link

link — Comments Off on Horse trading at city hall
25
Feb 11

Horse trading at city hall

CitySlikr — whose coverage of this week’s events on Twitter was awesome — details a small story about Councillor Josh Colle from yesterday’s session:

Josh Colle, one of the freshman councillors and political moderates, voted with the mayor on every budget item save for the Parks and Forestry and Library budgets. That’s not blind adherence but pretty solid support. In turn, when Councillor Colle’s motion came to a vote, a motion, let me add, that bore no financial impact on the budget, it just asked for a report on front yard parking fees and was shepherded through with the help of Councillor Cesar Palacio, a councillor plucked out of well-deserved obscurity owing solely to his slavish devotion to the mayor, it lost by one. You know who voted against it? Mayor Ford.

When the results were announced, catcalls could be heard directed at Councillor Colle. “They’re not your friends, Josh!”

via Notes On A Budget Debate From The Peanut Gallery « All Fired Up In The Big Smoke.

Two things about Councillor Josh Colle, who took over Howard Moscoe’s old ward in Eglinton-Lawrence. First, there’s this interesting story Josh Matlow tells about the time, soon after the election, that he met with Nick Kouvalis. Kouvalis, thinking Matlow was Colle, started trying to butter him with tales of his father — Liberal MPP Mike Colle — before trying to get him to agree to vote with the mayor on the budget.

Second, there’s the small matter of probably the only election promise Ford has broken since he took office. During the campaign, he promised to stop the proposed redevelopment of Lawrence Heights. He even yelled into a megaphone about stopping it. But at the end of December, he declared that he wouldn’t actively work against the project, saying that he didn’t want to step on the local councillor’s toes. That councillor? Josh Colle.

I don’t profess to know if any of this, or what CitySlikr noted above, is related. But it does paint an interesting (if faint) picture of the kind of horse trading that seems to go on between councillors and the mayor’s office.

link — Comments Off on 2011 budget rich with symbolism, but not much else
25
Feb 11

2011 budget rich with symbolism, but not much else

The Globe & Mail’s Anna Mehler Paperny:

“The ink’s not even dry on the 2011 budget. I want people to enjoy the zero-per-cent tax increase,” he said, adding only that “we have to go really hard in 2012” to close a budgetary shortfall pegged at $774-million.

The budget braved a raft of attempts to save everything from additional staff for the city ombudsman to $75,000 cut from the tenant defence fund, the soon-to-be-closed Urban Affairs library and cut bus routes.

via Ford says budget has kept his promises – The Globe and Mail.

Over the past two days, councillors approved the 2011 operating and capital budgets with no major amendments. So bus routes are cut. The Urban Affairs Library will close. Conservation programs like rebates for low-flow toilets are gone.

Gord Perks’ motion on the first day, when councillors were debating 2011 tax rates, tells the whole story: this was, essentially, the exact same budget as last year except council used a combination of service cuts and one-time revenues to avoid an inflationary increase to residential property taxes. (Also, so they could cut the vehicle registration tax.)

A small increase (far below inflation) to the amount of revenue brought in by property taxes could have retained all services.

It should be noted that a ‘property tax freeze’ is a totally misleading phrase. If the federal or provincial governments were to freeze income taxes, you’d assume that would mean they’d lock in the percentages in the various tax brackets. Even with frozen income and sales taxes, governments would still realize increased revenues as wages and prices rise with inflation.

Property taxes work in an entirely different way. (For more on this, see this great Dylan Reid piece at Spacing.) By freezing property taxes, the city has forced itself to make do with the exact same pool of tax revenue as they did last year. Despite, you know, everything costing more than it did last year due to inflation.

They crippled themselves.

link — Comments Off on Toronto Council Curveball: Amendment to budget would retain services
23
Feb 11

Toronto Council Curveball: Amendment to budget would retain services

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/ddale8/status/40436998430920704″]

Fresh from Twitter, today’s special council session regarding the 2011 budget kicked off with a bang as Councillor Gord Perks moved a motion that would see a 3.5 million property tax levy. This would retain services — preventing the proposed cuts to public health, bus routes, etc. — and cost the vast majority of taxpayers less than $10 this year.

Shrewd move. It puts Team Ford in the awkward position of having to argue that $10 (or less) per year is an unfair tax burden. But then this is the administration that’s sympathetic to people who whine about having to pay a nickel for a plastic bag.

