feature — Comments Off on Sheppard Subway plan a “big black hole of wasteful spending”
27
Jun 11

Sheppard Subway plan a “big black hole of wasteful spending”

The cost of the Mayor’s much-bragged-about Sheppard Subway extension has risen by $500-million. The 11% jump comes before the project has reached even the planning stages, as Toronto Transit Infrastructure Ltd. (TTIL), led by Gordon Chong, continues to develop a strategy for moving forward with a feasability study that, if successful, would lead to an exploration of potential private sector partners who would help deliver the project.

The Toronto Star’s Paul Moloney:

Pegged at $4.2 billion initially, the estimated cost has risen by $500 million, according to the head of the company created to make the business case for a publicly and privately funded subway extension.

“The Sheppard project is projected to be around $4.7 billion,” Gordon Chong, president and chief executive officer of Toronto Transit Infrastructure Ltd. (TTIL), said Friday.

…

A TTIL working group needs 12 to 18 months to come up with a more detailed look at the scope, design and cost of the Sheppard subway extensions the mayor wants to build, to determine if it’s feasible.

Chong estimated it could cost $250 million to $300 million to complete the work needed to determine if the project is feasible.

via Sheppard subway cost soars – thestar.com.

The real concern at this point should be finishing this thing before teleportation technology becomes commercially viable and transit systems are no longer necessary.

TTIL’s report is an interesting read. Steve Munro points out that several of the potential revenue sources Chong identifies are, in fact, just taxes. They include things like a “special city-wide transit development charge” and “Left-over Metrolinx funds from the Eglinton project.”

Meanwhile, Metrolinx continues to indicate they want absolutely nothing to do with Ford’s subway project. The report excerpts a letter from Metrolinx on page five, stating that “any work that you undertake on this [Sheppard Subway Project] City project [sic] needs to be allocated to a separate account and funded by the City. Any invoices to Metrolinx should not include these costs.”

The report also includes a point, underlined for emphasis, indicating that “pre-feasability and/or full business case cannot be completed without more detailed design and data.” It also concludes with a nice budgetary note: “The existing budget is woefully inadequate to complete the tasks of the Working Group.”

In other words: despite campaign promises that said we’d have a subway by 2015, we’re a long way from actually building this thing.

Councillor Doug Ford was steadfast, of course, telling the Toronto Sun’s Don Peat “As sure as I’m standing here, we’re getting subways … I can’t be any clearer, there is going to be a subway on Sheppard.”

It was Councillor Janet Davis who summed things up best, however, in the same article:

“You’re now contemplating taking up to 18 months to complete not just the preliminary financial analysis but the feasibility study,” she said. “It’s a plan for a plan for a project that will take us into 2013 before we see anything that presents evidence one way or another about whether the Sheppard subway can be funded.”

“It feels like this is a big black hole of wasteful spending,” she said.

via Councillor Ford guarantees Sheppard Subway | Toronto Sun.

Government change, at any level, is the biggest threat to this plan. The reason Metrolinx exists in the first place is to allow long-term transportation planning that won’t fall to the whim of every newly-elected major, premier or prime minister. The Sheppard subway, falling far outside the purview of Metrolinx, is offered no such protection. Neither was Transit City.

Worth noting, as always, that the Sheppard Subway extension is now set to cost nearly five times more than the original plan for LRT on Sheppard. The Sheppard East LRT, as the first Transit City line, would have opened before the end of this council term in 2014.

link — Comments Off on Ford skips Pride kick-off at City Hall, was at hockey rink
27
Jun 11

Ford skips Pride kick-off at City Hall, was at hockey rink

The Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale:

Council speaker Frances Nunziata read Ford’s proclamation of Pride Week in place of the mayor, whom she later said had “other commitments” she could not identify. Her speech was interrupted by Dan Fraser, a 48-year-old corrections officer who is gay, and his friend Richard Warner, a gay 55-year-old retail salesperson, who stood in a crowd of more than 200 in Nathan Phillips Square.

