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feature — Comments Off on A short summary of Rob Ford’s voting record on HIV/AIDS
28
Feb 11

A short summary of Rob Ford’s voting record on HIV/AIDS

Last week the mayor was the only member of council to vote against accepting $100,000 from the provincial government to establish screening programs for syphilis and HIV. Here’s a quick look at how Ford has voted on other issues related to HIV/AIDs.

  • August 25, 2010 – Ford is one of seven councillors to vote against a motion by Kyle Rae that saw the city endorse the Vienna Declaration. Rae submits a communication urging council to vote for the (largely symbolic) measure because “research shows that the criminalization of illicit drug users is fuelling the HIV epidemic.” Read the Council Minutes.
  • July 6, 2010 – Ford is the lone dissenter in a 33-1 vote that saw the city approve $1,574,960 in funding for 40 programs recommended by the AIDS Prevention Community Investment Program Review Panel and $104,040 to Schools Without Borders “to enhance Toronto’s response to HIV/AIDS globally.” Read the Council Minutes.
  • August 5, 2009 – Ford is one of four councillors to vote against a Board of Health recommendation that the city approve $1,544,080 in funding for 40 programs recommended by the AIDS Prevention Community Investment Program Review Panel and $102,000 to Schools Without Borders. Ford also makes a motion that loses 7-26 to “Receive this item for information.” Read the Council Minutes.
  • June 6, 2008 – Ford is one of three councillors to vote against a Board of Health recommendation that the city approve $1,513,800 in funding for 47 programs recommended by the AIDS Prevention Community Investment Program Review Panel and $100,000 to Schools Without Borders. Ford also makes a motion that loses 3-23 to “Receive this item for information.” Read the Council Minutes.
  • June 19, 2007 – Ford is one of five councillors to vote against a Board of Health recommendation that the city approve $1,513,800 to fund 45 programs as recommended by the AIDS Prevention Community Investment Program Review Panel and $100,000 to Schools Without Borders. Voting on this motion was done simultaneously with several other community grant programs. Ford made a motion that lost 5-20 to “receive this item for information.” Read the Council Minutes.
  • May 23, 2006 – Ford is the sole councillor to vote against a motion by Kyle Rae, seconded by Pam McConnell, to put up three welcome banners over roadways for the 2006 International AIDS conference that was held in August 2006. The city did not require any extra funding to install these banners. The motion passed 32-1. Read the Council Minutes.

In fairness, Ford voted ‘no’ a lot. Far more than any other councillor. But his ideology wasn’t such that he mindlessly voted against every measure. The 2006 vote is particularly interesting because, as councillor, he tended to vote in favour of symbolic niceties – things like renaming arenas and streets and so forth.

Also of note: Rob Ford will be the mayor welcoming World Pride to Toronto in 2014.

feature — Comments Off on We need to talk about 2012
25
Feb 11

We need to talk about 2012

Megan O’Toole with the National Post details the totally bizarre part of yesterday’s council meeting, wherein any discussion about the implications of the 2011 budget on 2012 was ruled out of order:

At one point, Speaker Frances Nunziata (York South-Weston) opted to shut down discussion on the 2012 outlook, spurring a furious outburst from Councillor Janet Davis (Beaches-East York).

“That has never happened in this chamber,” Ms. Davis fumed later, noting the 2011 budget documents are rife with references to the following year’s outlook, meaning the topic should be free for discussion.

“If this Mayor thinks that this budget that’s passed today has no impact on next year, he is misleading the people of this city, and it’s totally outrageous,” she said.

via Fantastic day for taxpayers, mayor says | Posted Toronto | National Post.

Enough to make your head explode.

Here’s the thing about 2012 — I’ve written about this before — it’s become incredibly clear that there are very few ways for the mayor to handle next year’s budget and still maintain his populist, good-guy, I’m-saving-you-money image. The reports could not be more clear: either we see significant property tax increases — bigger than we saw in any of the David Miller years, I’d suspect — or incredibly painful service cuts.

There are other options, of course, and we’ll probably see a combination of games played to make things work. (Selling stuff is on the table, though not Toronto Hydro apparently.)

This report from city staff is clear that the real answer comes from improving relationships with the provincial government. Page 26 refers to “Sustainable provincial funding (50% transit operating funding)”, while Page 35 notes that the capital budget through to 2020 is manageable except for the TTC.

