Ford For Toronto | A Broken City, A New Mayor, Crazy Antics

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03
Nov 11

Calling 911 three times because there was a sketch comic in your driveway

I generally try to stay away from the sideshow parts of this mayoralty and focus on policy and council dynamics, but, hell, no blog that purports to cover the day-to-day at Rob Ford’s City Hall would be complete without a mention of this. So here goes.

Rob Ford called 911 three times because there was a sketch comedian and camera crew in his driveway. This was widely regarded as a bad idea.

I thought Ed Keenan at The Grid and Ivor Tossell at The Toronto Standard had great takes on the calls, the fall-out, and all the twists and turns, including the bit where CBC reported that the mayor, over the course of his calls, said something along the lines of “You bitches, don’t you know who I am? I’m Rob Fucking Ford. The mayor of this city.” And then the part where Police Chief Bill Blair came to the mayor’s public defence, assuring us that he had hard the call, and that there was no use of the word “bitches.”

Looking back, the goal posts sure moved a lot over those five days. The mayor started the week thinking he’d get to celebrate a council victory with the contracting out of garbage collection west of Yonge. He ended it by finding vindication in the police chief’s confirmation that he did not, in fact, call a woman a bitch. (Though, admittedly, he did use a bit of profanity with her.)

There was some sputtering from would-be defenders of the mayor. They said this whole incident was because employees at the Toronto Police Service are biased against Rob Ford. They expressed great moral outrage that someone would approach a politician on their driveway in an attempt to get an interview. They suddenly had grave concerns about the length of time 911 takes to respond to calls. They did that thing where they referred to CBC and “my tax dollars” and flew into a rage.

And in all that, there were good points (a public figure’s right to privacy; 911 response times) and bad ones (any notion that bias against Ford played a role in this) but I just can’t get beyond this: if the mayor had just spent two minutes talking to the woman with the camera crew, giving her a few token comments, none of this would have happened. If he had, instead, retreated to his house, waited for the crew to leave, and then gone about his day, none of this would have happened.

In all the alternate-universe takes on this chain of events, the only one that comes out worse for the mayor is the one where he backs over Marg Delahunty with his mini-van.

Why this never mattered

The narrative of Rob Ford’s dwindling public support goes like this: a lot of people bought into the notion that there was a ton of waste at City Hall and Rob Ford was the guy to fight it. Once that story got bulldozed under the plodding reality of consultants and slow-burn service cuts, they started jumping ship. Hence, he’s the second most unpopular mayor of a major city in Canada.

An incident like this is never really going to move the needle. Either you’re a voter who has shown themselves willing to look beyond the mayor’s quirks of character — if it’s fair to call getting drunk at a hockey game and telling a woman she should get raped and shot ‘quirky’ — and support Rob Ford, or you’re not. The CBC’s original account of the situation — the one with the “bitches” — spread so far and so fast not just because it was salacious (and funny) but because it was believable. It fit the established Rob Ford we know.

The CBC’s screw-up

Much has been made of the CBC running with this story despite apparently having not heard the 911 tapes. Today at Torontoist, Mark Bourrie argues that the whole incident reflects so badly on the public broadcaster that it could contribute to a future push to reduce or eliminate funding. I think that might be overstating things.

But the CBC definitely made a mistake here, and I think it comes down to running unconfirmed quotes from the supposed 911 calls. I’m not sure who made that call, but it was the wrong one. Had CBC led off with a news story that reported only that the mayor had made repeated 911 calls, used profanity, and been rude toward the operators, that likely would have held up to scrutiny and still driven the page views.

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03
Nov 11

Sorry Mr. Budget Chief, Rob Ford doesn’t have a mandate for a ‘tough medicine’ budget

Writing for his pals at the Toronto Sun, here’s city budget chief and Scarborough councillor Mike Del Grande:

Our mayor was elected because voters perceived him as a simple guy, the peopleâ€™s mayor, who would clean up City Hall.

But last yearâ€™s election is clearly not over for news outlets like the Star and CBC.