“Where’s the mayor?” Fraser shouted. “We want Ford. Forget it, Frances. It’s a disgrace. It’s an absolute sham.”

via Ford’s representative booed at Pride event – thestar.com.

After the backlash Ford received last week when he announced he would be going to his cottage instead of attending the Pride parade, breaking a thirteen year tradition, I half-expected that he would make a half-hearted appearance at City Hall today, reading the proclamation for Pride Week and raising the rainbow flag.

It would have been a redemptive move. Some would have criticized him for only attending due to political pressure, but it would have been better than nothing. An indication, at the very least, that the mayor does rebuke those who would call him homophobic.

Instead, the mayor doubled down on his snub, coming up only with the feeble excuse that he was not able to attend this morning’s festivities because he was taking part in a walkthrough of the Air Canada Centre with Leafs GM Brian Burke:

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/TOMayorFord/status/85407177455566848″]

The association with Burke is, I guess, supposed to suggest a kind of solidarity, given that the Leafs GM is a major supporter of PFLAG. But that line of thinking is so ridiculously idiotic that it’s hard to comprehend. A tour of the Air Canada Centre — a building the mayor has been in probably hundreds of times, including one time in 2006, when he told a sports fan in attendance that she could go get raped and shot in Iran — is exactly the opposite of the kind of event that should preclude the Mayor of Toronto from attending the kick-off to one of the most important cultural events the city holds.

UPDATE: After I published this story, the Toronto Star updated their article to include comments from Ford, who wore a Leafs jersey upon emerging from his office after being MIA all morning. He told reporters that he would take things “one day at a time” when considering whether to attend other Pride events or the Pride parade itself. I still hope he does.

feature — Comments Off on Mammoliti, other councillors face serious audit requests
27
Jun 11

Mammoliti, other councillors face serious audit requests

After making waves with a pretty-damn-serious request for an audit of Mayor Rob Ford’s campaign expenses, Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler turned up the dial last week, debuting a new advocacy group — Fair Elections Toronto — and launching eight additional requests for campaign audits against several councillors and defeated council candidates.

Steve Kupferman with Torontoist:

A group calling itself Fair Elections Toronto is asking for audits of four sitting councillors, whom they accuse of having violated campaign finance laws during the 2010 municipal election.

Comprised of about 25 members and led by activist and Toronto Public Library Board vice-chair Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler, Fair Elections Toronto alleges that Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West), James Pasternak (Ward 10, York Centre), Michael Thompson (Ward 37, Scarborough Centre), and Doug Ford (Ward 2, Etobicoke North) all improperly classified expenses incurred during their campaigns as being for “fundraising functions,” in amounts ranging from $4,000 to $17,000.

via Doug Ford, Giorgio Mammoliti, and Other Councillors Facing Calls for Campaign Audits – Torontoist.

The most serious allegations fall against Mammoliti, who is accused of exceeding spending limits by more than 50%. If, over the course of the audit process, it is determined that the Mammoliti campaigning knowingly overspent — listing non-fundraising expenses as fundraising expenses, which are exempt from the limit — he could very well be removed from office.

Knowingly overspending in an election campaign isn’t just a minor administrative error. It’s tantamount to cheating.

The Star’s Daniel Dale has more on the Mammoliti situation:

“When you file an audited financial statement without a name and a date or a title for each one of the expenses claimed, it really stretches my willingness to believe it was a good-faith error,” Chaleff-Freudenthaler said.

Mammoliti said he had done “everything according to the law.” And he lashed out at Chaleff-Freudenthaler and his colleagues.

“We’ve got no concerns at all,” Mammoliti said, “except the fact that we think this is a bit of a conspiracy going on with a few individuals wanting to get to the right-leaning councillors. That’s not really what this structure was put together for. So we’re looking at actually suing the individuals that are doing this.”

via Mammoliti alleges ‘conspiracy’ over audit requests – thestar.com.

When your first line of defence against an allegation is to claim that there’s a conspiracy against you, you know you’re in deep trouble. (A much better line of defence for Mammoliti would have been to produce details, including a date and location, of the fundraising event in question. But maybe that would just be playing into the conspiracists’ hands.)

