feature — Comments Off on Minnan-Wong planning “significant” downtown transportation study; believes more roads can solve traffic problems
19
Jul 11

Minnan-Wong planning “significant” downtown transportation study; believes more roads can solve traffic problems

I’ve been meaning to get to this for a while. Amidst a bunch of news cycles dominated by that thing where other councillors forced the removal of existing infrastructure in her ward — despite her objections, and those of local residents and business –, Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam revealed a major plan for the renewal of the section of Yonge Street between Dundas and Gerrard. It calls for wider sidewalks, an improved public realm, “sharrows” for cyclists and, oh yeah, the removal of two car lanes. Pedestrians vastly outnumber vehicles on this stretch so this doesn’t seem like an overly crazy suggestion.

You can download the entire report here. I’ve compressed it from its original downtown-elite file size of nearly 140 megabytes, so the images are a bit grainy.

Response to the report was swift, of course. Councillor and Public Works Chair Denzil Minnan-Wong essentially smacked it down, citing the need to first do a “very significant transportation study” of the downtown before making any moves to revitalize streets.

The Sun’s Chris Reynolds:

While Public Works chairman Denzil Minnan-Wong said he had yet to see the report, he cautioned any rush to rip up Yonge St. traffic lanes.

“The city is planning a very significant transportation study of the downtown, all the major roads and thoroughfares,” Minnan-Wong said. “It is going to be proposed by staff, it is coming forward in September and we are going to be looking at gridlock and congestion in the downtown.

via Study says Yonge stretch should be narrowed | Toronto & GTA | News | Toronto Sun.

Oh good. We’re going to look at gridlock and congestion in the downtown.

Much of Toronto’s downtown ‘gridlock’ can be attributed to simple physics: there are too many cars coming into a relatively small space. You might be able to nominally increase some traffic metrics by improving signal timing and filling in some missing roadway links (as seen with the Dufferin underpass last year), but you’re not going to drastically increase overall capacity unless you start knocking down buildings to allow for wider streets.

Even then, adding roadway capacity only leads to the “induced demand” phenomenon, which says, basically, that new roads create new traffic. There isn’t a magical point at which roadspace is bountiful enough that congestion and gridlock stop happening. (The inverse is also true: contrary to logic, some traffic will simply disappear if road capacity is reduced.)

The principles behind induced demand are pretty widely accepted by planners and politicians these days. A notable exception would be the Councillor backing this downtown transportation study. He seemingly does not buy it, as he told Torontoist’s Hamutal Dotan last week that he thinks, “if you have more roads you will have traffic run better.”

And so, in an attempt to deal with downtown traffic, it looks like we’re going to try and dig our way out of this hole. Meanwhile, Yonge Street will probably be waiting a long time for its much-needed revitalization.

Somewhat Related: I wanted to throw a link out for Edward Keenan’s ambitious five-part series at The Grid, which stands as a remarkably thorough examination of the idea of road pricing in Toronto and the GTA. Recommended reading.

feature — Comments Off on Toronto [heart] Partisan Politics
19
Jul 11

Toronto [heart] Partisan Politics

Councillor Josh Matlow, writing in his weekly column for the Toronto Star:

The once disenfranchised right now seem to relish their newfound ability to dismiss the left and overturn much of what was done during Mayor Miller’s tenure, and honestly believe that if they give the “opposition” any slack, Ford Nation’s “cultural revolution” might be impeded.

However, the right’s determination to fulfill their agenda, and their desire for revenge, only continues the hyper-partisan politics that Torontonians recently rejected. It reminds me of how many revolutionaries around the world have acted after overthrowing a dictator. They often become tyrants themselves.

via City Hall Diary: Councillors need to stop relishing revenge – thestar.com. (Emphasis added.)

Wait, hold on. When did Torontonians recently reject hyper-partisan politics? When they elected Rob Ford? The guy who whipped up populist anger against public sector unions, downtown elitists and opponents he described as gravy-peddlers? The guy who continues to stand up and call his colleagues tax-and-spend socialists?