You can stream council online or follow the #TOCouncil hashtag on Twitter for updates.

UPDATE: And the motion has failed, 18-27. Breakdown on votes will be very interesting.

link — Comments Off on On transit, we’re weighing a new fantasy versus an established reality
23
Feb 11

On transit, we’re weighing a new fantasy versus an established reality

At Spacing, John Lorinc decides to be admittedly contrarian and argue the upside of the Ford team’s scheme to privately finance a Sheppard subway extension:

On the other hand, if the city can concoct a model that relies on a witch’s brew of subways, private capital and urban-minded up-zoning to goose densities in a carbon-addled suburban landscape, the reward may be worth the risk.

via LORINC: Subways in the suburbs, a contrarian view « Spacing Toronto.

There’s not too much to disagree with here in spirit — density’s good, transit is good, more urban spaces in the suburbs is good –, but he glosses over the fact that this new plan takes away from the Sheppard East LRT, which would have been open in just three years. The Transit City plan wasn’t development agnostic, either — it called for medium density, mixed used development along all LRT routes, something arguably more conducive to building a great city than clusters of towers bunched around subway stations.

link — Comments Off on Budget debate at City Hall
23
Feb 11

Budget debate at City Hall

Cityslikr, over at All Fired Up In the Big Smoke, has clearly spent far too much time in City Hall committee rooms the past couple of months. His post predicting the events of today’s budget debate is terrifyingly clairvoyant:

Councillor Mammoliti will rise often and patronizingly tell dissenting councillors that he understands where they’re coming from (he doesn’t) and implore them to just trust him and his newest, bestest friend, the mayor. Councillor Thompson will talk and talk and talk, sounding as if he’s not totally in the mayor’s corner but will invariably vote with him every time. Fingers crossed that councillors Palacio and DiGiorgio aren’t inclined to try and match councillors Mammoliti and Thompson verbosity for verbosity as, well, actually, let them talk. We’ll need time for the occasional pee break. Councillor Milczyn will counter every criticism of the budget with examples of atrocities committed under the Miller regime.

via Buckle Up! It’s Budget Debate Time. « All Fired Up In The Big Smoke.

He knows these people far too well.

Postscript: I included his bit about Giorgio Mammoliti because he is, for my money, the most ridiculous councillor. His list of “DID YOU KNOW?” facts is staggering. Councillor Paula Fletcher gets flagged all the time for once being leader of the Manitoba Communist Party and being married to the President of the Toronto & York Region Labour Council, but DID YOU KNOW that Mammoliti used to be head of CUPE Local 767? Or that he was an MPP for Bob Rae’s NDP government? That he opposed same-sex marriage? That he changed his name from ‘George’ to ‘Giorgio’ in 2002? That, while serving on David Miller’s Executive Committee, he filed a human rights complaint against Rob Ford, and tried to get his son to run against Ford for the Ward 2 council seat? The guy’s wikipedia page is a goldmine of intrigue.

link — Comments Off on An idea, not a plan
22
Feb 11

An idea, not a plan

The National Post’s Chris Selley, as part of this week’s Posted Toronto Political Panel discussing the big transit news:

But this idea is not a suitable replacement for the plan that came before it, because none of the objections to that plan are reasonable enough to risk — to almost guarantee, in fact — getting absolutely nothing instead.

via Posted Toronto Political Panel: Toronto’s transit woes | Posted Toronto | National Post.

Bang on.

On another note: I listened to the February 17th edition of the Posted Toronto Podcast on my way to work this morning, where Matt Gurney, Ron Wadden and others discussed the same issue and it blew my mind. They essentially argued that Ford’s idea was a good one, as it’s just important that “something get built.”

I think people gloss over how close we were to having shovels in the ground. The Ford team hasn’t done anything that will bring transit expansion closer to reality — instead they’ve stood in the way of progress.

link — Comments Off on No gravy at City Hall
21
Feb 11

No gravy at City Hall

Over at the Toronto Star this morning, Robyn Doolittle takes a look at what all that “Stop the Gravy Train” rhetoric has amounted to. Spoiler alert: it’s nothing.

But when the city is $774 million short, a hundred thousand here and a million there don’t go very far to fill that hole.

It’s a lesson that Rob Ford’s team is also learning.

Insiders — ranging from members of the budget and executive committees to city financial staff — say that bubbling pot of gravy still hasn’t been found. The financial renaissance Ford campaigned on is still a few years away, they say.

via Looking for the gravy – thestar.com.

The article confirms that the mayor will be releasing a draft 2012 budget sometime this spring, which will at least give everyone a lot of time to argue about it. Apparently Caribana, TIFF, The Zoo, police funding and community grants are all on the table as ways to save money. (But not much money.)

Selling assets is an option, though Doug Ford says Toronto Hydro is not on the table. Selling the Toronto Parking Authority would be an incredibly short-sighted move (Just raise rates! That’s what the private sector would do!) but could happen.

Best part? “The goal is to be Mississauga, Doug Ford said.” They should have made that their campaign slogan.

link — Comments Off on Budget Chief Del Grande admits city has revenue problem
18
Feb 11

Budget Chief Del Grande admits city has revenue problem

The Globe & Mail’s Ana Mehler Paperny profiles budget chief Mike Del Grande, who waxes philosophically about the city’s small share of overall tax revenue:

“Out of every dollar that people pay in taxes, the city gets, I think, about six cents,” he says. “We get more than six cents when the federal government or the provincial government tosses us a bone, but the problem with tossing bones is that they’re not consistent. There’s no reliability.”

If his talk of what he calls “a new deal with cities” from the province and the feds sounds familiar, it’s because former mayor David Miller had a similar refrain. Mr. Miller argued incessantly that Toronto’s systemic funding challenges stem from senior levels of government not stepping up to the municipal funding plate. Mr. Miller campaigned tirelessly and fruitlessly for a penny of the GST.

via The quandary facing Rob Ford’s budget chief – The Globe and Mail.

Sure would have been nice for more people to acknowledge this during the election.

link — Comments Off on Pretty well everyone thinks mayor’s subway plan is stupid
18
Feb 11

Pretty well everyone thinks mayor’s subway plan is stupid

I get to run over-the-top headlines like that because this is a blog. Real media has to be nicer, as evidenced by this Globe & Mail article by John Lorinc and Kelly Grant titled “What it will take to make subway plan a reality.”

They write:

Mr. Ford’s subway turns on attracting high-density development. Sheppard is a mix of malls, apartments and single-family homes. City officials would have to conduct studies and hold public meetings to solicit feedback on sharply increasing density and height limits.

Even if the new rules survive scrutiny by dozens of Scarborough neighbourhoods and win council approval, such sweeping zone changes will almost certainly be appealed to the Ontario Municipal Board.

via What it will take to make subway plan a reality – The Globe and Mail.

It’s astounding how many pieces have to fall into place to make this thing a reality.

Councillor John Filion’s comments are noteworthy as well, indicating that the presence of the existing Sheppard subway hasn’t improved the traffic situation in the area. Which makes sense, given that the subway isn’t really geared toward local service.

link — Comments Off on Subtext: Metrolinx refused to compromise with Mayor’s office
17
Feb 11

Subtext: Metrolinx refused to compromise with Mayor’s office

Mayor Ford couldn’t hide from the media today, doing a short press scrum in between meetings with his Executive. Calling himself “300 pounds of fun”, he played down his brother’s earlier call for a strong mayor system and laughed off the suggestion that his brother has been the public face of the office. This despite the fact that his brother has clearly been the public face of the mayor’s office for several weeks now.

Whatever. His comments on yesterday’s pseudo-announcement that the city would attempt to get the private sector to finance the Sheppard line are interesting. Here’s what he said, as reported by the Globe & Mail’s Anna Mehler Paperny:

“I said I was going to build subways. I am building subways. I said if the public money’s not available, the private sector’s going to. And that’s exactly what’s going on,” he said Thursday. “We haven’t got any detailed information right now. We’re just working with a number of people, a number of groups, and I will let you know as soon as a deal is struck.”

via Confident Rob Ford sheds little light on plans for privately funded subway – The Globe and Mail.

The subtext on all this gets clearer by the day. Metrolinx refused to budge, so the Mayor has to take his ball and go home. And by ‘home’ I of course mean the private sector. Where everything is awesome but also cheap.

Ford has a ton of weird confidence in this plan, concluding that the private sector will buy into this plan because of the election results:

“I campaigned on it, people knew we had to get the private sector involved and obviously you saw the poll results – I did very well. People know you can’t always depend on government to build subways, and that’s where the private sector’s going to come in.”

Apparently there is no better inspiration for a multi-billion dollar business deal than a mayor who captured 47% of the vote.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →