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link — Comments Off on Still trying to kill that pesky library
28
Jan 11

Still trying to kill that pesky library

Once thought safe, the library in Metro Hall is still facing the chopping block. Brett Popplewell with the Toronto Star:

The Toronto Public Library Board, which has twice defied city requests to trim its finances, has again been advised to close one of its branches and cut hundreds of thousands of dollars from its book budget.

via Urban Affairs library back on the chopping block – thestar.com.

Sometimes it still floors me that, after all the “gravy train” rhetoric, the first examples of waste the new regime pointed to were bus routes and libraries.

link — Comments Off on Mayor touts elimination of proposed fare increase in rare sit-down interview
28
Jan 11

Mayor touts elimination of proposed fare increase in rare sit-down interview

Making professional media outlets (especially the Star) all kinds of jealous, Excalibur — York University’s student newspaper — has posted video of their exclusive sit-down interview with Mayor Ford.

via YouTube – Excalibur interviews Rob Ford.

There’s nothing surprising here, but I do always enjoy hearing from our mayor. He admits he doesn’t know a lot about the TTC but he sure knows people want subways. He goes on about how he ‘turned around’ the Rexdale neighbourhood in his Ward, and how he will do the same for the entire city. (Presumably through high school football.) He notes, as I did below, that student groups pressured him to eliminate the vehicle registration tax.

The most interesting bit was the couple of references he makes to the proposed TTC fare increase that was famously eliminated twenty-four hours after it was announced. It’s been clear for a while that they were hoping they could play that incident of an example of Ford standing up to a city bureaucracy that doesn’t care about people. The Sun’s Sue-Ann Levy, who has long acted as a de facto extension of Ford’s communication team, confirmed as much in her post-budget column, where she wrote, “I couldn’t believe TTC Chief General Manager Gary Webster’s chutzpah in proposing a 10-cent fare hike while doing virtually nothing to improve customer service in the past year.”

It was a rare misstep from a communications team that has, on the whole, been pretty damn good. Nobody bought the story that staff proposed a surprise fare increase that was, incredibly, eliminated after less than a day of budget talks. But it’s interesting to see Ford still plying the narrative that he, against all odds, was the hero.

link — Comments Off on Levy: Privatizing garbage will let us throw more stuff away
27
Jan 11

Levy: Privatizing garbage will let us throw more stuff away

I know Sue-Ann Levy is too easy a target and I really should just lay off, but I will not be deterred. Here she is on privatizing garbage collection:

A few hours later, on the flight back to T.O., my seatmates happened to mention that in Florida the garbage workers take everything — and twice weekly at that — while in Toronto, one virtually has to gift-wrap the garbage before it gets picked up.

I couldn’t have said it better.

via Gift-wrapped garbage has to end | Sue-Ann Levy | Columnists | Comment | Toronto Sun.

Of all the reasons to look at privatizing garbage, so we can throw more stuff away has to be the worst I’ve heard.

We should be honest about why the mayor has a mandate to privatize waste collection: it’s to punish the union after the protracted strike two years ago. This isn’t necessarily bad reasoning — I lean toward supporting the move — but don’t pretend it has anything to do with day-to-day customer service, the city’s finances or your ability to throw out bags upon bags of trash and have them picked up twice a week.

link — Comments Off on Lobbying from student groups led to car tax repeal, says Ford
26
Jan 11

Lobbying from student groups led to car tax repeal, says Ford

I feel ridiculous even writing that headline, but there it is. A full-length interview with the mayor is as rare as a unicorn sighting these days, so this from the York University student newspaper is more interesting than it should be. It’s by reporter Pippin Lee, who probably got tired of hobbit jokes when she was younger:

“I’m not much older than the students – we’re a younger generation, and I understand the challenges you have,” said Ford. He pointed out that lobbying from the student population instigated his scrapping the $60 vehicle registration fee, that many student drivers made it clear to him they simply couldn’t afford the fee.

via North of Toronto, south of York–still in Ford country | Excalibur Publications.

Summary: our 41-year-old mayor understands youth, and heard from them en masse that a fee equivalent to the cost of one tank of gas was making driving unaffordable.

(Update: Turns out Pippin Lee is actually the photographer. The article is by Jacqueline Perlin. I’ve left my lame hobbit joke intact as a gift to future generations. But I do regret the error.)

link — Comments Off on Holding Ford to campaign promises just makes sense
26
Jan 11

Holding Ford to campaign promises just makes sense

The Toronto Star’s Royson James, rumoured today to have multiple personalities, on the guns-ablazing counter-offensive we’re seeing from council’s left in opposition to the 2011 budget:

So when city councillors opposed to Ford go on talk radio to taunt Ford for not stopping all hiring as promised, less than two months after he became mayor, eyebrows curl upwards. Do we want an immediate slash and burn? Should Ford stop the hiring of 713 people for the TTC (116 positions were deleted, for a net increase of 597)? Are we suggesting that if Ford doesn’t make the promised changes immediately, he was obviously wrong and the staff reductions can’t be achieved?

via Ford leaves slash-and-burn prediction unfulfilled – thestar.com.

A couple of points in response to this:

First, while those in the media knew throughout Ford’s campaign that his “save money while cutting no services” rhetoric was total bullshit, that doesn’t mean his supporters were savvy enough to realize the same thing. Ford’s mandate is to save gobs of money, improve customer service and lower taxes. Put simply: anyone who tells you Ford’s victory in October means that people are expecting deep cuts to government services is lying.

