response to delayed construction. Construction that was itself delayed by another lawsuit.

link — Comments Off on Tapdancing Josh Colle
29
Mar 11

Tapdancing Josh Colle

Writing a column for the My Town Crier newspaper, Councillor Josh Colle lays out a good argument for the importance of building rapid transit on Eglinton Avenue:

It seems that anyone and everyone equipped with a pen, napkin and visions of transit lines criss-crossing the city has become an expert and is pushing one preferred transit plan over another. The fact of the matter is that Toronto can no longer afford only to talk and plan. The time for action is now and the most obvious starting point for a new era of transit building is Eglinton Avenue.

While Mayor Rob Ford has committed to additional tunnelling on the proposed Eglinton line beyond Laird Avenue, all parties involved agree that this is a priority project. The provincial funding is in place, Metrolinx and the TTC are working collaboratively on the design and planning of a line, the mayor is very supportive, and businesses and residents along the route want the line now.

via Let’s make rapid transit on Eglinton a reality now – TownNEWS – MyTownCrier.ca – the online home of Toronto’s Town Crier Group of Community Newspapers.

He takes enormous care to gloss over the fact that there is only one person who has stood between the Eglinton LRT and its construction: Mayor Rob Ford. These delays aren’t the result of  bureaucratic wrangling, but rather a new mayor who has opposed the line.

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