Fair Elections Toronto’s biggest challenge through this process will be to convince skeptics that their actions are not politically-motivated. That all the sitting councillors targeted for audit happen to be allied with the mayor is difficult to ignore.

But either way, these allegations are serious regardless of motivation. Municipal elections are tooth-and-nail, grassroots efforts, where every dollar spent and every vote cast matters. Allegations that Councillor James Pasternak overspent by a mere $2,500 may seem trivial, for example, until you consider that he won Ward 10 by only 382 votes, garnering less than 20% of the popular vote. A hundred fewer signs or flyers and that race could have easily gone a different way.

Those claiming that these allegations are politically-motivated also have to contend with the fact that Fair Elections Toronto seems sincerely devoted to the idea of reforming the Municipal Elections Act. The Reform page on their site outlines four changes to the Act that would improve accountability and fairness, and justifies the necessity of the current round of audit requests:

Litigating complaints against candidates who, we allege, broke election laws is only the first step in bringing fair elections to Toronto. Fundamental changes need to be made to the Municipal Elections Act to increase accountability and transparency, eliminate the gray areas that candidates systemically exploit, and better reflect the realities of big city elections. As the City of Toronto’s Auditor General reported following the 2006 election, 29 of 45 councillors broke election laws in one way or another. While we have only filed audit requests on the four councillors we believe gained a material advantage from Municipal Elections Act violations, we believe that the culture of non-compliance that was identified in 2006 remains today.

via Reform | Fair Elections Toronto.

Regardless of outcome, the audit process and legal proceedings are expected to drag out for quite some time.

feature — Comments Off on What we talk about when we talk about Jarvis
24
Jun 11

What we talk about when we talk about Jarvis

At yesterday’s meeting of the Public Works & Infrastructure Committee, while discussing Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong’s new bike plan, Councillor John Parker moved an amendment to kill the bike lanes on Jarvis Street.

Here’s the text of Parker’s amendment:

City Council rescind its decision related to the bicycle lanes on Jarvis Street.

via Agenda Item History – 2011.PW5.1.

Council will debate the item at the July council meeting. If approved by a majority of council, the lanes will be removed.

No Justifiable Reason

I’m going to have lots to say about this over the coming weeks, but let’s get some stuff out of the way. First, the big one: as far as city planning, traffic engineering and economics go, there is seemingly no justifiable reason for removing the bike lanes on Jarvis.

The city’s own numbers tell the story. Since the lanes were installed, traffic levels for cars has remained at the same level as previous. Travel times increased by about two minutes in the morning, and three to five minutes in the afternoon. If that latter figure seems a tad high, staff agree, and are taking steps to correct it:

Much of the increased travel time could be attributed to the delays and queues experienced at the Jarvis Street/Gerrard Street East intersection, particularly in the northbound direction during the p.m. peak period.

The introduction of an advanced left turn phase in the northbound direction at this intersection, scheduled this summer, will reduce the delays at this intersection and the overall travel times between Queen Street East and Charles Street East.

via Bikeway network — 2011 Update. (pg 17)

Most notable, however, is that the total number of vehicles (cars + bikes) using the road in both directions during daily peak eight hour periods increased from approximately 13,290 to 14,180 after the installation of the lanes. 100% of this increase comes from bikes.

In other words: a $63,000 one-time investment in infrastructure increased the daily utility of a Toronto roadway by about 7%. That’s an incredible value-to-dollar ratio.

This isn’t some hippie pinko gut-based opinion. This is black-and-white fact. The Jarvis Street bike lanes aren’t preventing people from moving through the city. They’re enabling people to move through the city.

Let’s ignore cyclists in this debate

But, on this issue, we might be best to ignore cyclists. I have a very real concern that if we let this debate spiral into the same tired car-versus-bike war we’ve seen a dozen times before, bikes will lose. And lose bad.