Apparently they cannot stand to think changes in the way City Hall operates are imminent, and they will do all they can, not to offer any alternative, but to derail them, simply for the pleasure of saying, â€œI told you soâ€.

We have a â€œtough medicineâ€ budget coming and I expect more of the same conduct from them.

via Anti-Mayor Ford agenda is clear | Columnists | Opinion | Toronto Sun.

I praised Del Grande last week for taking the right stand on the shark fin soup issue. His vote came packaged with a nice speech that I thought showed a sincere commitment to the environment. I also praised the budget chief earlier this year when he took a bit of a stand — albeit by excusing himself, instead of voting ‘no’ — when his allies at council attempted to repeal a ban on the sale of bottled water at city facilities.

Unlike some Ford allies who seem driven by a gleeful desire to spitefully tear down all things associated with David Miller, Del Grande strikes me as a rather back-to-basics fiscal conservative. His attitude toward the 2012 budget has been relatively consistent: he thinks we should take the pain of significant cuts, fix the structural deficit, and move on from there.

I disagree with him, of course. Trying to fix a structural shortfall — one that we’ve had to deal with for more than a decade — in a single budget cycle is insane and also unnecessary. It’s insanely unnecessary. There’s no reason to do things this way.

But that’s my perspective. The budget chief has his. We disagree. That’s okay.

But here’s what gets me about his editorial, and it’s something I see from a lot of the crowd that still clings to the Rob Ford steamship: Rob Ford is not some paragon of austerity and old school conservative thinking. That wasn’t his platform last year and it doesn’t seem to be his position now. Instead, the mayor clings to some rather dubious magical thinking about gravy and how he’ll cut it and save us billions of dollars.

If Mike Del Grande wanted a mayor with a mandate to pass ‘tough medicine’ budgets, he should have run for the office himself. As much as he might want to project his principles onto the guy in the mayor’s chair, it doesn’t hold up. Because the guy in the mayor’s chair said there would be no cuts.

He assured us.

Del Grande’s Budget Notes

While we’re on the subject, Del Grande’s office recently posted some “budget notes in brief” on the councillor’s appropriately austere blog. They also were included in the fall newsletter.

I’d take issue with a couple of his points.

The first is the off-hand reference to capital debt “caused by the previous mayor’s spending.”Â Capital spending did increase over the David Miller years, but I would challenge people to look at that spending and identify high-ticket items that shouldn’t have been bought. Like it or not, this municipality bears responsibility for one of the largest transit systems in North America. Replacing end-of-life subway trains and streetcars, coupled with a continued emphasis on state of good repair projects after that incident where people died in a train crash, make for the brunt of our capital debt challenge.

Second, there’s the continued spectre of large property tax increases. Simplifying this complex budget debate down to alarmist concerns about 30+% tax increases is a dumb strategy. It just ends up making Del Grande and company look like they have no strategy, no ideas and no direction. The city has had years where they faced much larger opening pressures — bigger, yes, than $774 million — and council was able to find a way to balance them without double-digit increases in residential property tax rates.

Enough with the fear mongering. Show us your plan.

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01
Nov 11

Nothing noble about paying for your own office expenses

“Rob Ford buys golden business cards from family firm” is a tempting headline, but I’m going to be the model of restraint and come at this from a slightly different angle.

Let’s start here: third quarter office expenses for councillors and the mayor were posted this past Friday. Office expenses are mostly boring — all toner and Blackberrys — but there’s always a story or two that emerges after they get released. For this round, that story was this: Rob Ford bought some business cards.

On the surface, this shouldn’t be a big deal. Ford loves business cards. Handing out his card is the first thing he does when he meets someone. It’s like his super awkward version of the fist bump. And it even makes sense that he’d look to an outside printer for his stock of cards, as the city’s in-house business cards are kind of cheap looking.

But here’s the problem: When Rob Ford went to buy his business cards, he decided to buy them from Deco Labels. Deco Labels is the printing business started by his father. The mayor still has a title there, and when elected he said he would still be doing some work for the firm. A released version of his schedule from earlier this year showed him devoting full days to work at the company. So by buying these cards — a premium product with some nice gold embossing — Rob Ford essentially did business with himself.