I don’t think that narrative really holds together very well, Councillor.

Speaking of partisanship, though, there’s been some interesting movement amongst progressive voices within the city to develop strategies to more effectively combat the Ford hegemony at City Hall.

First, Daren Foster at local blog All Fired Up In the Big Smoke has announced “Project 23“, an effort to convince swing-vote Councillors or those allied with Ford who have shown signs of independence to ally themselves more firmly against the mayor. A group of 23 councillors who don’t take marching orders from the Mayor’s Office would immediately diminish the power Rob Ford wields over council decisions. The outcome might actually look more like the post-partisan wonderland councillors like Matlow often yearn for.

Second, former City Hall reporter Mike Smith contributes “The Long Game“, a good look at the ins-and-outs of City Council politics and what activists and concerned voters need to do if they want to be effective in opposing this administration.

Smith recommends that people stop with the goddamn “let’s all phone the mayor!” pile-ons, something I’d absolutely agree with:

Ford’s strategists have been good at (or lucky in) exploiting the corporate press’ reluctance to empower us with understanding of how government actually works — scary headlines about the next program the Mayor’s decided to kill do two things: make people think it’s a fait accompli, and, sometimes, rev up pointless campaigns to pressure the Mayor, who, by the time things are making their way to Council, is the hardest of the “hard” votes.

via The Long Game | linebreaks.com.

Hundreds — if not thousands — of cyclists called the mayor in advance of the vote to kill the Jarvis bike lanes. None of those calls were logged nor are they likely to have made any kind of impression in the mayor’s mind. Jarvis was always a longshot save for the Left, but a coordinated strategy to call individual members like the sometimes-wavering Councillor Jaye Robinson or even stalwarts that should know better, like the flip-flopping Peter Milczyn, would have made more of a difference.

Call it partisan politics or call it good strategy. Whatever. The alternative seems to be this thing where we pretend Torontonians rejected partisanship, ignore the existence of ideology and make continual appeals for everyone to vote with their conscience. It is not working out very well so far.

feature — Comments Off on The incredible shrinking budget gap
19
Jul 11

The incredible shrinking budget gap

Here’s the story, as advanced by Councillor Gord Perks and reported this weekend by the Toronto Star: That $774 million budget gap we’re all freaking out about? The one that has us talking sincerely about de-flouridinating our drinking water and shutting down parks? The one that’s so severe that it’s led to the City’s Budget Chief carrying around a plastic State Farm-branded piggy bank that he pulls out and shakes whenever one of his colleagues starts talking about programs that might potentially require more City spending? Turns out it might not be a real figure.

In actuality, the real budget pressure for 2012 — thanks to remaining, recently-discovered 2010 surplus dollars and an anticipated surplus for 2011 — might be significantly less. Like $331 million less.

But if we’re not actually looking at three-quarters-of-a-billion-dollars of “budget pressure,” why does that figure keep coming up? The Star’s Paul Moloney explains:

Critics accuse the Ford administration of exaggerating the city’s money woes to cow citizens into going along with serious cuts.

“I think the mayor is trying to create a political climate that suggests that the City of Toronto government is broken,” said Councillor Gord Perks, a key budget figure in the old David Miller administration.

“The kind of damage that Rob Ford wants to do to services Torontonians rely on can only be achieved if he terrorizes the public into believing we need to do it,” Perks said.

via City budget gap exaggerated, critics say | Toronto Star.

At Toronto Life, John Michael McGrath links this kind of  manufactured-crisis strategy to Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, a sentiment backed up by blogger Sol Chrom, who writes, “Whose interests are served by all this manufactured hysteria around the budget? Apocalyptic numbers and phrases get thrown around and amplified by the transmitters in the media, and soon the sense of crisis is so acute that the stage is set for extraordinary measures.”