Rob Ford car-friendliness isn’t just a part of his character. It turns out it’s also what drives some of his most bedrock support. In a post at OpenFile yesterday, John Michael McGrath took a look at an academic paper by doctoral candidate Zack Taylor at UofT, which laid out the strong correlation between people who commute by automobile to work and those that supported the mayor:

The other strong predictor in Taylor’s paper was car ownership and use. No surprise, the man who ran against “the war on the car” picked up the support of Toronto’s most car-dependent areas. “Toronto isn’t the only place you’re seeing this happen. Once you own a car, once you experience the street as a car—a car driver—you experience anything that impedes you as an annoyance,” says Taylor.

via Why suburban motorists voted for Ford, and why this is news | OpenFile.

If the Jarvis lanes are simply held up as a key battleground in the ever-ongoing war between cars and bikes in the city, Rob Ford likely still has enough clout on council and enough popular support to kill the lanes. It’s as simple as that.

You bike guys had your way with the previous council, they’ll say, but things are different now. We have to give the people what they want.

What Jarvis Street means

Jarvis Street was, for much of Toronto’s history, a place for Toronto’s well-off. One of the richest thoroughfares in the city, it was lined with trees and huge mansion homes setback from the roadway. To illustrate, BlogTO’s Derek Flack compiled a beautiful-then-sad series of images that sets the scene.

Spacing’s Shawn Micallef described the old Jarvis in an Eye Weekly column as “once the most beautiful street in Toronto” that “has been reverse-gentrified and turned into a fat arterial traffic pipe between North Toronto and downtown.”

The widening of Jarvis street and the installation of a reversible centre lane — one that flowed south in the morning and north in the evening — immediately changed the character of the roadway.

During the first debate over what to do with Jarvis, a local resident told the National Post’s Allison Haines that “many consider Jarvis Street to be a freeway and it’s not – it’s a downtown city street.”

Yes, Jarvis is a downtown city street. It’s a street with numerous homes — and more coming, with a recent condo proposal for the once-thought-uninhabitale Dundas intersection — businesses and institutions. The National Ballet School calls the northern part of Jarvis Street home, as does a public high school and a large downtown Toronto park and conservatory.

The Jarvis bike lanes were not part of the original plan to revitalize Jarvis Street. The thought was to instead improve the pedestrian realm with wide sidewalks and landscaping. The idea was that the street would look like this:

 

via Jarvis Street Streetscape Improvements Class Environmental Assessment Study (2009) pg 13

That may have been a better option in the long-term than what we got — further improvements to the streetscape on Jarvis seem to have stalled out after the bike lanes were installed — but the two approaches carry one thing in common: both called for the removal of the reversible fifth lane.

Removing that lane under any context was a huge win for Jarvis Street.

It’s unclear at this point whether Parker’s motion means that the fifth lane will be reinstalled if council approves his amendment, but it is important that councillors understand that Jarvis Street about far more than just travel times. It is a downtown city street with all that entails: a place for people to live, learn and work.

Any further discussion about what to do with Jarvis must take that into account. It is not and should never be again thought of as a mere urban arterial, where speed is king, and nothing else matters. Not only does that sort of argument shortchange the growing number of people who call the area home, it also ignores the huge economic impact a revitalized Jarvis could have.

feature — Comments Off on Scenarios wherein the mayor is not a homophobe
23
Jun 11

Scenarios wherein the mayor is not a homophobe

So Rob Ford confirmed yesterday that he will not be marching in this year’s Pride parade due to a previous commitment to be at the cottage with his family on the long weekend. This comes on the heels of the mayor’s conspicuous absence at a string of Pride- and LGBT-related events, some of which took place within shouting distance of his office at City Hall.

This will be the first time a Toronto mayor has missed the parade in more than a decade. June Rowlands was the last Toronto mayor to not march.

And, sure, if he was missing the parade but had committed to make an appearance at another Pride event, I’d cut him some slack. It’s nice to be out of town for the Canada Day weekend. But it is impossible to separate the mayor’s refusal to attend the Pride parade with his continued and apparently deliberate snubbing of any event put on by the LGBT community.