Real fiscal responsibility would call for the mayor to address this need head-on. But, again, under his direction council has essentially denied itself achievable revenues (property taxes, vehicle registration taxes) this year, putting itself in probably the worst possible position to negotiate with other levels of government.

David Miller was often derided by those in the media for going after new funds from the provincial government. He was “crying poor.” There were many CFRB-types who called for the city to go on a quixotic quest to get its own “fiscal house in order” before asking the provincial government for funding.

This always bothered me because it ignores recent history. It wasn’t until the mid-90s that the province shirked its responsibilities for funding transit in Toronto. And since that time, for a ton of different reasons, the city has never been able to find a way to stabilize its year-to-year finances. Is it so crazy to wonder if it’s simply impossible?

I don’t think it is. And I’d speculate that that is the same realization the mayor and those around him are coming to. They’d simply rather avoid that reality than talk about it.

feature — Comments Off on The ins and outs of the city’s new transit plan
19
Feb 11

The ins and outs of the city’s new transit plan

Over on his blog, Steve Munro presents a fantastic summary of yesterday’s Metrolinx board meeting. It includes a good, succinct look at what the mayor’s new transit plan actually entails:

On Tuesday, representatives of Mayor Ford met with Metrolinx with an updated version of Ford’s subway plan:

  • Extend the Sheppard subway west to Downsview and east to Scarborough Town Centre (STC)
  • Extend the Danforth subway northeast to STC
  • Build the Eglinton LRT in tunnel from Jane to Kennedy
  • Operate express bus service on Finch West
  • Build a new subway yard at a location to be determined

via Metrolinx Contemplates Ford’s Subway Plan | Steve Munro.

Munro notes that Metrolinx has asked that, instead of a Bloor-Danforth subway extension, the Eglinton LRT be extended through the SRT corridor to Scarborough Town Centre. This is necessary, as I understand it, because any transit funded with provincial dollars must be owned by Metrolinx. (It also allows for further LRT expansion in the future, when we have a political climate that isn’t so steadfast against surface rail.)

The subtext throughout is that, while Metrolinx is compromising with the mayor, they’ve successfully defended the part of Transit City that matters most to them. Metrolinx seems to be very aware of the numerous logistical problems with Ford’s private funding scenario, but is happy to let the mayor and his team busy themselves trying (and likely failing) to build a Sheppard subway while real work happens on Eglinton.

Building the eastern section of the line underground (needlessly) isn’t ideal, but it’s apparently a sacrifice Metrolinx is ready to make. If and when this plan comes to City Council, I’d hope that one of the first motions made is to build the eastern section of Eglinton at street level, and put the savings toward construction on Finch.

Speaking of Finch, it’s really the big loser in all of this,  getting stuck with ‘express buses’ instead of the proposed LRT. Per Munro, Metrolinx Director Paul Bedford did a good job of pointing out how little sense it makes to sacrifice Finch for Sheppard:

Director Paul Bedford agreed noting that the Finch West bus is among the routes with highest ridership on the TTC at 52k/day, greater than the Sheppard subway at 47k.  Bedford argued that ignoring the Finch corridor is a serious problem, and more generally that surface transit routes carrying 60% of TTC ridership were an important part of the network.

I guess it should be said that, with a few exceptions like Councillors Anthony Perruzza, local representatives have not been active in advocating the preservation of the Finch and Sheppard lines.

I’m happy with how this compromise plan is developing as at least we’re keeping the Eglinton LRT, but that doesn’t excuse this process which has been fraught with delays. None of this was necessary and plans for transit expansion in this city are no better off than they were before.

For the record, before this mess happened, the plan was for a Sheppard East LRT to be opened in 2014, a Finch West LRT to be opened in 2019, and an Eglinton Crosstown LRT and Scarborough LRT to be opened in 2020.

feature — Comments Off on Budget committee proposes three fiscal futures: doom, gloom or more doom
17
Feb 11

Budget committee proposes three fiscal futures: doom, gloom or more doom

The City has published a presentation on the 2011 Budget — credited to the Budget Committee – that was delivered at today’s meeting of the Executive Committee. It’s similar in substance, if not in tone, to the budget presentation delivered by Councillors Vaughan, McConnell and Wong-Tam a few weeks ago. (Of note: page 68 of the presentation explains that the city has a “modest level of debt” and reports the “recent loss of Personal Vehicle Tax” as an “area of concern.”)