Extraordinary measures. Like library closures. Like transit cuts. Like service cuts. You might remember that the Mayor’s Office actually justified their use of previous-term surplus funds to close the 2011 budget gap because it would  mean they had “unmasked the true financial condition for all to see. The 2012 budget forecast reflects the true gap between the city’s revenues and spending habits.”

At The Grid, Ed Keenan contributes a great primer on how the city’s budget process works, and underscores that this year’s budget gap isn’t unique: the previous council dealt with initial shortfalls that were even larger and dealt with them without slash-and-burn service cuts:

[G]oing into the 2010 budget season, David Miller faced a projected budget shortfall of more than $800 million, and he managed not only to balance the budget without cutting any services at all, but to eventually show a huge surplus. So why is the somewhat smaller shortfall that Ford faces an emergency? Why would this, lesser crisis, require considering slashing whole government departments?

via From $350 million surplus to $774 million deficit in one Ford year? | The Grid TO.

But so what? Even if the budget gap is only the $443 million Perks says it could be, that’s still a huge number. And isn’t it time that we got our fiscal house in order and stop with these annual budget games? Shouldn’t Council’s left-wingers know better than to suggest we get through 2012 with yet another short-term, unsustainable fix?

John Lorinc is asking for a more proactive approach from Council’s Left. In his Spacing column this week, he calls on opposition councillors to lay out a “Plan B” budget, proposing an alternative to spending cuts instead of just criticizing the mayor and his allies. It’s not a bad sentiment, but he also adds this: “By the way, if a Plan B hinges on an unspecified Provincial bail-out, it automatically fails the smell test.”

Okay, yeah, it’s not likely that the McGuinty government — much less a prospective Hudak government in the fall — will be willing to cough up new subsidies to the City of Toronto when they’re facing a giant-sized debt and deficit all their own, but to ignore the role the province must play in righting amalgamated Toronto’s financial ship is not realistic. The City’s annual deficit became structural the day Mike Harris cut the provincial TTC operating and capital subsidies. Without a return to a fairer funding model — which will require strong intergovernmental advocacy efforts from the Mayor and Council — the only workable long-term Plan B-type solutions will have to involve politically toxic revenue drivers like a return to something like the Vehicle Registration Fee or even — horror! — a Municipal Sales Tax.

feature — Comments Off on Councillor Josh Colle misled constituents in lead-up to Jarvis vote
18
Jul 11

Councillor Josh Colle misled constituents in lead-up to Jarvis vote

In the frantic lead-up to last week’s vote on the Jarvis Street bike lanes, Councillor Josh Colle told at least two Toronto residents via email that he would not support spending money to remove the lanes. “The City of Toronto currently faces a projected deficit of over $700 million dollars and will have many tough decisions to make in the coming year,” wrote the councillor. “In light of this, I do not believe it would be an appropriate use of limited City resources to eliminate bike lanes on Jarvis Street.”

Colle later reversed from this position, voting with Public Works Chair Denzil Minnan-Wong and the right-wing of Council against an amendment moved by local Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam that would have saved the lanes. He also supported the 2011 Bike Plan as a whole, even once it was clear that his support would mean approving spending limited City resources to eliminate bike lanes on Jarvis Street.

Councillor Josh Matlow, who had previously made a commitment to saving the lanes, also voted against Wong-Tam’s motion to preserve them. He later clarified that this was a mis-vote, and his intention had been to vote “Yes” on the item. Fair enough.

Worrying that perhaps Colle too had made a mistake, I emailed the councillor for clarification. His response read, in part: “In response to resident concerns to secure a north-south passageway in the city centre, I felt that separated bike lanes on Sherbourne Street with better connectivity north of Bloor was the best alternative. I made it a priority to ensure that nothing would happen to the Jarvis Street bicycle lanes until separated bike lanes were fully installed and operational on Sherbourne.”