Second, and with regard to the 2011 budget, the charge his opponents are laying on him isn’t so much that he hasn’t immediately fulfilled his campaign promises to cut waste and cut staff, but rather that, instead of rolling through 2011 with a small property tax increase — which he campaigned on! –, he pushed the city into an incredibly rushed and thrown-together budget process marked by ideological cuts.

link — Comments Off on The only thing the budget committee cut: oversight
26
Jan 11

The only thing the budget committee cut: oversight

The National Post’s Chris Selley follows up on the story about cuts to the Toronto ombudsman’s office by noting that it was literally the only change to the budget made this week:

On Jan. 10, the city’s recommended gross operating budget stood at $9,372,571,000 and allowed for 47,063 staff positions. After six agonizing days of minute budget committee discussions, it now stands at $9,372,468,000 and allows for 47,061 staff positions. From dozens of separate departments’ and agencies’ budgets, the thrift-minded committee squeezed two staff positions and $103,000. And it all came from one budget: the ombudsman’s, which had been set to increase by roughly 10%.

via Chris Selley: Ford cuts one thing — oversight at city hall | Posted Toronto | National Post.

The whole thing just strikes me as insane. The argument that Councillor Peter Milczyn has advanced — that the ombudsman may not need those staff members because customer service will improve over the next year — seems to suggest that the previous council was actively in favour of bad customer service.

link — Comments Off on TTC to 250,000 riders: sorry about your bus route
26
Jan 11

TTC to 250,000 riders: sorry about your bus route

Gary Webster visited Matt Galloway on CBC Radio this morning, and dropped a bomb of a number relating to the TTC’s proposed route cuts:

Speaking to CBC’s Metro Morning on Wednesday, TTC general manager Gary Webster said he estimates “there are about 250,000 people that will be affected” by the changes.

via CBC News – Toronto – Bus cuts will affect a quarter million: TTC manager.

It hasn’t been a good week for the TTC. In addition to Webster plainly stating that a quarter of a million people are (at best) going to be inconvenienced by the proposed route cuts, the TTC’s public consultations regarding the route cuts have been very poorly received.

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/LesterBrown/status/29698468146577408″]

To be fair, I guess, who could have known that throwing a bunch of signs up in a room and calling it a ‘consultation’ wouldn’t go over well?

Laurence Lui has a great post today outlining a potential compromise solution, establishing a new service standard that still might save some money. But as Joe Fiorito at The Star points out, trying to have conversations about ridership, service levels and transit-as-a-public-good is fruitless in the face of cuts that are 100% political.

link — Comments Off on Doug Ford wants to cut everything
26
Jan 11

Doug Ford wants to cut everything

From the Toronto Star, David Rider and Paul Moloney bring us this bit of eloquence from the mayor’s brother:

[Doug] Ford’s answer: Just wait. As soon as this budget is done, a top-to-bottom review of city spending will, with the help of outside experts, expose fat and services ripe for contracting out, he said.

“Yes, we should outsource everything we can,” said Ford, the mayor’s closest adviser.

via Doug Ford: Deep cuts coming in 2012 – thestar.com.

He also made yet another gravy reference but it’s way past time for media outlets to stop printing those.

I encourage people to take another look at this chart. For all the bluster about savings from contracting out garbage, few point out that it’s a damn rate-supported service. Any contracting out in that area will result in minimal impact on property taxes. All it would do is maybe lower the annual fee for garbage bins by a little bit.

To make a big difference, the city would need to make big cuts or find ways to contract out services in one or more of the following areas: Police Services, TTC, Fire Services, Support & Housing or Parks & Recreation. Of those, Parks & Rec is the only one I could see the potential for real movement on. (They’re working on it.)

link — Comments Off on Ford’s revised “subways” plan delayed
25
Jan 11

Ford’s revised “subways” plan delayed

Buried within the TTC uploading stories today comes word that the revised transit plan, being worked on by Metrolinx and the TTC at the request of the mayor, will not be presented within the next week or two as expected.

Natalie Alcoba:

The city, Metrolinx and TTC staff are still hammering out a revised transit plan, as per Mayor Ford’s orders that the city ditch a plan to build surface light rail lines in favour of tunnelling underground. But it appears that it won’t be ready by the end of this month, as previously hoped.

“I don’t have a specific timing for the completion of that work,” said Mr. McCuaig. Ms. Stinz said she does not expect a report by the Feb. 2 TTC meeting. “We’re working towards a solution but we’re not there yet,” she said.

via Metrolinx confirms Ford floated idea of handing TTC to province | Posted Toronto | National Post.

Steve Munro confirms the delay in a comment on his blog: “[The new plan] was to come in early February, now late February, and I’ve even heard March as a possibility.”

I have several questions about these delays, not the least of which is what the hundreds of people hired to work on the Transit City projects are doing during this period of uncertainty.

link — Comments Off on Ontario Transit Commission
25
Jan 11

Ontario Transit Commission

The Globe’s Adam Radwanski:

But multiples sources familiar with the talks said that, while no detailed proposal has yet been put forward, the mayor’s officials have repeatedly floated the idea of transferring either subway lines or the entire TTC to Metrolinx, the regional transit agency established by Mr. McGuinty’s government.

via For both Ford and McGuinty, an Ontario-run TTC has its perks – The Globe and Mail.

I’m honestly not sure why the province would want to take control of the whole thing when they could just restore their operating and capital subsidies that existed until Mike Harris. It would be cheaper for them.

Update: And it’s denied. That didn’t take long.

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