Is the mayor homophobic? He’s making it difficult to conclude otherwise. Not only does his voting record include bombshells like voting against accepting provincial money for HIV screening programs and hanging banners for the International AIDS Conference, he has also expressed support for “traditional marriage”, backed an anti-gay candidate in a council race, openly expressed the retrograde opinion that HIV is a gay disease and — this one bothers me the most — couldn’t be bothered to leave his office for twenty minutes to raise a flag on the roof of City Hall for Parents & Friends of Lesbians and Gays alongside the General Manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

It’s a lot to take in, and the mental gymnastics necessary to avoid landing on “backwards homophobe” are daunting. But we — the collective we — hate labels, naturally, so let’s try. Let’s try and come up with scenarios where the mayor is not a homophobe.

Scenario #1: This is all just a big misunderstanding

You know how it is. Sometimes you’re just going about your duties as a politician in Toronto and one thing leads to another and — through no fault of your own — suddenly people are calling you a homophobe. And, yes, you can see how some might come to that conclusion but really it’s just a big misunderstanding.

Put it this way: Maybe Rob Ford and the LGBT community are like the principal characters in the John Cusack romantic comedy Serendipity. They’re meant to be together — they yearn to be together — but a series of unfortunate coincidences keeps them apart. Eventually, though, after years of confusion and near-miss chance encounters, they’ll meet in a park with falling snow and kiss and kiss and kiss.

Let’s give the mayor the benefit of the doubt. Maybe there is a remote possibility that his schedule has just not allowed him to attend events like the aforementioned PFLAG flag raising or the “Proud of Toronto” event or the coming reading of the Pride proclamation. You might find that hard to believe considering that, within only the last couple of months, the mayor has found time to attend events as varied as McHappy Day celebrations, an ice cream party thrown by Ivanka Trump and the grand opening of the studios for the Sun News Network. He’s also continued to find time to coach high school football in Etobicoke.

So, yes, hard to believe. But stranger things have happened.

Scenario #2: The mayor buys into the Post-Mo theory so whole-heartedly that he sees no reason to attend Pride-related events

Bear with me on this one, as it sort of hinges on the mayor being a bit of an intellectual who reads alt-weekly newspapers. But let’s consider that Rob Ford read Paul Aguirre-Livingston’s “Dawn of the New Gay” cover story in The Grid a couple of weeks back and has now fully embraced the notion that Toronto has moved past all this LGBT stuff and Pride is an unnecessary relic; a boozed-up and needlessly decadent spectacle that’s no longer politically relevant. The struggle is over.

Sure, this requires ignoring that gay bashing hate crimes still happen in Toronto. And that GTA area publicly-funded school boards are banning both Gay-Straight Alliances and, seriously, rainbows. And that local commenters are currently flooding newspaper comment boards with anti-gay slurs in support of the mayor’s decision to go to his cottage. But still. Let’s chalk that kind of thing up to omelettes and eggs.

Maybe Rob Ford is a visionary. Ahead of the curve. Maybe what he’s saying is that all of us — gay, straight, whatever — should head to their cottages during Pride, celebrating inclusivity with collective exclusivity. Let’s be together alone.

Note that some of you — especially those that are not savvy enough to hold stake in a multi-million dollar family business — will have to go to cottages in your imagination.

Scenario #3: Something about secret agents and robots

I won’t bore with you the details but consider for a minute that the mayor is currently leading a double life, spending half his time undercover working against rogue elements seeking to subvert the gay agenda….

Wait, no, this is dumb. No one will believe this.

I’m spent. I can’t justify these decisions Rob Ford has made, and it doesn’t make sense that the mayor of a city like Toronto — the Toronto I know — would make the choices he’s made. About the only thing I can say in his defence sincerely is that I think Ford is a man who doesn’t do well in situations that might be awkward and uncomfortable. He craves control and familiarity. These aren’t necessarily bad qualities for a person to have, but the way those qualities are influencing his behaviour as mayor are justifiably disappointing to a wide cross-section of the city he was elected to represent.