This is disappointing behaviour from a councillor and works only to diminish valuable and critical trust between residents and elected officials. I would cheerfully suggest to Councillor Colle that any advantage he or his family gets from being seen as a “team player” with the Ford administration could very well be erased if the electorate starts to perceive him as lax with his convictions.

feature — Comments Off on Rob Ford misinformed on critical budget issues
18
Jul 11

Rob Ford misinformed on critical budget issues

The media outlets were maybe a bit too charitable with our mayor on Friday, as, in an interview with John Oakley on AM640, Rob Ford claimed that labour costs made up 80% of the city’s operating budget. In actual fact, that figure is about 48%. The disparity between the two percentages seems too large to be the result of a simple mental lapse or an exaggerated rounding error — it would seem, in this case, Ford was simply misinformed.

The discrepancy — paragraph six in the Star; paragraph eight in The Globe; paragraph eight in The Post; unmentioned in the Toronto Sun — is alarming because Ford was using his understanding of the city’s spending on labour to justify potentially laying off thousands of public sector workers.

The Globe & Mail’s Elizabeth Church and Jill Mahoney:

On the radio Friday, the mayor lamented that the city is spending 80 per cent of its budget on labour costs and vowed to bring that number down.

“In business, the first thing you look at is the labour and your labour should be making up, you know, maximum 20 per cent,” he said. “We’re at 80 per cent. It’s just unheard of. So I think that [we’re] taking a serious look at non-union and union employees and exactly what they’re doing and taking it from there.”

via Ford talks layoffs, suggests labour costs are four times too high — The Globe & Mail.

Cutting 75% of the City’s public workforce — about 50,000 strong — would mean laying off approximately 37,5000 people. Even assuming only half that number actually live within the borders of the City of Toronto, that still works out to an estimated 1.3% rise in Toronto’s unemployment rate. Regardless of whether these workers are providing necessary or efficient services, dumping that many people into unemployment would have disastrous impact on the regional economy.

Also alarming, and from the same interview, was the mayor’s seemingly sincere attempt to equate revenue cuts with spending cuts.

The Toronto Star’s David Rider:

Despite the layoff threat, Ford made balancing the 2012 budget sound positively easy.“We’ve saved over $70 million in the first six months so if we can find $70 million I’m sure we can save $700 million, that’s for sure,” Ford said.“So many great ideas are coming forward and then it’s for us to implement it. There’s tonnes of gravy,” he said, Ford’s pet word for waste.

via Ford makes layoffs sound like a certainty – thestar.com.

Many, including The Globe & Mail’s Marcus Gee, have pointed out that the $70 million in savings the mayor refers to is probably the same $70 million his office touted as “savings to the taxpayer” shortly after his first month in office. That figure included the roughly $64 million in revenue the City now must do without following the elimination of the Vehicle Registration Fee. Rob Ford, apparently, believes that eliminating government revenue counts as a “saving.”

To put it another way: this is the equivalent of taking a $100 bill, setting it on fire, and then calling that a “savings” on your monthly budget. Because now, I guess, you don’t have to worry about spending it.

The mayor was spinning these weird numbers — 80% and $70 million — as part of an attempt to to tiptoe around the idea of a 3% property tax increase for 2012. A reasonable property tax increase for the next year is actually the first sensible thing the mayor’s office has proposed in quite some time, so of course the Toronto Sun and others are already hammering him for it. Joe Warmington, in his column this weekend, accused Ford of replacing the Gravy Train with a Tax Train. (Seriously, enough with the damned trains.)

Which brings me back to this familiar refrain: property taxes don’t work like other taxes, in that they don’t grow automatically with inflation. A 3% property tax increase this year is in line with inflation — especially considering the freeze last year –, and really shouldn’t be seen as any kind of tax grab. Favouring layoffs over a fiscally-responsible move to keep the city’s property tax revenues in line with inflation is dangerous and short-sighted fiscal policy.

feature — Comments Off on Searching for Council’s conservatives
14
Jul 11

Searching for Council’s conservatives

Yesterday, Toronto City Council endorsed spending approximately $400,000 removing cycling infrastructure downtown and in Scarborough, despite staff reports that indicated the bike lanes had no substantive impact on traffic flow. They followed this up hours later by voting to uphold an earlier decision by the Executive Committee that, due to concerns that maybe someday the funding might be removed, Council not accept provincial money that would add two new public health nurse positions to the City’s payroll.

