link — Comments Off on Ford endorses federal party that offers nothing for Toronto
29
Apr 11

Ford endorses federal party that offers nothing for Toronto

Natalie Alcoba reports the only-a-little-surprising news that Rob Ford will officially endorse Stephen Harper at a Conservative Party rally in Brampton tonight:

Adrienne Batra, the Mayor’s press secretary, confirmed that he will be introducing the prime minister at a rally in Brampton.

“It’s coming down to the wire in terms of the election and the Conservative platform and the message that Prime Minister Harper has been giving, lower taxes, is very important to the City of Toronto, particularly on the corporate tax side. We need to create jobs here and have a competitive tax environment,” said Ms. Batra.

via Mayor Rob Ford to endorse Harper | Posted Toronto | National Post.

Two points:

First, it is more than a little insane that a mayor who threatened to campaign against the provincial government, should they not give in to his stated demands for more money, is now publicly supporting a federal party that has little-to-nothing in their platform about urban issues.

Second, I think it’s somewhat telling that this endorsement is taking place on a Friday night, two days before the election, at a party event outside of Toronto. This is something that’s largely meant to fly under the general public’s radar, energize the Conservative base in the 905 — who, anecdotally, seem crazy for Rob Ford and the “stop the gravy train” stuff — and keep the Fords in the good graces of the Conservative Party.

feature — Comments Off on Trash talk: debate is about process, not outcome
29
Apr 11

Trash talk: debate is about process, not outcome

Natalie Alcoba covers some of the reaction from councillors following last week’s executive committee meeting about the ongoing plan to privatize waste collection in the city. The meeting was marked by various theatrics. You probably read about them.

Councillor Josh Matlow does a good job of summing up the important parts of this ongoing debate:

“I can tell you that I need to be convinced that it would be a financially responsible move and it would see the savings that staff are suggesting,” said Councillor Josh Matlow, who represents the midtown ward of St. Paul’s.

“We’re hearing the different ideological perspectives but we’re all trying to get to the root of the question, which is are we moving in the direction of privatization because of remaining angst of the strike or is it a fiscally prudent decision that will support quality service or is it a bit of both?”

via Centrist councillors wary of trash proposal | Posted Toronto | National Post.

Privatized garbage pick-up became an inevitability the second Ford’s numbers came in on October 25. Of all the various things the mayor lays claim to have a mandate to do, this one is actually legit. People want this.

I get the ideological objection. I wish people would stop trying to tear union jobs down and instead try to build non-union jobs up. A race to the bottom on labour costs isn’t going to be good for anyone.

But privatized garbage collection doesn’t necessarily represent a titanic shift for this city. We can still be a good, progressive city, even with tendered trash.

Despite persistent needling from right-wingers like Sue-Ann Levy and Frances Nunziata, wading into a deep ideological debate about the modern role of the labour union and Toronto’s recent collective bargaining snafus will only serve to distract from the real issue: that this specific plan is starting to look like a shitty deal for this city.

The process is being rushed through at near-breakneck speed. Despite representing nearly a quarter billion dollars, the final contract won’t be approved by council before its signed. A bad deal signed now will only get worse when the contract comes up for renewal. By then, the city’s negotiating position will have been made weaker by the sale of trucks and collection equipment, making in-sourcing a more costly endeavour. As there are only a few vendors capable of servicing a large city like Toronto in the first place, competition will be limited.

If we are going to go down this road, let’s take the necessary care to do things the right way. Let’s examine our options with proper oversight. Let’s not let the spectre of an expiring labour contract force us into a deal that only looks good in the short-term.

feature — Comments Off on Our new city-building strategy: sell downtown
28
Apr 11

Our new city-building strategy: sell downtown

Let’s start with this: At the Toronto Standard, Ivor Tossell writes about the recent hullabaloo surrounding Team Ford’s comments on waterfront development:

There are a few undercurrents beneath this goofiness. One is the distinction between the city as a place that people visit, and a place that people live. Urbanists want to turn the Port Lands into a breathable (and maybe even breedable) habitat for those who enjoy city living. The middle of a city is a pretty good place to do that. The Fords seem to want downtown to be a fun destination for weekend visits.

via Castles in the Sand | Toronto News, Media, Art, Business, Technology, Fashion, Events.

Downtown as a place to visit versus a place to live. That’s a critical distinction. It brings to mind some of the arguments made by G20 apologists after the largest mass arrest in Canadian history. “Why would anyone go downtown on G20 weekend?” they asked, ignoring that for a hell of a lot of people — a growing number — they don’t go downtown, they live downtown.

Mayor Ford, himself an apologist for all things G20-related, echoed the argument in the immediate aftermath: “Personally, if you didn’t want to be down there, then you shouldn’t have been down there. I didn’t take my family out when there is a riot downtown.”

A place to visit versus a place to live.

Then there’s this: this week, the city’s public works committee voted to essentially kill an ambitious plan to build a pedestrian and cyclist bridge over the rail tracks at Fort York. This was a critically important piece of infrastructure for the thousands who have recently moved into the area. It also would have looked very cool.

Why kill it? Nominally, it’s because the bids for the project came in about four million dollars above the allocated budget. But Councillor David Shiner made his real reasoning known in a comment he made following the vote, as reported by the Toronto Sun’s Don Peat:

Building the bridge eliminates two future sources of cash, Shiner said.

He estimated 10 Ordnance St. — the property where the bridge’s centre columns would be placed — could fetch more than $50 million if sold, while the Wellington St. city-owned property where the bridge would start is worth around $20 million to $25 million.

via Pedestrian bridge to Fort York latest casualty of war on waste | Toronto & GTA | News | Toronto Sun.

Translation: why invest in public space and infrastructure when we could just sell it?

You would think that city politicians would have moved past the belief that Toronto’s downtown is little more than a destination. There’s more to our city centre than various weekend attractions and athletic events, things that you load up the car and take the kids to, stopping for dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory.

Downtown is neighbourhoods. Downtown is homes and families and community. Different from the suburbs, sure, but not so different that it should be tossed aside as some rogue other.

With the debate over the waterfront and now this recent killing of the Fort York bridge, we’re starting to see a political climate where the mayor and his allies can’t or won’t look beyond the immediate dollar signs that downtown property represents. They’ll skip out on public spaces in favour of private ones — canyons of condos.

And if those private developments end up choking all the life and character out of downtown neighbourhoods? No big deal. They’ll just find somewhere else to take the family on the weekend.

link — Comments Off on On public housing: why vouchers aren’t a quick fix
28
Apr 11

On public housing: why vouchers aren’t a quick fix

In this month’s Toronto Life, Brian Topp looks into the fall-out from the TCHC scandal and takes a broad look at alternative delivery models for public housing. On the mayor’s favourite magical cure-all fix — rent vouchers — Topp writes:

Instead of integrating the poor into mixed-income areas, vouchers have had the effect of concentrating them into pockets of sometimes grossly substandard private housing owned by neglectful landlords—the same kind of ghettoization the vouchers were designed to put an end to. Policing abuses would require teams of well trained and managed overseers, but program administrators (like those running the TCH) are the principal targets of populist right-wingers these days—their jobs are the ones pro-privatization types are keen to eliminate.

via Why selling off Toronto’s public housing is a bad idea | From the Print Edition | torontolife.com.

Topp concludes with the suggestion that a decentralized model for Toronto public housing administration could be more effective than the current situation, where TCHC is “one of the biggest landlords of any kind in North America.” There’s a lot of merit to that.

It’s worth mentioning that this is likely the kind of analysis and debate that we could have had in the wake of the spending scandal had the mayor followed the process and let this proceed to the audit committee. Instead, those with first-hand knowledge of the inner workings of the organization were forced to resign or were fired before they could be publicly questioned.

feature — Comments Off on Provincial money for Sheppard Subway derailed by Ford’s demands
26
Apr 11

Provincial money for Sheppard Subway derailed by Ford’s demands

On his site, Steve Munro looks into “The Mythical Private Sector Subway” and leads off with this tidbit:

Recently, I learned that Queen’s Park had offered $2b toward the Sheppard Subway provided that the Fords would allow the eastern part of Eglinton to remain on the surface, but this was turned down flat.  So intransigent is the Mayor on the subject of incursion by transit into road space that the possibility of substantial funding for his pet project was not an option worth embracing.

via The Mythical Private Sector Subway | Steve Munro.

Two billion dollars toward a Sheppard Subway extension would likely not have been enough to ‘complete’ the existing subway line with an extension to Scarborough Town Centre — TTC estimates pegged that cost at $3.6 billion this past fall — but it certainly would have put the city in a position where some kind of public-private partnership could have been workable.

Putting this in perspective, and assuming that Munro’s source is reliable, this means that the top transportation priority from this mayor is ensuring no transit vehicle ever runs on-street. He’d rather spend an unnecessary two billion extra dollars burying a line, even if it means denying a large number of transit riders access to new, high-capacity service.

A note on in-median LRT: A few weeks ago, Ivor Tossell wrote an article for the new Toronto Standard outlet, questioning the desirability of on-street LRT:

Transit City might have been a genuine boon to its neighbourhoods. But it gave every indication of being a lousy way to get across town.

For one thing, it’s slow. Advocates like the Toronto Environmental Alliance claim that, on average, Toronto’s street-level LRTs would be only slightly slower than subways. But these numbers, like Ford’s fundraising schemes for the Sheppard line, live in the gauzily optimistic land of theory.

via Transit City’s Dead! Long Live Transit! | Toronto Standard.

It’s all hypotheticals, but I’d point out that two things. First, that if speed is (or was) a major concern on the surface sections of the new LRTs, there are far cheaper ways to deal with those concerns: elevated sections over intersections, side-of-road operation, etc. Second, it’s important to separate inherent problems with infrastructure from potential issues with line operation. Put another way: if the TTC just plainly sucks at running on-street transit, we’re better to work with management to fix that problem than we are to simply bury all future projects.

From an open house consultation regarding the Eglinton LRT, here were the proposed operating speeds of the line as originally envisioned (as found on page 12):

Eglinton LRT Operating Speed

Munro also posted a number of other interesting transit-related articles over the holiday weekend. Check out “The Vanishing Eglinton Right-of-Way“, which notes an item on the Government Management Committee’s upcoming meeting agenda that would transfer land adjacent to Eglinton to Build Toronto for eventual sale. This would close the door forever on using this land for transit. Also fun –if totally nerdy — is “Reading the Fine Print” which breaks down the TTC’s capital and operating budgets.

link — Comments Off on Citizen voices silenced at city hall
23
Apr 11

Citizen voices silenced at city hall

On Wednesday, the mayor’s executive committee voted to adopt a staff recommendation that would eliminate eleven active citizen committees and formally dissolve ten others whose work has been deemed to be ended. (The item still has to be approved by council.)

The Globe & Mail’s Patrick White explains the opposition to the move, and quotes deputy mayor Doug Holyday’s rationale for cutting these committees:

Opponents portray the move as an attempt to blockade one of the few avenues unelected Torontonians have to influence municipal policy while the mayor’s allies see it as making good on election promises to streamline government.

“It’s a simple way of reducing bureaucracy,” said deputy mayor Doug Holyday. “There are many, many other ways for people to be heard at city hall without these committees.”

via Ford’s committee criticized for vote to cancel citizen panels – The Globe and Mail.

It should be noted that Doug Holyday pointed out the “many, many other ways for people to be heard at city hall” on the very same day that the executive committee reshuffled their agenda, forcing those who had come to city hall to speak against the elimination of city committees to wait for more than seven hours before getting an opportunity to depute.

And when the citizens in attendance did get a chance to speak, others in attendance reported that the councillors on the executive committee seemed uninterested in what they had to say.

Here’s how Daren “cityslikr” Foster at All Fired Up In the Big Smoke described the scene:

The reception most of the speakers received was perfunctory at best. The members of the Executive Committee asked few questions, most of their attention turned to making sure enough of them were present to maintain a quorum. I don’t believe Councillors Mammoliti (probably off figuring ways to defund Pride) or Shiner were ever in the room during deputations.

Councillor Kelly left early and Councillor Thompson, when he was present, spent most of it away from his chair talking to members of the press and the mayor’s staff. Citizen democracy wasn’t foremost in their minds.

via Citizens Not Wanted – All Fired Up In The Big Smoke.

To recap: Councillors argue that citizen committees are no longer necessary because citizens can speak directly to councillors via committee deputations and other mechanisms. Then those same councillors ignore the citizens who take the time to come to share their opinions.

feature — Comments Off on The upside to libertarian leadership: better food carts
20
Apr 11

The upside to libertarian leadership: better food carts

The Toronto Star’s David Rider:

Toronto’s “a la cart” street food pilot project is a failure that should be shut down immediately, say senior city staff who also urge council to consider expanding menu options for all food vendors.

The report to the executive committee, made public Wednesday, recommends that “the A La Cart Street Food Pilot project be discontinued immediately, prior to season three of the planned pilot project.”

via Shut down ethnic street food project, city staff urge – thestar.com.

When this program was proposed in 2008, then-councillor Rob Ford opposed it, saying “I would just open it up and let them sell anything…whatever they want to make money on.” While I guess you could spin that as a moment of prescient wisdom, the reality is that Ford consistently used the same high school libertarian rationale for his opposition to damn near everything council did over the last decade.

It just happened that, on this matter, he ended up being mostly right.

One of the weaknesses of the David Miller council was their tendency to over-engineer solutions to problems. The street food vending program that became A La Cart is one of the best examples of this — overly bureaucratic, inordinately complicated and generally just too innovative in a space where innovation wasn’t really necessary.

In this case, the simplified “let businesses do what they want” strategy is the correct one. For all his faults, Ford does understand that. It’s the broader application of the libertarian ideology (to, for example, the waterfront) that we have to worry about.

For the record, council gave broad support to the new program in 2008. Here’s how that vote went down, from the City Council minutes for December 1, 2 and 3 in 2008:

feature — Comments Off on “Vaughan amendment” wreaks havoc on city boards and agencies
18
Apr 11

“Vaughan amendment” wreaks havoc on city boards and agencies

Motion to Reconsider Item 2011.EX4.7
The recorded votes on Gloria Lindsay Luby’s motion to reconsider Adam Vaughan’s amendment. 29 votes were needed to re-open the item.

By most accounts — including mine –, council’s left-wing opposition won a major victory last week when they successfully passed an amendment to an Executive Committee motion that would have eliminated some council positions on several of the city’s boards and agencies. The amendment, moved by Adam Vaughan, called for a minimum membership of 11 on all such boards, including three members of council and one designate of the mayor. This passed 24-19, despite a Mammoliti thumbs down.

The victory was marked by a clerical error, as it was realized it applied far too broadly — to neighbourhood BIAs and arena boards other such things. Gloria Lindsay Luby moved that Council reconsider the amendment to fix the area, but Mammoliti again whipped the vote and her motion failed. (See above.)

And so today we have an unfortunate briefing note from staff relating to the matter, that attempts to make sense of the logistics of filling an incredible 319 newly-created positions on 107 of the city’s boards. Of these, 103 of the positions are to be filled by the mayor or his designates, 169 are to be councillors nominated by the striking committee and approved by council, and 47 are trapped in a mysterious void. No one is sure who is supposed to fill these positions, or how they should be appointed.

For his part, Mammoliti has been spinning this as a good thing. He told InsideToronto’s David Nickle that he is “certainly looking forward to sitting on the Dundas Square BIA,” which is not a thing that actually exists. There’s also something about ‘gravy googles’:

“I’m certainly looking forward to sitting on the Dundas Square BIA,” said Mammoliti. “So in an attempt by Vaughan to detract from the mayor’s agenda, I think he’s increased the value of the agenda.”

Mammoliti said “The gravy goggles will come on and we’ll wear them in the appointments we get on these other agencies, boards and commissions.”

via InsideToronto Article: Debate focuses on size of boards, councillor commitments.

I assume the gravy googles he refers to would be worn to identify and then eliminate gravy. They would probably not be goggles made of literal gravy. (Viscosity would be a problem, and also the optics.)

It’s challenging to determine reasons why councillors would vote against Luby’s motion to re-open the item and fix the mistake, aside from vindictiveness and spite. Appointing more than 300 new board members across the city certainly doesn’t fit with the mayor’s “small government” mandate.

link — Comments Off on No Waterfront Gravy
18
Apr 11

No Waterfront Gravy

John Lorinc has done a hell of a job staying on top of the Waterfront Toronto story since the mayor and his pals started their assault last week. His latest column at Spacing serves as an incredibly well-researched defence for the agency and its work:

The remarkable point about all this back channel maneuvering is that the target of their opprobrium, Waterfront Toronto, has been scrupulously, and sometimes frustratingly, transparent about the way it has gone about its business.

They consult relentlessly, follow regulatory procedures to the letter, expose their plans to extensive public and professional scrutiny, and rely on a meticulous approach to procurement, which is how they’ve attracted, in the past three years, developers with very deep pockets, including Houston-based Hines, one of the world’s largest real estate firms, with $23 billion in property assets.

Despite the mayor’s wearying rhetoric about sole-sourcing and respect for taxpayers, the brothers’ boundless contempt for public process and transparency continues to astonish, and stands in stark contrast to the way WT operates.

via LORINC: Let’s Play Ball with the Waterfront (Again)! « Spacing Toronto.

So well said.

link — Comments Off on Pride and Prejudice and Revisionist History
18
Apr 11

Pride and Prejudice and Revisionist History

Since last week’s announcement from Queers Against Israeli Apartment stating that they would not march in this year’s Pride parade, some have advanced the idea that we shouldn’t trust QuAIA or Pride because they pulled a tricky bait-and-switch last year, where Pride temporarily banned the controversial group, accepted the city’s money, then unbanned QuAIA and allowed them into the parade.

The National Post’s Matt Gurney is guilty of doing this an incredible THREE times over the course of the last week: here, here, and finally here.

Even the mayor is mistaken about the nature of the motion council adopted last year, as reported in My Town Crier by Kris Scheuer.

If the organization doesn’t participate, then Ford said that Pride Toronto can still get a city grant of about $125,000.

“Last year council agreed if they don’t (participate), they (Pride) will get their money after the parade. That’s what we agreed on,” the mayor said at an April 15 media scrum. “If (Queers Against Israeli Apartheid) does march in the parade (Pride) won’t get their money.”

via Funding fracas – TownNEWS – MyTownCrier.ca – the online home of Toronto’s Town Crier Group of Community Newspapers.

For the record, there is no such agreement in place. There never was. Council has never even considered a motion that would specifically ban QuAIA from the parade.

Two items came before council last year related to this issue, both moved by Giorgio Mammoliti. First, he attempted to ensure that Pride Toronto enforced the City of Toronto’s anti-discrimination policy if it wanted to continue to receive city funds. When that got punted to the executive committee and then ruled redundant after Pride announced they would tighten review standards for parade participants, Mammoliti later moved a second motion that made Pride’s funding contingent on their being compliant with the city’s anti-discrimination policy — the city would only deliver funds after the parade. This passed 36-1.

This is why the news last week that staff had ruled that the phrase ‘Israel Apartheid’ did not violate the anti-discrimination policy was so important. It makes the motion irrelevant, at least as far as QuAIA goes. Without adopting a new motion that explicitly bans QuAIA, Council has no grounds to deny Pride funding this year, even if the group does march.

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