Big news, though, comes on page 70, where three scenarios for the city’s fiscal future are laid out. They are, in summary:

  1. STATUS QUO – just keep doing what we’re doing! Don’t cut services or look at new revenues. Just keep on keepin’ on.
  2. HALF A BILLION DOLLARS IN SERVICE CUTS – If this year is any indication, that money will be found through a combination of cutting transit service, closing libraries and policy inspired by the belief that poor people are just lazy.
  3. SELL STUFF, GET THE PROVINCE TO GIVE US MONEY, SOME SERVICE CUTS – Despite repeated claims during the election that the city didn’t need provincial money, the actual need for provincial money comes up several times in this presentation. By ‘sell stuff’ I mean ‘asset monetization’, likely Toronto Hydro.

Here’s how the three scenarios break down in terms of impact on property tax rates:

Yes, the ‘Status Quo’ results in a property tax increase of 26% next year. I believe all of these scenarios continue to count on revenue from the Toronto Land Transfer Tax.

Scenario 1 — the blue line — is plainly impossible, given the public response to the service cuts proposed in this year’s budget. They still might try it, though, and be prepared for the war to end all wars at council if they do. Half-a-billion dollars in savings amounts to serious hits to things like the library, public health, housing, culture and transit.

Scenario 2 is more balanced, though the city has to be careful with the idea of ‘asset monetization.’ Selling stuff without considering the long-term implications can cause problems later on. But it relies mostly on revenue from the provincial and federal governments, which would mean lobbying hard for extra dollars. And nearly every member of Team Ford derided the previous mayor when he did just that. (Also: cutting 60 million dollars a year from revenue doesn’t put the city in a great position to argue for increased provincial and federal funding.)

So what will happen? It is hard to say. I do believe the Fords may make a hard play to cut half-a-billion from the operating budget — this may be why Doug Ford was musing about a Strong Mayor system earlier, as it would make these cuts a whole lot easier — but there’s no way council will stand for those kinds of service reductions. The province swooping is also unlikely, especially if a deficit-hawk Harris-era Progressive Conservative takes the wheel in the fall.

Which leaves us back where we started: short on revenue, short on time and — this one’s new — short on leadership.

feature — Comments Off on What pushed Doug Ford to publicly call for a strong mayor system?
17
Feb 11

What pushed Doug Ford to publicly call for a strong mayor system?

The city hall headlines of the day are once again being made by the newly elected councillor from Ward 2 – Etobicoke North, who — it must be continually said — is neither the mayor nor deputy mayor. Nor does he chair any of the city’s standing committees. He recently moved back from Toronto after living in Chicago and has never, to my immediate recollection, been sighted on a TTC vehicle.

But I digress.

In an interview by the Globe & Mail’s Anna Mehler Paperny, Doug Ford fantasizes about a world where he and his brother don’t need to worry about the meddling of other duly elected officials:

It’s been a tough transition for the Ford camp to shift from a highly partisan, highly successful mayoral campaign to the enforced diplomacy of governing, attempting to woo councillors and win votes on a 45-person council with no party system, in which the mayor has only one ballot to cast.

“You’ve always got that council. You’ve got to have your 23 votes to get it passed,” Mr. Ford said.

He’d like the mayor to be able to override council “100 per cent. … So the mayor has veto power.”

via Toronto needs strong mayor with veto power, Doug Ford says – The Globe and Mail.

In the abstract, I would agree — as I did when Miller was in office — that the amalgamated Toronto could use some changes to its governance model. This would include elements of a strong mayor system at the top but also some devolution of powers down to the community council level, allowing the former municipalities of Metro Toronto to govern their local affairs more independently.