Let’s phrase that another way: over the course of one summer afternoon, councillors decided both to recklessly spend $400,000 for no clear reason and to play it safe, eschewing needed resources at public health because they might, one day — but probably not –, get stuck with a $200,000 per year bill for their trouble.

The same Council then had the relative gall to pass a motion calling for the province to step in and fund a greater percentage of the operating and capital budgets for the TTC. And so Council both rejected provincial money and asked for more of it on the same day.

Meanwhile, outside Council chambers, consulting group KPMG has spent the week releasing delightfully concise Core Service Review reports that all follow a similar template. First, they point out that the department they’ve examined has very little waste. Then, they drop a bundle of ‘considerations’ — not recommendations — that range from things like eliminating water fluoridation to selling the city’s stable of barnyard animals.

The consultants — who already have a checkered history with this kind of thing, having once produced a report arguing amalgamation would save the Toronto municipalities a significant amount of money — are clear that they aren’t even really looking at efficiencies as much as they’re laying out a list of things that could legally be cut from the city’s portfolio of public services. That this stands contrary to an election promise made by the mayor seems to have been tossed to the curb.

Also on that curb? The results of the city’s exhaustive consultation sessions regarding the Core Service Review. A full 60% of people who attended indicated they would accept increased taxes to pay for existing service levels. Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, who’s had a fun week, said Monday that that group was irrelevant. “Self-selecting,” he said. Okay.

For the record, Toronto — you know, the city that we continue to hear is suffering from near-fatal fiscal wounds that can only be treated by deep government cuts — has some of the lowest property taxes in the GTA and recently voluntarily reduced its annual revenues by $60 million.

I’m not sure what you call the ideology that drives these decisions, but it can’t be conservatism, can it? Certainly not principled conservatism. A conservative would demand to see a business case before spending public money modifying infrastructure. In the case of Jarvis, Birchmount and Pharmacy, there wasn’t one. A conservative wouldn’t turn away provincial money — which the city has said it needs –, especially if there was a guarantee in place that the new positions could be eliminated should the funding ever be removed. (Which was the case.)  A conservative wouldn’t call on the provincial government for funding only months removed from electing to decrease the city’s own revenues, and hours removed from opting out of committed, ongoing provincial money for public health.

Our Conservative Mayor

Early in the day on Tuesday — before Council had really started rolling with the big items of the week — Mayor Rob Ford rose and asked to be recorded in the negative on four items relating to grant funding for community groups, including Etobicoke Services for Seniors, the Crime Prevention Association of Toronto and Variety Village. (The latter is interesting, as it comes only a couple of months after Ford made a rare media appearance announcing a new bus stop implemented to serve visitors to the organization, which supports disabled children.) The Mayor also stated his intention to vote against grants for heritage buildings. Late in the day on Wednesday, the Mayor added to this bizarre tally, lodging a vote against the 2011 AIDs Prevention Community Investment Program. This vote marked a milestone for the councillor-turned-mayor: he’s now voted against AIDS funding five years in a row.

The bottom line: If the Mayor of Toronto could have his way, it would appear that the city would cease most community grants, end some of its heritage protection programs and drastically cut back on public health funding.

My kingdom for a conservative

I don’t lean even slightly to the right politically, but I would like to think I understand the merits of conservative thinking. It’s about mitigating government risk, off-loading ambition to the private sector and, in times of economic hardship, turning to austerity as opposed to reinvestment. That’s fine. As much as I disagree with that line of thinking on an ideological level, I respect it. I can hold it in my hands and argue against it. It feels firm.

