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link — Comments Off on The Phoenix Saga (of libraries)
02
Feb 11

The Phoenix Saga (of libraries)

The Toronto Star’s John Goddard was on Toronto Public Library Board Meeting duty tonight, as once again that board is demonstrating their commitment to saving the Metro Hall branch:

Amid high passions calmly stated, the Toronto Public Library board voted again Wednesday to defend its downtown Urban Affairs branch from closure.

At the same time, the board agreed to budget cuts that bring it close to those demanded by city hall number-crunchers.

“We must act in the best interests of our patrons … (and) closing a library would not be doing that,” said city councillor and board member Janet Davis.

via Defiant library board votes to save Urban Affairs branch – thestar.com.

Still not safe, but now council will have to serve as the hatchet man and kill the branch themselves. Assuming that’s what they want to do. Kudos to the board for standing tough on this one.

link — Comments Off on A boring story about council salaries
02
Feb 11

A boring story about council salaries

Okay, let’s cover this briefly and hopefully never again. Robyn Doolittle with the Toronto Star:

In what will come as no surprise to anyone, the Ford administration has proposed a salary freeze for both the mayor and city councillors.The motion asks members of council to “lead by example,” by cancelling their scheduled cost-of-living increase.

via Council asked to give up cost of living increase – thestar.com.

Who cares. Who cares. Who cares. There has never been anything insightful written about politician salaries. You’ll hear a lot of bullshit about “leading by example” and the plight of this year’s middle class worker who isn’t getting a pay raise. None of it matters. If this council freezes their salaries for the entire term, eventually the city will just get to a point where a major increase is necessary because there does come a point where political jobs are so unattractive that only eccentric activists and bored rich kids are willing to wade into the pool. (The latter is way more dangerous than the former.)

Councillors are not overpaid relative to any standard. They’re not particularly underpaid either. It’s an incredibly tiny portion of the city’s budget. The smartest policy on this is to give an automatic cost-of-living increase every year and then never, ever bring up the issue again. But if council must grandstand and bring the issue up, then the media should do us the courtesy of not acting like it matters.

link — Comments Off on Bus route cuts are a customer service issue
02
Feb 11

Bus route cuts are a customer service issue

There’s a marathon TTC meeting going on today with a zillion deputations. Concurrent with this, Councillor Josh Matlow has published an open letter to the TTC Chair and Commissioners, questioning their ridership numbers and asking for a more in-depth study before routes are cut in his ward.

I liked this part a lot:

I recognize the importance of being thoughtful about how we dedicate tax dollars and am acutely aware of the very real budget constraints we have as a City today. However, I am also cognizant that the TTC is a public service. These local bus routes are the only transportation option for many seniors, students and workers.

via Councillor Matlow’s letter to the TTC re: Proposed reductions to bus service – Josh Matlow, Toronto City Councillor for Ward 22, St. Paul’s.

As I write this, Councillor Peter Milczyn has taken to his Twitter account to lament the delays to this “server reallocation” because it means fewer routes will see improved service in the spring. He’s also accusing the left of being ideological in their opposition to this move.

I have two points in response to this.

First, to pretend this isn’t a service cut is crazy. The TTC does have capacity issues on other routes that necessitate service improvements, yes, but the responsible thing to do would be to find a way to fund those necessary service improvements without removing service in other places. If the 10-cent fare increase had been presented as necessary to do this — and not presented instead as some kind of weird political game of peekaboo designed to make the mayor look like a hero — I would support the move.

Second, if all you’re doing is reallocating service, take some time to do a proper study of both routes losing service and routes gaining service. Present that data to the people. Let them see where the trade-offs are. This government continually hammers on about the importance of “customer service,” so let’s speak that language: it is crappy customer service to take away someone’s bus route and not even tell them what they’re getting in return.

link — Comments Off on Caught in the headlights of new LRV storage yard
02
Feb 11

Caught in the headlights of new LRV storage yard

New councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon, replacing the Nixon-esque Sandra Bussin in Ward 32, has made the media rounds this week with her fight to get the proposed new streetcar yard, set for the corner of Leslie & Lake Shore, moved elsewhere.

Local Ward 32 Councillor Mary Margaret McMahon, meanwhile, had to backtrack after coming out of a meeting with TTC Chair Karen Stintz, Ward 30 Councillor Paula Fletcher and St. Paul’s Councillor Joe Mihevc.

In a letter issued by her office, McMahon had said that “all were in agreement” that there ought to be a 90-day moratorium on work [on the new LRV storage facility].

According to Mihevc and Stintz, that was far from the case – and McMahon issued a retraction, noting that “everyone” didn’t support her idea.

Mihevc called the retraction “tepid.”

“The reality was that no one supported it,” said Mihevc.

via InsideToronto Article: Future of LRV facility turns into war of words.

Whoops.

I don’t know enough about this issue to really weigh in on it — my preference would be to do whatever necessary to ensure no delays to the new streetcar order — but I think Joe Clark’s take is worth reading. It’s a local perspective on the site, presenting a side that probably won’t be covered by the media as they write about this issue over the next few months. (He describes it as a “massive exurban toybox more suited to T. Rex than a mom pushing a stroller.”)

link — Comments Off on Government is not a business
02
Feb 11

Government is not a business

Edward Keenan over at Eye Weekly makes the point I kept hoping Ford’s opponents in the election would make:

Still, while we’re at it, we should keep in mind that the people of Toronto are not actually customers of the city, we’re citizens and residents. Similarly, the corporation of the City of Toronto is not primarily a business, nor should it be. Though these seem like obvious distinctions, they are too often overlooked in discussions about how to run things around this place.

via Retail politics – EYE WEEKLY.