More specifically, though, I have to wonder what motivated this outburst from Doug Ford. I don’t have him pegged as the type who gets all charged up about the structure of municipal government. Is there something on the Ford’s immediate agenda that they know they don’t have the votes to pass? If so, what is it?

feature — Comments Off on A look back at Mike Del Grande and Sue-Ann Levy’s imaginary city budget
11
Feb 11

A look back at Mike Del Grande and Sue-Ann Levy’s imaginary city budget

Via a comment on BlogTO, I came across this 2007 Sue-Ann Levy column, in which she details a fun weekend she spent with Councillor Mike Del Grande, currently the city’s Budget Chief. To summarize, they got together and used their imaginations to drastically slash the city’s budget. Councillor Del Grande liked the outcome so much he archived the article on his website:

So last week Del Grande and I spent two days looking for savings and our own revenue tools to replace the $356 million anticipated from the new land transfer and vehicle ownership taxes.

We found some $440.9 million — $419.4 million from what I’ve called the Big Ticket Items like wages and benefits. There was another $21.5 million from what the socialists like to call “chicken feed” — the small yet symbolic cuts to councillor office budgets, their wage hikes and free food, the city’s grants, special events, cultural and plant watering budgets that Coun. Rob Ford raises year after year.

via The Toronto Sun: City Hall.

The 440.9 million they “found” is similar to the amount Ford pledged to cut in his first year in office. And we know how that turned out – the 2011 budget is, in fact, bigger than the 2010 budget. Same as it ever was.

It’s interesting to look at the items Levy and Del Grande put on their mythic chopping block. A bunch of it is pure fantasy. They wanted to kill the city’s 100-year-old fair wage policy. Easier said than done. They suggested freezing wages for non-unionized staff, something that was actually done under Miller, but isn’t sustainable.

Then there’s the kind of stuff that, in retrospect, feels a lot like foreshadowing. They slashed office budgets to $30K and froze council salaries. They cut the free food and coffee and slashed travel budgets. They even proposed a cut to the Tenant Defence fund. All things that have been floated by the new administration in the mayor’s office.

Incredibly, Del Grande and Levy also snuck in a cut to the lobbyist registry. Which saves very little money and seems like a real loser of a proposal. But then, who needs oversight when you’ve vowed to be awesome and make no mistakes?

The most prescient thing about this whole exercise, which was surely meant to make David Miller look like a spending-addicted tax-ocrat, is that to find their half billion dollars in ‘savings’ Del Grande and Levy had to apply a series of ‘revenue fixes.’ They account increased revenues from new condo assessments and provincial uploading. They even proposed a property tax hike of 6%.

Of course none of this matters now, because council’s right-wing has decided the city doesn’t have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem. And magic privatization fairies will solve everything.

feature — Comments Off on Mayor’s office is in total disarray but believes itself incredibly effective
06
Feb 11

Mayor’s office is in total disarray but believes itself incredibly effective

In what has become something of a tradition, some crazy-ass news broke from the mayor’s office late Friday. This one is a bit complicated, so let’s try to step through it together.

The National Post’s Natalie Alcoba:

It was late afternoon when news broke of an incident at City Hall that led Mayor Rob Ford’s outgoing chief of staff, Nick Kouvalis, to ask security to escort the mayor’s long time staffer Andrew Pask out of the building.

Before the workday was up, Mr. Kouvalis and Councillor Doug Ford, the mayor’s brother, marched down to the Press Gallery to “clarify” what happened on Jan. 21, insisting there is no discord in the Mayor’s office, while simultaneously declaring that a new plan for subways is almost finalized.

via Ford’s office holds meeting to ‘clarify’ incident with Nick Kouvalis | Posted Toronto | National Post.

Okay. So Nick Kouvalis, the mayor’s chief of staff and the guy who essentially got Rob Ford elected, is a total jerk, right? And I say that not in a disparaging way because I don’t think he aspires to be anything but a jerk. It’s a label that fits him. In any case, we learned a few weeks back (on a Friday afternoon) that Kouvalis would be stepping down from his role. According to others in the mayor’s office, this was both something that was and was not planned for some time.

So a footnote of Kouvalis’ leaving was that another guy, Andrew Pask, was also leaving. This didn’t really receive a lot of attention because Kouvalis was the bigger story.

But today news broke that Kouvalis actually called security and had them escort Pask out of the building after an altercation at a meeting. Keep in mind that Kouvalis is a man who was accused of uttering death threats against Essex MP Jeff Watson and once pushed a Ford supporter out of the way because the mayor wnated a Diet Coke. When news of this so-called “blow-up” was leaked, with the suggestion that it led to Kouvalis’ leaving, Doug Ford and Kouvalis himself called a press scrum to clarify things.

And clarify they did. Toronto Star blog The Goods has the audio of the conference, and it’s well-worth listening to. (Little moments, like the attempt to get everyone to go off-the-record in the middle of the scrum, and that the apparently semi-serious question as to where Sue-Ann Levy would be running for office, are great.)

Some choice quotes:

  • Doug Ford confirms the mayor’s approach to accountability by saying that it is “no one’s business what happens…in the Mayor’s office.”
  • Kouvalis makes the claim that this administration has done “done more than Miller did in seven years in a month-and-a-half.” Which seems to suggest that the last seven years amounted to less than the elimination of a sixty-dollar-per-year user fee, a bunch of bus route cuts and a single year tax freeze.
  • Doug Ford says, of Kouvalis, “Public record, he’s going to privatize garbage.” I really think he expects people to break into spontaneous applause every time he says this.
  • Kouvalis says that he would already be gone if not for the transit deal. In a curious turn-of-phrase, he says, “Transit City is alive and well and it’s going to be buried underground.” He may have just misspoken and meant to use the Ford-branded “Transportation City.”

In conclusion? Who the hell knows. But even diehard Ford supporters have to be feeling like maybe this isn’t the greatest example of efficient, well-run and customer service-oriented government.

feature — Comments Off on The City of Toronto budget explained with three simple charts
24
Jan 11

The City of Toronto budget explained with three simple charts

On Saturday I braved some very cold weather to attend an unofficial downtown budget consultation meeting at City Hall. Held by councillors Pam McConnell, Adam Vaughan and Kristyn Wong-Tam — with an animated Shelley Carroll as a special guest –, the (unfortunately under-publicized) event was eye-opening. The presentation given by the host councillors is available for download. It’s a PDF file.

It’s well worth giving the whole thing a read, particularly for residents of Wards 20, 27 and 28 as it includes a list of ‘safe’ projects in those areas. However, I know not everyone geeks out over city finances like I do so I’ve pulled a few key slides and embedded them below. Taken together, these three graphs paint a compelling picture of the real state of the City of Toronto’s finances.

City of Toronto finances versus American cities

Point #1: The City of Toronto gets an abnormally large percentage of its revenues from property taxes

This chart looks at City of Toronto operating budget revenue versus an average of the Top 35 cities in the United States. This would include frequent Toronto comparators like New York and Chicago. (Most of the 35 cities would even have NFL teams!)

The big disparity to note here is the property tax slice of the pie. Nearly 40% of the city’s revenue for its operating budget comes from property taxes, more than double the percentage seen south of the border. The City of Toronto Act, ushered in a few years back, was supposed to allow the city to increase revenues through other means. You may have heard that this strategy was slightly unpopular.

Also worth noting is that, in contrast to American cities,  our city gets no revenue from any kind of sales tax and we have a federal government that is seemingly unwilling to provide municipal funding. If the federal government quadrupled its annual contributions, bringing them to the same level as the U.S. average, the city would generate an extra 800 million dollars for the operating budget this year.

Point #2: The City of Toronto’s residential property tax rates are abnormally low

Not only does the city derive too much of its revenue from property taxes when compared to your average American city, its residential property taxes are also very low for the GTA. (These are real dollars, so don’t let anyone tell you that Toronto’s lower tax rates don’t matter because our homes cost more.)

Where Property Tax Revenue Goes

Click this one for bigger.

Point #3: 77% of the revenue from the average property tax bill goes to core services which, in most cases, can’t be cut

This is where the Mayor’s “the city has a spending problem, not a revenue problem” rhetoric gets destroyed. The above shows where revenue from the average property tax bill goes. More than three quarters of that revenue is used to pay for things that generally can’t be cut. Either they’re provincially mandated (housing) or involve arbitrated labour contracts (police, fire, soon TTC). The amount the city must pay for debt charges every year is concerning, but keep in mind that the city can only use debt to finance capital projects. In 2011, 83% of capital expenditures went to either ‘State of Good Repair’ projects — ie. keeping things from exploding — or growth expenses related to increased population.

The councillors at the downtown budget meeting warned that battles would be fought over very very small pieces of the budget, particularly Community Partnership & Investment Programs. These cuts are more ideological than anything else, since they make little impact on the bottom line.

My conclusion at the meeting, after Oh god we’re doomed, was that the current budget process amounts to little more than theatre. Even if the conservative wing of council is successfully in cutting all the expenditures they’re targeting, we’re still left with mounting core costs that will inevitably require a combination of steep residential property tax increases and an improved funding formula with the other levels of government. Put another way: even if the city solves its mythic spending problem, we still have a revenue problem.

feature — Comments Off on TTC Chair Stintz hints reworked transit plan includes Sheppard Subway
23
Jan 11

TTC Chair Stintz hints reworked transit plan includes Sheppard Subway

Karen Stintz has taken to Twitter this Sunday, throwing around hashtags like candy and broadly hinting at what to expect when the Mayor reveals his reworked ‘Transportation City’ plan before the end of the month:

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/TTCchair/status/29222655328522240″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/TTCchair/status/29224611837116417″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/TTCchair/status/29233060373336065″]

She also makes reference to Eglinton:

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/TTCchair/status/29233998634950656″]

For the record, and ignoring all the platitudes that we’ll hear about connecting our city and completing what we started and blah blah blah, any extension of the Sheppard subway is a bad idea at this point. We will spend billions, wait a decade (or more) for it to open and ultimately end up with a line that carries fewer people that most of the downtown streetcar routes.

The new subway and its stations will add tens of millions to the TTC operating budget, necessitating either rapid and steep fare increases or — more likely — continued cuts to ‘low-performing’ surface routes. It doesn’t make sense, and the poor outcomes and negative press that will inevitably result from such a white whale of a project will have negative impacts on future transit expansion in our city.

UPDATE: Because this is going to be a popular topic in the coming week, here’s a link to the TTC’s own cost estimates on subway versus LRT projects. (Via, of course, Steve Munro.) The short of it is that to build the currently planned Eglinton LRT, extend the Sheppard Subway to Scarborough Town Centre and replace the Scarborough RT with a Bloor-Danforth subway extension we’ll need to spend 13.27 billion dollars. Current provincial funding commitments amount to 10.94 billion dollars. (I’m not taking into account any penalties or fees the city will have to pay after breaking/renegotiating contracts, but they’re likely to happen.)

feature — Comments Off on Proposed TTC route cuts impact 2,600 riders per day
13
Jan 11

Proposed TTC route cuts impact 2,600 riders per day

The TTC has started providing statistics relating to the proposed bus route cuts part of the 2011 budget. Steve Munro was nice enough to post the TTC’s numbers here. (PDF link)

After putting on my nerd pants, I converted the PDF back to an Excel document. Filtering to display only weekday cuts, the TTC’s own numbers indicate that over 2,600 riders per day will be impacted by these proposed weekday cuts. Of the 658,569 customers affected per year, 126,086 of those will be ‘lost’ riders, who will presumably replace a trip they previously took by transit by a trip in a car.

The TTC estimates that many of these impacted riders will walk to other routes, but how much of that will happen remains to be seen.  Steve Kupferman at OpenFile Toronto makes some good points about why simply walking further to access transit can be daunting for some late night riders.

Meanwhile, Munro concludes:

The TTC’s analysis shows the hallmarks of something pulled together quickly as a way to satisfy a demand for cuts without taking care to look at what is happening or to validate the accuracy of the calculations.

via The “Ooops” Factor in Planned Service Cuts | Steve Munro.

“Pulled together quickly to satisfy demand for cuts” is kind of a recurring theme this week.

Postscript: Via Jonathan Goldsbie’s twitter account, this from Royson James is particularly relevant to this discussion:

“[Late-night and weekend service] were introduced as valued, credible transportation options and alternatives to driving a car. They were to help people adopt transit as part of their lifestyle. We clearly said they would not generate huge ridership or carry huge volumes but they would allow citizens to count on transit wherever and whenever they need it.”

And that’s what they have done. Off-peak ridership is growing faster than rush-hour service and accounts for more riders. “We achieved what we set out to do,” [TTC  Manager – Service Planning Department Mitch] Stambler said.

via James: TTC choking on its success – thestar.com

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