There’s nothing here to be proud of.

link — Comments Off on Does vote on public health nurses reveal the real Rob Ford?
22
Jun 11

Does vote on public health nurses reveal the real Rob Ford?

The Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale has more on Monday’s totally baffling Executive Committee decision to defer indefinitely a recommendation that the city accept, at no cost, two additional public health nurses, courtesy of the provincial government:

Council’s budget committee had recommended that the city accommodate the nurses by increasing the health budget by $170,000, all of which would come from the province. At Monday’s executive committee meeting, Ford asked, “How are we going to pay for these two public health nurses on an ongoing basis?”

Told by a health official that the provincial funding would continue on an ongoing basis, Ford said only, “I just want to defer this indefinitely, then.”

via Health minister criticizes Ford’s rejection of nurses – thestar.com.

Ontario Minister of Health Deb Matthews criticized the decision, noting that Toronto is the only municipality thus far to reject the province’s offer for more public health funding.

Despite sticking to a promise to record every vote made at City Council — including routine motions to provide extensions on speaking time — votes at Executive Committee are not recorded. So far, and to their credit, it’s been reported that Councillors Denzil Minnan-Wong, Mike Del Grande, Norm Kelly and Peter Milczyn voted against the mayor’s deferral motion.

Since Ford’s taken office, there’s been an effort to soften his image, portraying him less as a curmudgeon with extreme libertarian tendencies and more as a curmudgeon who, sure, is conservative but who also loves this city and if council would just join hands and work with the mayor maybe we’d all be better off.

But what if this vote — and his similar negative vote on a motion that saw the city accept $100,000 of provincial money for STI screening — reveals the real Rob Ford? Did voters really elect this mayor in the hopes that he would reject needed funds for things like public health, all in the name of ideology?

link — Comments Off on Executive committee moves to cut out the private sector
22
Jun 11

Executive committee moves to cut out the private sector

The Toronto Sun’s Sue-Ann Levy writes about a decision made by the Executive Committee on Monday following an amendment by Councillor Mike Del Grande:

[Del Grande] proposed that city officials start to phase out the capital loan guarantees once they expire — and not continue to roll them over again. He also suggested once the Waterfront’s Corus building sells and their $128 million outstanding loan is repaid, the maximum of capital loans given out be limited to $125 million in total. Both motions were approved by executive committee.

“We’re not in the business of providing loan guarantees,” Del Grande said. “It is not a core activity… simple as that.”

Added Mayor Rob Ford: “I don’t think we should be in the business of loaning money … we’re here to deliver services, I think that’s what banks are for, to loan money.”

via Toronto’s $449-million loan groan | Toronto & GTA | News | Toronto Sun.

Phasing out loan guarantees would impact the financial situation of institutions like the Evergreen Brickworks, Artscape Wychwood Barns, Ricoh Coliseum and, after 2020, BIXI.

Ford says that the city should not be in the business of loaning money which, actually, is true. The city shouldn’t and is not in the business of loaning money. What the city does is guarantee loans taken out by private companies. It’s like your parents cosigning your apartment lease when you were in college — they’re not giving you any money, but they’re on the hook if, for whatever reason, you skip town and stop paying your landlord.

That Ford and Del Grande are railing against this practice at the same time they have people working on a deal to get the private sector to pay for the Sheppard Subway is a massive contradiction. If the city isn’t going to provide capital loan assistance for a subway project, the prospects of such a plan actual coming to fruition are even dimmer than we thought.

feature — Comments Off on Ford’s transit plan: still unapproved, still lacking
21
Jun 11

Ford’s transit plan: still unapproved, still lacking

On Monday, Rob Ford’s Executive Committee briefly discussed the City Manager’s response to Councillor Janet Davis’ administrative inquiries regarding the mayor’s transit plan and the steps necessary to officially adopt his plan over the previously-approved — and started — Transit City plan.