It does seem ridiculous that this needs to be brought up, but the anti-government rhetoric in our city has been running at full tilt for the past couple of years. It’s rare these days for anyone to even stop and wonder why a profit-driven private deliverer of a service is preferable to a public deliverer that, by definition, doesn’t care a bit about profits.

And, yes, I know the theory behind market efficiencies and the wonders of competition. And I know too the issues we face with public labour unions, who have little reason to ever make concessions in the face of a government that can infinitely increase revenues. But the reality is that simple “run government like a business” or “outsource everything” hand-waving do nothing more than oversimplify issues which are incredibly complex.

One of my favourite bits of cognitive dissonance is when someone argues for government to be run more like a business, then turns around and complains about large private corporations and their screw-you approach to their customers.

link — Comments Off on A great deal of effort to accomplish little
01
Feb 11

A great deal of effort to accomplish little

Steve Munro, whose great blog turned five years old yesterday, on yesterday’s story that the bus route cuts were being scaled back:

There’s some budget hocus-pocus going on with the TTC’s original claim of a $7m saving from the cuts.  That was a 9-month figure assuming the change went into effect on March 27.  About $1m in savings were given up by deferring the change until May 8, and a few million more have already been dedicated to service improvements in January 2011.  This doesn’t leave a lot for additional service in fall 2011, let alone for those changes to roll out for a full year in 2012.

While “efficiency” is worth looking for, we seem to have spent a great deal of effort to accomplish very little.

via Not Quite So Many Service Cuts | Steve Munro.

“A great deal of effort to accomplish very little” is a good way to describe much of the budget process this year.

link — Comments Off on TTC to announce that some bus routes will be spared cuts
31
Jan 11

TTC to announce that some bus routes will be spared cuts

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/kellygrant1/status/32139846659088384″]

From Globe reporter Kelly Grant on Twitter comes word that a number of the proposed bus routes, who were just a few weeks ago deemed so underused as to be entirely disposable, have been ‘saved’ thanks to a ‘compromise.’ Good news, sure, but it will be interesting to see if the compromise amounts to anything more than unspecified savings to the operating budget.

Either way, it seems being a hard-line budget slasher who never wants to disappoint anyone ever sure leads to a lot of flip-flops.

link — Comments Off on Local councillor knows little of existing transit plans for his ward
31
Jan 11

Local councillor knows little of existing transit plans for his ward

Over at Torontoist, Desmond Cole hits a home run with a piece on Finch West’s transit troubles. Notably, he gets Councillor James Pasternak on the record as having no idea about the specifics of the proposed Finch West LRT line. A project that was, until the Transit City plan was famously threatened, slated to run through his ward:

Councillor James Pasternak (Ward 10, York Centre) […] spoke at length about his opposition to an LRT on Finch, saying repeatedly that the plan would “remove [traffic] lanes from system roadways.” Pasternak seemed genuinely surprised when we insisted that the environmental assesment for the Finch LRT contains no lane reductions, as the roadway would be widened to accommodate the rail line while preserving the existing number of traffic lanes.

via The Transit Crunch on Finch West – Torontoist

Nice one. Pasternak goes on to argue instead for a Sheppard West subway extension for some reason.

link — Comments Off on TTC Chair Stintz not involved with new transit plan negotiations
28
Jan 11

TTC Chair Stintz not involved with new transit plan negotiations

John Lorinc, writing for the Globe, gets an interview with new TTC Chair Karen Stintz and midway through she drops this bomb:

In any case, her fingerprints won’t be on the final deal. The mayor’s office has left her out of the high-stakes negotiations with Metrolinx and the province over Mr. Ford’s subway plan. Ms. Stintz gamely insists the talks “are taking place at the right level” and denies that she’s trapped between the competing political agendas of the mayor and Premier Dalton McGuinty.

via Karen Stintz, new TTC chair – The Globe and Mail.

She also restates her support for the Eglinton line, but seems resigned to having no real influence as to whether it happens or not.

It’s mind-bending to me that the mayor’s office has left the TTC chair out of all major transit decisions. If Stintz isn’t involved, and Ford self-admittedly doesn’t know much about the TTC, who the hell is leading the charge in the Metrolinx negotiations?

As a postscript, as the news unfurls over the next few weeks and Stintz spins whatever new plan we end up getting as the right thing for this city, keep this quote in mind. It’s from just this past April in an article by (yet again) John Lorinc:

Stintz says she supports the Metrolinx “Big Move” plan, which includes the LRT network. “We came together,” she told me on Friday, “because it’s not a partisan issue, it’s a city building issue.”

I understand adapting to the winds of political change, but some consistency sure would be nice.

link — Comments Off on City’s budget problems not about council meals or expenses
28
Jan 11

City’s budget problems not about council meals or expenses

Spacing has a great interview with Hugh Mackenzie, research fellow at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, regarding the city budget. He concludes:

The City’s budget problems are not about council meals or whether the expense allowance is $50,000 or $30,000. This is about big-picture political decisions made at Queen’s Park. It doesn’t matter what Rob Ford does with incidental expenditures because it won’t alter the fact that every spring there will be a jousting match over the City’s budget.

via HEADSPACE: Economist Hugh Mackenzie discusses the City’s budget « Spacing Toronto.

The whole thing is worth reading, and it serves as a nice follow-up to what I posted about earlier this week. The city’s budget problems are far more fundamental than overpaid TTC ticket takers and expense account retirement parties.

One of the most damaging things the Toronto media did over the Miller years was continually characterize council’s emphasis on securing more funding from the provincial and federal governments as “crying poor” or “going cap in hand.” By doing so they took what should have been a rallying point of an issue — giving Canadian municipalities their fair share of tax dollars so they can provide the services people rely on — and turned into a joke.

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