That’s not a good idea.

Chris MacDonald at BusinessWeek dismissed Councillor Josh Matlow’s opinion that this incident amounts to a “perceived conflict of interest,” writing instead that, actually, it’s a “bona fide conflict of interest.” No bones about it: politicians should shy away from doing business with companies that they have a stake in.

Yesterday, of course, we got the requisite backtracking. Ford’s office told the Toronto Sun that the mayor will pony up the cash for the business cards out of his own pocket. And to really sweeten the deal, he’ll also pay for the newspaper subscriptions his office bought in April. (The mayor’s team gets them all, even the one whose reporters they won’t talk to.)

This is a ridiculous response that totally misses the point. There’s nothing noble about paying for office expenses out of your own pocket. All it demonstrates is that certain politicians are, in fact, rather wealthy and can afford to put their money forward for things that should rightly be provided by the organizations they work for. By holding this kind of thing up as virtuous, we’re aggrandizing personal wealth and turning it into a political tool.

Suddenly the candidate who inherited his father’s successful printing business is preferable to the other guy, who wasn’t so lucky. Because the first guy will be paying for his own damn staples while the second will be billing you, the taxpayer, for the cost.

This is, ultimately, a news item with a small price tag attached to it. A $1600 bill for mayoral business cards is not a thing that should be commanding our attention, especially when items like a broken transit plan and looming labour strife are bubbling under the surface, but there’s a troubling precedent here. Rob Ford may have respect for taxpayers, but how about respecting the rules in place to protect taxpayers from corruption and shady dealings?

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26
Oct 11

Council Scorecard Special: How your councillor voted on sharks & elephants

After months of squabbling, divisiveness and nail-bitingly close votes, Council found some consensus yesterday with a couple of items relating to sharks and elephants. The overwhelming margins on both votes prove that, while councillors stand divided on things like whether residents should have libraries to visit or late night buses to ride, they’re pretty damn united when it comes to animal protection.

The vote on banning the sale of shark fin was the bigger story, and the one that attracted more detractors from council’s libertarianish wing. (A wing that includes Rob Ford.) I enjoyed Corey Mintz’sÂ photos and commentary from the vote. I’d also like to highlight the speech given by Mike Del Grande — I’ll try to grab video –, which came as a passionate defence of laws and policies that protect endangered animals and showed a side of the councillor we tend not to see much of these days in Ford-dominated news cycles.

The elephant vote was a long time coming — read this Toronto Life article if you haven’t already–, and it’s heartening that it passed so swiftly. Aside from the obvious good-news-for-elephants angle, the only other story to emerge from the vote is an indication from Councillor Paul Ainslie that he may resign from the Zoo Board, as he feels the board was overruled and blindsided by this decision. No word yet on whether the other members of the board will be able to carry on without all the talent and knowledge Ainslie brings to the table.

Neither vote fits the parameters for inclusion on the City Council Scorecard — they don’t really relate to the mayor’s agenda in any meaningful way, and neither vote was whipped –, but I had enough people ask if I was going to include them that I decided to make a special chart for posterity’s sake. As a bonus, you get to see which councillors stuck it out until 11 p.m. last night to vote on the elephant item.

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26
Oct 11

What contracted out garbage means — and doesn’t mean

The Toronto Star’s Paul Moloney:

Starting next August, a private company will be collecting household garbage from 165,000 homes west of Yonge St. to the Humber River and from Lake Ontario to Steeles Ave.

The campaign promise of Mayor Rob Ford was fulfilled when city council voted 26-16 Monday to award the job to GFL Environmental East Corporation, of Pickering.

The company, which collects garbage in Hamilton and Oshawa-Whitby, beat out other competitors by offering to do the work for seven years at a $78.4 million saving, or about $11.2 million a year less than unionized city workers.

viaÂ City approves private garbage pickup | Toronto Star.

I don’t have a ton to write on this, as it is a relatively minor shift when compared to some of the other policy this administration has their collective eye on. But, given that the mayor is likely to highlight this “victory” in every speech he’ll make from now until the Leafs win the Stanley Cup, let’s spend a little bit of time talking about what contracted out garbage in District 2 means — and more importantly, doesn’t mean — to the city of Toronto.

It means risk: I wrote about this last week as well, but I don’t think council or staff did anywhere near their dueÂ diligenceÂ when it came time to vet this bid. It is such a suspiciously lowball bid that even GFL’s competitors were wondering how they managed to make their numbers work. And that’s where the risk comes in, because it’s entirely possible that the numbers won’t work, and the city will be left holding the bag — or bin — when GFL either goes bankrupt or simply decides they want out of the deal.
It doesn’t mean better service: Service quality is a bit of a question mark going forward. When he appeared with Josh Matlow on NewsTalk 1010, Public Works Chair Denzil Minnan-Wong would only commit to service bring provided at the same level as it is currently.
It doesn’t mean budgetary savings that can be used on things like libraries and transit: This is the point that will continuously get overlooked again and again, and it’s so critical. Waste collection falls under the city’s rate-based budget, which is separate from the operating budget. Homeowners cover their costs for trash collection through a user fee they pay on their City-issued utility bill. As a result, cheaper waste collection won’t ever mean that there extra funds for the city services that are currently being menaced by men with large knives. It also won’t mean lower property taxes, if that’s the kind of thing that makes you salivate. As far as the all-important taxpayer is concerned, the only fiscal impact as a result of this change might be a freeze or slight decrease in the annual cost of a garbage bin. A medium-sized bin costs less than $50 per year at current rates.

So what happens next? Hopefully very little of interest. Now that council has made this decision, I hope GFL does have a workable business plan that allows them to maintain current service levels at their proposed costs, and that, come next August, those west of Yonge Street don’t even realize that their waste is now being hauled away by people in different trucks, which I assume will be green in colour.

Ford often claims to have a mandate for various things stemming from his one-year-ago-yesterday mayoral win, and often I find such claims pretty damn dubious. On transit, for example — an issue that was shamefully kicked to the back of the bus during most debates so Ford and opponent George Smitherman could rant about waste — I find it hard to buy the notion that the mayor had a real mandate to immediately kill Transit City. But on this issue, his claim was more legitimate.

Setting aside ideology and academic notions about the role of public workers delivering public services, the 2009 garbage strike made a lot of voters really mad, and they channeled that anger into support for a mayoral candidate whoÂ continuouslyÂ promised that his plan to contract out would help avoid future lapses in service.

He’s done that now, at least partially, and expressed a desire to continue with the other districts. We’ll see how it goes.

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21
Oct 11

Police Budget 2012: How Bill Blair beat Rob Ford

Are you ready for some totally ridiculous math?

Check this out: The mayor has rather famously asked all departments to cut 10% from their operating budgets for 2012. This is a neat trick that, I guess, is supposed to let him deflect some of the blame for the inevitable service cuts that come from such a huge target. The request has made a lot of people unhappy.

For the police services — with a budget approaching a billion dollars per year — this request worked out to about $90 million in cost reductions. We know this is the case, because a report, the 2011 Environmental Scan, presented at this week’s police board meeting — the very same meeting at which the budget was passed — included this unambiguous sentence: “The city recommended 2012 operating budget target for the Toronto Police Service reflected an overall decrease of $84 million, about 10%, from the total 2011 approved budget.” (See Agenda Item 5; a straight-up 10% reduction totals $93 million, but the city probably accounted for some — but clearly not all — mitigating factors in its original request, to knock that down to $84 million.)

Okay, so the mayor wanted the chief to cut 10%. But the chief said he couldn’t do it. And of course he couldn’t: it was only a few months back that the mayor approved a giant pay increase for officers in this city. The police budget is more than 80% labour. You’re not going to make a Â dent in that without taking cops off the street.

Here’s where things get ridiculous: at this week’s meeting, the chief came forward with a budget request for $936 million. This is $5.9 million more than the 2011 budget, a 0.6% increase year-over-year. There is no reasonable way to present this as any kind of reduction, let alone 10%.