You’ll recall that the City Manager confirmed in his response that “any agreements to implement the Memorandum [between the province and the city, regarding the new transit plan] will require Council approval.” That’s a requirement that Rob Ford has continued to ignore.

Still, Ford was defiant at the meeting, as reported by the Toronto Sun’s Don Peat:

“We’re working on [my transit plan], everyone is going to see it, everything is on track, pardon the pun,” Ford told reporters.

He dismissed Davis’ concern that his transit plan hasn’t been approved by council.

“I campaigned for close to a year, I was crystal clear that I want to build subways and that I was going to kill Transit City or Streetcar City or whatever you want to call it…the people spoke loud and clear.”

via Ford’s opponents try to block his transit plan | Toronto & GTA | News | Toronto Sun.

(For sanity’s sake, let’s just ignore the bit where the mayor seems to imply that things he perceives as popular don’t require council approval.)

While Ford did campaign for close to a year, his transit plan was not unveiled until his team released it via YouTube on September 7, 2010. A mere 48 days before election day.

Before the YouTube reveal, Ford’s comments on transit did tend to stick close to his “subways good, streetcars bad” position, but it was never a top-of-mind issue when he was campaigning. His supporters were, I’d argue, most moved by the “stop the gravy train” rhetoric. His other policy positions were background noise.

Ford’s anti-LRT position hinges on a number of incorrect assumptions. First, he wrongly believes that LRT as proposed with Transit City is synonymous with the city’s downtown streetcar network. It’s not. Second, he believes that LRT will inevitably remove road space used by vehicles. But it doesn’t. Transit City didn’t propose any loss of lanes for cars.

He also believes — and I think this is the prime motivator — that on-street LRT construction is inherently more disruptive to businesses and residents (In the campaign-era article I referred to above, he argued “Once you’re going underground you won’t affect the stores and the businesses as much as you did on St. Clair.”). Thus by avoiding on-street construction we avoid situations like we saw on St. Clair, where businesses suffered and children cried and so on.

But the mayor has never really understood that the St. Clair construction –and the recent project on Roncesvalles, for that matter — was about more than just installing a streetcar right-of-way. It was about street beautification, improving the pedestrian realm and doing necessary utility upgrades, among other things.

Now that construction for the coming Eglinton LRT has shifted underground along the length of the route — at a cost of two billion dollars — some of the same businesses Rob Ford would seek to protect by avoiding another St. Clair situation are actually complaining. Turns out they wanted the streetscape improvements they would have received with the original on-street LRT plan.

The Globe & Mail’s Josh O’Kane:

[The Eglinton light-rail line] was originally was originally planned to be a largely above-ground project, but this spring the province gave in to Mayor Rob Ford’s desire for underground transit, agreeing to fund $8.2-billion for the Eglinton line. Because it will be mostly dug by a tunnel-boring machine, there’ll be few disruptions on the ground. But at Tuesday’s meeting, there was concern that the underground project would mean no revitalization for the midtown artery.

“The street is a mess,” local business owner Arnold Rowe told The Globe. “We need improvement for pedestrian facilities … and the use of roadways.” He asked the city and provincial representatives at the meeting – TTC chairwoman Karen Stintz, Ontario Minister of Transportation Kathleen Wynne, Eglinton-Lawrence MPP Mike Colle and Ward 15 Councillor Josh Colle – if there were plans to work on the street itself as part of the project.

Mike Colle said that there no concrete plans, but that he hoped the launch of the rail line would mean the “reshaping, revitalizing, improving above ground – starting now.”

via Metrolinx seeks to calm anxieties over Eglinton LRT | The Globe and Mail. (Emphasis added.)

It should be noted that underground subway construction is no picnic for businesses and residents that live along the route. Stations still need to be constructed, and stations require on-street access.

feature — Comments Off on City Council Scorecard Update: Selling TCHC homes
21
Jun 11

City Council Scorecard Update: Selling TCHC homes

Toronto Council Scorecard

June 20, 2011 Update: Download (PDF) – Download (PNG) – Google Docs

Last week’s council meeting was light on major decisions, as some of the hyped-up media items (shark fin soup and a second NHL team, for example) were deferred without much debate. The only new addition to this month’s City Council Scorecard is the item regarding the sale of 22 TCHC homes.

New Votes

The vote added:

  • EX6.5 — As written, this vote referred only to the sale of 22 single-family homes owned by the TCHC, located mostly in downtown wards. Several of the houses are currently vacant, waiting very costly repairs. There was a lot of discussion as to how many of the homes listed are actually eligible for sale under various provincial and municipal regulations. Regardless, the debate council had on this item was only nominally about the listed homes. (Council has often sold TCHC properties in the past. Here’s an example from last summer.) Opposition councillors seemed more concerned with the precedent set by the sale — especially considering Case Ootes’ recommendation to sell another 900 homes — and the belief amongst Ford-allied councillors that selling properties represents a scaleable solution to Toronto’s housing problem. As such, even after speaking at length with concerns about the sale, several left-wing councillors — including Kristyn Wong-Tam, Sarah Doucette, John Filion and Glenn de Baearemaeker — ultimately supported the sale. Notably, Councillor Adam Vaughan drew some flack from the mayor’s team for sitting out the vote in protest.

Trend Watch

I didn’t deem it notable enough to include in the Scorecard, but a vote on an amendment moved by Councillor Raymond Cho on the same item was interesting. Defeated on a tie vote of 22-22, the amendment would “[urge] the Federal and Provincial governments to immediately fund an ongoing and sustainable social housing renovation and repair program so that social housing repair needs in Toronto are met and the backlog eliminiated. [sic]”

In other words: tell the provincial and federal governments that they’ve kind of screwed us over with this downloading-of-responsibilities thing.

Voting for it included the left-wing of council (minus Shelley Carroll, who missed the meeting due to an out-of-town funeral, and — oddly — Maria Augimeri), the ‘middle’ group of councillors, and Gloria Lindsay Luby and James Pasternak.

Questions

Questions about the Council Scorecard? Read my notes on methodology. Also, you can email me.

link — Comments Off on Public Health Nurses? No fun
20
Jun 11

Public Health Nurses? No fun

The Toronto Star kicked off the week with a bizarre article by Robyn Doolittle, grouping together a collection of existing city bylaws that Ford is seeking to repeal and positing that the ultimate outcome might be a city that’s more fun:

Toronto: The Town of No Fun. The City of Rules.

Well, that might be changing thanks to Rob Ford, “Mayor of Fun,” as Councillor Michael Thompson jokingly dubbed him during a recent interview.

Before Ford came to office in December, this was the city that sent you a bill for $60 on your birthday.

Since repealing that vehicle registration fee, the mayor has talked about scrapping numerous regulations, which critics of the previous city hall regime would claim represent a nanny-state mentality.

via Will Mayor Ford put some fun into rule-obsessed Toronto? – thestar.com.

Among other things, Doolittle lists the following as things that might get in the way of fun:

  • Vehicle Registration Fee
  • Rules against cutting down trees
  • Obstructing sidewalks
  • Ban on bottled water sales in city buildings
  • The five cent plastic bag fee

The city certainly has some bylaws in place that are too restrictive — the requirement to have a paid duty police officer at a neighbourhood barbecue, for example — but it seems quite the reach to equate Rob Ford’s lazy libertarian approach to government with any kind of policy that might lead to fun.

Rob Ford dismantles government because he dislikes government. Most of the restrictions Doolittle lists were put in place as environmental safeguards. If a more fun city is the end result of their elimination, it’s not by design. It’s just collateral.

Case in point: Soon after this article was published, Rob Ford’s Executive Committee voted to defer indefinitely item BU12.7. The small item would have made an net-zero adjustment to the 2011 Approved Operating Budget of Toronto Public Health to account for the addition of two permanent public health nurses, paid for entirely by the provincial Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.

Free nurses working in the city! No cost to the Toronto taxpayer! Not happening, says the Mayor. Because nurses and public health are, I guess, not fun.

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