But what we’re seeing at Council these days isn’t that. It’s a weird mishmash of spite-based decision making and conservatism-when-convenient, held up by the enthusiastic wishes of a “silent majority” that only communicate through the cellphones of the mayor and his brother. It’s all glazed over with a slapdash of pseudo-libertarianism, the kind that exists in the minds of high school students who are like halfway through reading Atlas Shrugged.

Rob Ford is Rob Ford. I can’t fault him for that. He’s maddeningly consistent in his anti-government views and has been for years. What disappoints me — and continuously surprises me — is that he has commanded the support of a cabal of once-sensible Liberals and conservatives on Council, and has driven them to this point where Toronto is now governed by a Council with no consistent guiding ideology, principles, or direction.

feature — Comments Off on The Jarvis vote: What the hell happened?
13
Jul 11

The Jarvis vote: What the hell happened?

After a long and contentious debate that spanned across two days, Council voted today to remove the bike lanes on Jarvis Street and return the  street to its original five-lane configuration. The move will cost the city at least $200,000. The debate was marked by a series of (mostly) cogent arguments by councillors opposing the elimination of infrastructure that has, by all accounts, had no significant impact on traffic flow and increased the number of cyclists in the city. Those who supported the elimination responded by generally just wandering around the council chamber and not listening.  The hundreds of taxpayers who came to City Hall to support maintaining the lanes were dismissed by some councillors — notably Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday — as “bike people.”

The media narrative spinning out of today’s vote will be that the cyclists won a “concession” after Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, chair of the Public Works & Infrastructure Committee and architect of the 2011 Bike Plan, supported an amendment that will see the Jarvis lanes removed sometime in 2012, simultaneously with the installation of new, repaved, separated bike lanes on Sherbourne Street. This is a too-simplistic interpretation that ignores the damage Council has now done to ongoing neighbourhood revitalization efforts across the downtown east-side.

What Council really did today was move to reclassify Jarvis Street — a place where people live and work and go to school — as a kind of downtown highway with a reversible fifth lane. In doing so they’ve thrown out a 2009 Environmental Assessment, a series of exhaustive community consultations and the objections of the local ward councillor, who was in the midst of ongoing neighbourhood beautification efforts in concert with local residents and business.

The vote on Jarvis came down with 18 in favour of keeping the lanes and 27 opposed. Or maybe it was 26-19. Or 28-9. No one is really sure.

Political Gamesmanship

Late on Tuesday afternoon, Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam — the local councillor for Jarvis Street — moved three individual-but-connected motions. Together they worked to protect her efforts to continue to improve Jarvis Street, a recognized “cultural corridor” in the City of Toronto. You can read the motions in full in the Decision Document, but here’s a quick summary:

  1. Council not eliminate the Jarvis bike lanes
  2. Council not eliminate the Jarvis bike lanes before the proposed separated bike lanes on Sherbourne are implemented
  3. Council not eliminate the Jarvis bike lanes before extensive community consultation

Her third item, calling for the involvement of a variety of community groups in an extensive consultation, showed signs of support from a few right-leaning councillors. And why wouldn’t it? Most would acknowledge that it seems cold-hearted to make significant changes to a street over the objections of a local councillor without so much as a public meeting.

Minnan-Wong, as the last speaker on the item, had an ace up his sleeve, however, as he moved an amendment to Wong-Tam’s second motion, explicitly calling for a return of Jarvis to its “pre-existing operation.” This stood as the first significant reference to Jarvis’ former five-lane configuration, and came after several of Minnan-Wong’s right-leaning colleagues had made arguments seemingly in support of a 2009 Environmental Assessment that called for wider sidewalks — instead of bike lanes — and the elimination of the fifth lane. His amendment also employed softer language, calling for more limited coordination between the removal of the Jarvis lanes and the installation of the Sherbourne lanes, as opposed to the original implication that one not happen without the other.

Wong-Tam challenged the amendment, which was ruled to be in order by Chair Frances Nunziata. A vote on whether to uphold Nunziata’s decision saw councillors support their Chair 27-18.

From here, things quickly broke down into procedural chaos. After the vote to retain the Jarvis lanes failed 18-27, the vote on Minnan-Wong’s amendment passed 26-19. Wong-Tam’s amended motion then passed 31-14 in the confusion, which had the probably unintentional effect of making her third motion — the one that would have allowed for public consultation — redundant. Minnan-Wong’s efforts thus had the dual impact of explicitly calling for the return of the fifth lane on Jarvis Street and ensuring that no consultations would ever be held on this issue.

The rest was noise. Some councillors lobbied Nunziata with the sensible suggestion that council vote on the individual items contained in the 2011 Bike Plan one at a time, as this would allow them to express support for elements of the plan while opposing others. Nunziata, as is her way, was obstinate and opted to instead hold only one vote. That prompted nearly all left-leaning councillors to leave the chamber before the results of the vote were read, with eight of them opting not to register a vote at all.

Not About Bikes

The most disappointing thing about today’s outcome is that it cements Jarvis as little more than a strategic battleground in a spite-driven war between cars and bikes. Bike lanes on Jarvis were never the entire issue. A reasonable compromise would have been to see a return to the original staff recommendations made as part of the 2009 EA: removal of the bike lanes in favour of wider pedestrian thoroughfares, and perhaps the installation of a few key left-turn lanes for automobile traffic. Instead, some councillors were disingenuous enough to pretend that this was their favoured option while ultimately placing their support behind a reversible fifth lane.

Today’s decision does little except increase the speed of automobile traffic, foster a substandard pedestrian realm and prop up Jarvis Street’s mid-century-to-now legacy as the tragic story of a once-great street in perpetual decline.

 

link — Comments Off on On bike lanes, put up or shut up
11
Jul 11

On bike lanes, put up or shut up

At the Toronto Standard, Matthew Kupfer — who is doing some very good work on the City Hall beat — takes a look at the brief alliance between activist Dave Meslin and Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, which ended so spectacularly when Minnan-Wong endorsed a decision to remove the Jarvis bike lanes as part of his new bike plan.

Well worth reading. I wanted to note this part specifically, as it’s a line Minnan-Wong has been pushing to reporters repeatedly:

Minnan-Wong stands by the bike plan that is going to be voted on this week. He said it represents an investment in cycling infrastructure of nearly $43 million in five years—nearly double what Mayor Miller invested in his final term. As for the so-called war on the bike, he said those charges are trumped up.

via Tandem Troubles | Toronto Standard | News, Media, Art, Business, Technology, Fashion, Events.

I don’t think any cyclist in this city thinks the previous council did a great job installing bike lanes, but it should be noted the the previously adopted city-wide bike plan, written way back in 2001, actually called for $68.3 million in spending. Minnan-Wong should remember that. He voted for it.

I say this not because I’m happy about how the previous bike plan was — or, more accurately, wasn’t — implemented, but instead to point out that there’s a gigantic difference between money that’s been committed as part of a plan and money that’s actually been spent. In other words: put up or shut up.

link — Comments Off on First Core Service Review report: cut snow-clearing, street-sweeping, fluoridation and recycling programs
11
Jul 11

First Core Service Review report: cut snow-clearing, street-sweeping, fluoridation and recycling programs

Cast your mind back to when Rob Ford, then a candidate for mayor, ran on a platform of austerity and service cuts, highlighting a need for Toronto residents to sacrifice things like regular street cleaning, water fluoridation and snow-removal in order to maintain Toronto’s lowest-in-the-GTA property tax rates? Remember that?

You might not, because it never happened. Instead, Ford ran on a platform that called for an end to “gravy train” waste. He told voters he would be able to save them $230 million on the 2011 operating budget, and ultimately produce a $1.7 billion surplus over his first four years in office, all without cutting services. The city doesn’t have a revenue problem, he was fond of saying, but a spending problem. And he could fix that.