And yet, as the Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale tells us:

The 2011 police budget was $930 million. Blairâ€™s â€œstarting budgetâ€ added the $23 million in salary increases produced by this yearâ€™s collective agreement with officers, then added $26 million in other â€œpressures identified during 2011,â€ for a total of $979 million.

Using this figure, two Ford allies on the board, Thompson and council speaker Frances Nunziata, joined Blair in arguing that his $936 million budget request amounts to a $43 million cut â€” about 4.6 percentage points of the requested 10.

â€œItâ€™s a huge reduction,â€ Nunziata said.

viaÂ Blair wins: Ford poised to accept police budget hike | Toronto Star.

So, through the power of imagination — and uncompetent thinking — a 0.6% budgetary increase is now being touted as a 4.6% budgetary decrease.

I guess the lesson to be learned here for all city departments is to start high. Come in with a huge budgetary request for 2012. Then whittle it down a tad and claim mega savings. With imaginary money on the table, we can all be fiscal conservatives.

Why Blair’s strategy worked

Other departments are unlikely to get away with so blatantly side-stepping the mayor’s request for cost reductions, even though that request will undoubtedly mean major service cuts. Blair was able to pull this off because he put the mayor in a position where he would have to publicly endorse a reduction in the number of police officers in Toronto to achieve his target. There is no way that Ford was going to do that.

Still, it’s worth noting that this is a mayor who campaigned on adding one hundred officers but will likely end his term having taken many times that number off the streets through attrition and hiring freezes.

A caveat

There’s still a conversation that needs to be had about the cost of policing in this city relative to declining crime rates. There might be a better way forward. But that is not a conversation this administration seems capable of having.

“Bargain basement” garbage contract smells a bit fishy

The Globe & Mail’s John Lorinc:

A Pickering firm run by a former minor hockey league goalie has emerged as the recommended winning bidder on the cityâ€™s controversial garbage out-sourcing deal, city hall sources have confirmed.

An announcement is expected at a news conference scheduled for noon.

GFL Waste & Recycling Solutions was founded by Patrick Dovigi, a one-time Edmonton Oiler draft pick who formed the company in 2007 out of three smaller firms â€“ Direct Line Environmental, National Waste Services and Enviro West — that run several transfer stations and hauling operations.

The firm bid $17.5-million on a contract to provide residential waste collection west of Yonge Street, significantly undercutting three other large competitors, including Emterra Environmental ($23.9-million), Miller Waste Systems ($20.98-million) and Waste Management of Canada ($23.8-million and an alternate bid of $25.6-million).

viaÂ GFL winning bidder for Toronto garbage contract | Globe & Mail.

Via Twitter, the Toronto Sun’s Don Peat has reported that Councillor Gord Perks has expressed “serious concerns” about this contract, saying it represents a “below bargain basement price.”

A comparison between the announced figure and the numbers provided by staff (in the April report that kicked off this process) sure seem to back that assertion up. Green For Life is claiming they can pick up solid waste in District 2 — bordered by Etobicoke in the west and Yonge Street in the east — for $105 per household, or $95 per tonne. That’s comparatively less than what the current private contractor charges to pick up trash in Etobicoke. There, the costs work out to $119 per household and $103 per tonne. You can see the full comparison in the chart above.

I’m hardly an expert on solid waste collection, but I think it’s a safe assumption that solid waste collection in Etobicoke — with wide, suburban streets and leafy culs-de-sac — is a hell of a lot easier than it is in District 2, which includes a wide swath of downtown.

In another fun note, Lorinc also reports that the “the city’s recommended seven year contract offer to GFL is actually about $8-million more than what GFL initially bid, due to contingencies, HST recovery and cost of living allowances.” Those extra fees result in a contract that totals about $25.5 million a year, would seem to put the actual year-to-year savings of garbage privatization in District 2 at just under two million dollars.

So, some lingering questions to discuss:

Is GFL’s bid so low that it’s suspicious?
What is the city giving up — in terms of control and/or quality of service — to achieve potential overall savings that, reportedly, could only amount to $2 million per year in District 2?

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17
Oct 11

City Council Scorecard: How many library service hours will your councillor cut?

Update: The Library Board has decided to consider these reductions at their November meeting, which should allow time for both some kind of consultation process and, of course, a bunch of angry emails from residents.

At Torontoist, Steve Kupferman has got his hands on a document detailing proposed cuts to library service. Staff prepared the document as a response to Mayor Ford’s push to have all departments cut their budgets by 10% for 2012.

Rob Ford once claimed that closing a library on a Sunday would constitute a major service cut. To that end, it would sure seem crazy to try to pass off a reduction of 382 service hours a week as an “efficiency” or “adjustment.”

These cuts are being considered as I write this by an all-new library board, now chaired by steadfast Ford ally Paul Ainslie. If approved, they’ll ultimately go before council as part of the 2012 budget debate.

TPL staff were kind enough to group the proposed reductions by ward and councillor, which let me make this:

The full list, separated by branch, is available over at Torontoist.

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17
Oct 11

What they’re saying about Rob Ford in other municipalities

Come with me on a whirlwind tour of smallish Ontario community newspapers, as we look at their many and varied references to Toronto Mayor Rob Ford over the past month.

Ray Martin, Cambridge Times:

[Cambridge Mayor Doug] Craig said he will also report on the fiscal health of the city as it rolls out of the recession.
â€œI want people to know that we are in strong shape and our focus now is on creating jobs and building our economy,â€ he said.

Unlike Toronto, where Mayor Rob Ford is seeking to cut 10 per cent from his budget, Craig said Cambridge has already been there and done that thanks in large part due to the work of senior city staff.

viaÂ Mayor looks to big picture for city | Cambridge Times.

Chip Martin, London Free Press:

[London Mayor Joe Fontana] said an ongoing review is better and more comprehensive than the one-month quickie review of the budget last year before it was passed.

“And it’s better than what’s going on in Toronto,” he said, referring to the proposals for budget cuts there by the Rob Ford administration that is producing public outcry.

“We intend to engage the public once we’ve decided on a cut- and-add list,” Fontana promised.

viaÂ Itâ€™s open season | London Free Press.

Brian Holstein, Guelph Mercury:

We have seen it before: voters believed Rob Ford and his Toronto gravy train; Guelphites were led by mayoral hopeful Kate Quarrie to believe the deliberate mismanagement of the city budget. There was no mismanagement, and the only thing deliberate was unfounded fear. But the people believed, only to quickly find they had been duped.

viaÂ Smart meter-era bills can bring validation | Guelph Mercury.

Editorial Board, Simcoe.com:

Rob Fordâ€™s campaign for Mayor of Toronto is an example of a taxpayer-first tactic at work.
Ford promised â€˜taxpayersâ€™ that he would derail Torontoâ€™s gravy train, ending wasteful spending at city hall.

What Ford discovered once in the mayorâ€™s chair, however, was libraries, community grants, grass-cutting in parks, snow-plowing, neighbourhood zoos and child-care subsidies were not considered superfluous spending by citizens.

viaÂ Be a citizen | Simcoe.com.

John Kastner, Stratford Beacon-Herald:

Why is it when we talk cuts it’s always the things we hold most near and dear that are the first things rushed up to the sacrificial altar?

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has said the first tasks of his new financial regime will be to sell off theatres and zoos and cut back on snow-clearing and transit service.

Not sure how much that will save, but people will sure notice — and you almost get the impression that’s the plan.

Politicians aren’t really interested in cutting spending. The real goal is just to give that impression by picking the most visible targets possible.

viaÂ Hitting beloved services the unkindest cut of all | Stratford Beacon-Herald.

Mike Norris, Kingston Whig-Standard:

Madeleine Ross stands directly in front of [PC Candidate Rodger] James and expresses concern that the governments of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, a Conservative supporter, are making decisions with little public consultation. How can Ontarians be assured that Tim Hudak won’t do the same if elected, she asks.

viaÂ He’s all business | Kingston Whig-Standard.

Editorial Board, King Township-Sentinel:

Itâ€™s been wisely stated over the centuries that people should be careful when it comes for what they wish for, because they may get it.

We believe voters in the City of Toronto are getting a good lesson in that, and we hope it resonates as far as possible.

…

Mayor Rob Ford and company have called for an across-the-board 10 per cent budget cut from all departments at the City of Toronto. That includes police and fire (Toronto residents might want to bear that in mind the next time they have the urge to call 9- 1-1). Thereâ€™s no doubt that has a certain political appeal, but it sounds very simplistic to us. It could also result in a big mess that no one has yet thought through.

viaÂ Be careful about cutting programs | King Township Sentinel.

Geoff Zochodne, Oshawa Express:

The largest reaction of the night came when [PC Candidate Jerry] Ouellette made a jab about the NDP and their association with former Toronto Mayor David Miller. [NDP Candidate Mike] Shields fired back that heâ€™d rather be associated with Miller than with Rob Ford to raucous cheers.

viaÂ Candidates square off on the eve of an election | Oshawa Express.

Ronald Zajac, Brockville Recorder & Times:

[Brockville Councillor Mary Jean] McFall stressed she is not interested in a broad service-cutting exercise such as the one proposed by Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, but rather in looking for ways to deliver the same level of service â€“ or almost the same â€“ at less cost.

viaÂ Council gives lukewarm OK to service review | Brockville Recorder & Times.

Rob Ford was elected with more than 47% of the popular vote last year. Recent polls have put his approval rating at very low levels. He chose not to endorse any of the candidates in the recent provincial election. He has not said why.

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17
Oct 11

Catching Up: Provincial Election Fallout, TTC Customer Service, Library Cuts & Budget Blues

After nine months of episodic thrills — Public Housing Chicanery! Disappearing Bike Lanes! Marathon Meetings! A Waterfront Under Attack! — the loud political drama that has surrounded Mayor Rob Ford since he took office last year seemed to finally quiet down last week. The only thing to really come out of City Hall was a committee decision to ban the sale of Shark Fin. Which, sure, is a good thing, from what I can tell, but it’s hardly an issue rich with intrigue or nuance. It’s simply good news for sharks.

So I decided to take last week off from blogging.

But just because shark fins were the only major thing up for debate at City Hall doesn’t mean there weren’t rumblings of larger stories to come. Here are a few jumbled thoughts on the bigger stories from the past seven days.

Provincial Election Fallout

Ford did a mini media-tour on the morning after the provincial election, going so far as to stop by the CBC studios to speak to Metro Morning’s Matt Galloway. The results of the provincial election — a complete Tory shutout in Toronto — can realistically only be seen as a major defeat for the Fords and their agenda, but the mayor still came out with his own spin on things.

The National Post’s Natalie Alcoba:

Mr. Ford met with the three major party leaders during the campaign but did not endorse anyone. During the radio interview, the Mayor dismissed any suggestion the Progressive Conservativesâ€™ inability to crack through the 416 may have been a repudiation of his approach to balancing the books.

â€œNot at all. Last time I checked, we never had a seat, Tories never had a seat, my name was never on the ballotâ€¦ Iâ€™m getting a lot of support, people are saying stay the course,â€ said Mr. Ford. â€œIâ€™ve worked well with Mr. McGuinty. He helped us make the TTC an essential service and weâ€™re not going to have strikes anymoreâ€¦we have a great working relationship.â€

viaÂ Liberal minority government â€˜excellentâ€™ for Toronto: Rob Ford | National Post.

The spin is, of course, kind of lame, but there’s actually a bit of truth to what Ford’s saying: his October 2010 victory did hinge on the support he got from voters who wouldn’t describe themselves as conservative or even right-leaning.

He got that support because his major platform plank wasn’t conservative or right-leaning.

Here’s the thing about all that stop-the-gravy-train, spending-problem-not-a-revenue-problem stuff: it all rested on the premise that there wouldn’t be service cuts. Ford wasn’t preaching good, right-wing austerity and the elimination of social programs. He was calling for the status quo, only cheaper. People believed in that. They voted for that. But, in return, they got the same conservative, let’s-cut-everything governance they had roundly rejected in the past.

And that’s why the mayor is unpopular.

Improving customer service while cutting actual service

TTC Chair Karen Stintz announced a “customer service liaison panel” and an upcoming Town Hall meeting as the first step toward improving customer service on the TTC. This is incredibly boring news.

Steve Munro points out that trying to improve customer service while cuts are moving forward that would increase overcrowding on transit vehicles — thus providing worse service in general — seems kind of ridiculous:

What nobody mentioned is that most of these recommendations address problems of communication in a broad sense, but the report is silent about system management and service quality.

There has been no discussion of the service implications of the budget cuts beyond the general policy change in loading standards â€” we donâ€™t yet know which routes and time periods will be affected, or how much more crowded they will be.Â Chair Stintz stated that the proposed cuts, in detail, would be part of the budget process at the TTC and Council.

viaÂ More Icing, Less Cake (Updated) | Steve Munro.

I don’t think you need to have a big discussion to determine that riders don’t like it when their bus driver is rude, and that they especially don’t like when their bus driver is rude and their bus is late. Customer service suffers on the TTC when service itself suffers.

Major cuts to Library Service

While Ford took branch closures off the table — finally –, library cuts are still very much on the table for the 2012 budget. And they’re significant.

The Toronto Star’sÂ Raveena Aulakh:

Closing libraries was suggested by consultant KPMG some months ago. Ford backed down after an unprecedented public outcry led by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. But the mayor left the door open to a reduction in operating hours and other cuts.

Now the cuts are here:

â€¢An almost 30 per cent reduction in the number of hours that neighbourhood branches will be open on Sundays.

â€¢At least 25 neighbourhood branches losing some morning service from Monday to Saturday.

â€¢Nearly 20,000 fewer open hours from Monday to Saturday.

â€¢Two research and reference libraries will lose two mornings each.

â€¢A reduced acquisition budget, meaning more than 106,000 library items wonâ€™t now be bought.

viaÂ Toronto library services face cutbacks | Toronto Star.

In an edition of the National Post Political Panel from earlier this year, Post columnist Chris Selley noted that “Ford told the Post in a sit-down interview that closing a library on a Sunday, never mind entirely, constituted a major service cut in his mind.”

So: this would be a major service cut. Do you think Rob Ford will oppose these staff recommendations, which were made to meet his edict that departments reduce their budgets by 10%?

$774 million is wrong. So wrong. Incredibly wrong.

That $774 million figure — the purported budget shortfall for 2012 that leads us to apocalyptic budget scenarios and 35 per cent tax hikes — was always BS. This is continuously confirmed by reports coming from city staff, who can’t help but point out that there are significant revenues that have come in or will come in from the 2010 and 2011 budget years.

Here’s the latest, via The Star’s Paul Moloney:

In a report to the budget committee, finance staff project the tax windfall and cost cuts mean there will be a $139.3 million surplus left over at the end of this year. Thatâ€™s money that will make it easier to balance the 2012 budget.

The large surplus results in part from a hiring freeze and other cost-saving measures, but most comes from the higher tax haul.

via City headed for $140M surplus thanks to tax Ford wants to scrap | Toronto Star.

“City headed for $140M surplus thanks to tax Ford wants to scrap” is a great headline.

Ford’s allies were quick to dismiss this news, arguing that we shouldn’t use one-time funds to plug systemic budget issues. Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday told a group of his constituents that “We’ve got to make balancing the budget repeatable and accountable every single year without a provincial bailout or pulling a rabbit out of a magic hat.” The budget chief echoed that: “You should use one-time surplus money for one-time expenses. The problem for the city for a long time has been the use of one-time monies to balance the budget. We canâ€™t get back into that trap.”

And, yes, I suppose, in a perfect world we’d have budgets that balanced without prior-year surplus dollars, which would allow us to put the surplus dollars in reserves and save them for a rainy day. But we don’t live in that world. And the only alternative we’ve been shown so far to using these one-time funds to get us through 2012 is to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from programs that people seem to value a lot.

Ford For Toronto A Broken City, A New Mayor, Crazy Antics