Today, the campaign-era theatrics and slogans all came crashing down, as the Rob Ford administration revealed the first phase of their Core Services Review report. The initial release relates to programs that fall under the purview of the Public Works & Infrastructure Committee. It concludes that a  full 96% of the services provided by these city departments are absolutely essential. Nearly all the potential avenues for savings are listed as “small.” They include things like cutting down on the frequency of street sweeping, changing our standards for snow-removal, setting less ambitious targets for recycling and green bin programs and discontinuing the practice of fluoridation for the city’s water supply.

Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, Chair of the Public Works & Infrastructure committee, seemed to agree with media reports that claimed very few — basically none — of the report’s areas for consideration are actually plausible cuts, telling the Toronto Star’s David Rider and Paul Moloney that PWIC was not “a sweet spot” for easy savings. Which is decent enough logic, but if that was so obviously the case, why lead the multi-stage announcement of the Core Service Review reports with this document? Why not come out swinging with a report that highlights real areas for savings?

It might be because there is no such a report. This PWIC document identifies only $10 to $15 million worth of savings, which means the remaining seven reports — relating to committees like Economic Development, Parks & Environment, and Executive — need to contain considerations that average out to approximately $100 million in savings each to even begin to approach this year’s budget shortfall of $775 million.

As Torontoist’s Hamutal Dotan points out, the most glaring failure of this report is that it doesn’t even address the fiscal efficiency of how services are delivered, but instead jumps right to listing things that could be cut:

Which is to say, the administration directed its consultants to look for which programs it was allowed to cut, and by how much, without ever asking it to look at how it could maintain service levels by delivering them more efficiently. The underlying message of today’s report: if we want to cut the size of the budget, it will be, in the first place and not as a last resort, by cutting the scope of government.

via Waste Diversion, Fluoridation, and Cycling Infrastructure in First Round of Potential City Hall Cuts | Torontoist.

In other words: they’re skipping the gravy, and going right to the meat.

feature — Comments Off on Who to call & email to save the Jarvis bike lanes
08
Jul 11

Who to call & email to save the Jarvis bike lanes

With some information that’s rolled in over the past week, I’ve been able to update my projected City Council Scorecard for the vote on keeping or killing the Jarvis Street bike lanes that will take place at next week’s Council meeting.

Councillor Josh Matlow made us wait, but confirmed last night that he would not support removing the lanes. The other Josh — Councillor Colle — has also indicated in responses to email that he does not believe that the City should spend money to remove the existing bike lanes.

I’ve moved some 100% Ford-supporting councillors like Giorgio Mammoliti and Frances Nunziata into the kill-it category, despite that they both voted to implement the lanes two years ago. There was never really a chance that they would vote against the mayor.

That leaves a scorecard that looks like this:

This leaves us with 19 in favour of keeping the lanes, 18 opposed, with eight undecideds or uncommitted councillors. Of the undecideds, six lean toward the Ford Nation side of Council, with middle-skewing Ron Moeser joining them more often than not. My suspicious is that Councillor Ana Bailão is likely to vote in favour of keeping the lanes.

The Toronto Cyclists Union reported yesterday via their twitter account that Mayor Rob Ford has claimed that 70% of the calls he has received regarding Jarvis Street support his view to eliminate the lanes. This is despite numerous reports via Twitter and social media channels from those who have called the Mayor’s famous phone number — 416-397-FORD – who say they were not asked for their name nor was their position seemingly recorded.

Calling Ford is never necessarily a bad idea, but I think it is becoming increasingly clear that it is not an overly effective strategy on this issue. As far as I can tell, the phone calls the mayor talks about receiving have only ever hardened his stance on key issues. Dissenting voices are dismissed as a minority. Calling him is not going to make a significant difference on this issue.

For those who want to truly influence the vote — which is likely to take place this coming Wednesday — I’d urge you to contact the councillors who are still listed as uncommitted votes in the chart above. Particularly if you live in their ward. You can find their contact information on the City’s website.

And if anyone has received an email or message from any of the uncommitted councillors above that makes their intentions clear, please let me know.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →