The Real Waste at City Hall

Rob Ford and Karen Stintz, as drawn by Charles Schulz Neville Park.

Throughout the mayoral campaign and his first year in office, Rob Ford reminded anyone who would listened that it was all about waste. City Hall was filled with waste, he claimed, and he would be the one to look after it.

This language characterized his KPMG budget too. It was about finding 'efficiencies,' separating the nice-to-haves from the must-haves and making tough choices to move forward.

But the conversation was limited and the politics were small. The scope of Toronto's budget reform focused on how to cut services rather than the larger question of analyzing the structural relationships that give rise to the underlying issues. So while Ford had the public willingness to do a deep-dive in to how Toronto addresses its finances and the underlying issues, it was more Sue-Ann Levy than John Lorinc.

So it is with Toronto's transit plan. Ford was legitimately elected with a platform to re-visit Toronto's transit plan and specifically the poorly communicated Transit City plan. But instead of addressing the underlying flaws of Transit City- a lot of transfers and increased stress on the at-capacity Yonge-University-Spadina line- he decided to plow ahead with his completely unrealistic Sheppard line, accompanied by no funding and no transit experts who would support the idea.

And so The Mayor's office dithered on transit for a year, and Gordon Chong's much anticipated report was delayed multiple times before an optimistic version was released that still argued Sheppard was not feasible unless tolls, new parking charges or congestion taxes were introduced.

Of course, these suggestions were non-starters and Council's opposition fought to preserve the status quo, a vast improvement over the Mayor's crayola-planned underground.

It is rightly a triumph for Council's opposition; they effectively neutralized the uncompromising delusions of the Mayor to avoid a disastrous policy commitment.

But much like the other two big Mayoral defeats of the budget or the Port Lands, there's a bitter aftertaste to this victory. After all, it's all about preservation of existing policy, not progress. In this way, waste once again rears its ugly head, as the theme of this administration has become wasted opportunity.

In the aftermath of campaigning on criticism of the city's budget, planning and transit, Ford had the chance to lead a conversation of what Toronto has to do in order to achieve its goals. Of course, the populist and intellectually disinterested former Ward 2 councillor was never the man for that job.

Now it's up to Council to lead that conversation and assert its primacy beyond playing defense against a harmfully reactionary Mayor. Until then, in the glow of a historic victory, we have City Hall in the same place as the Mayor's disposition, stuck in arrested development.

Save Transit City: The Website

Between reducing service while increasing fares, assuming at least a $65 million charge for canceling Transit City while dismissing the number as 'fictitious', making the TTC an essential service at what might cost another $25 million a year and canceling the Finch LRT to plan a fanciful unicorn subway line along Sheppard, transit is screwed up in Toronto. 

It's something that Matt Elliott writes about in detail over at his blog today, and is a sentiment that has had an increased crescendo in recent weeks as more news comes out on the transit file. 

Following up on this is Joe Drew, a Firefox developer who put together the website savetransitcity.com. I sent Drew some questions by e-mail to further explain his website and where the conversation on transit needs to go:

Why is savetransitcity.com needed, and why now?
Transit City—and LRT in general—is the lowest-cost way of extending real rapid transit to the parts of Toronto that aren't served by the subway or the Scarborough RT. It's clear that Mayor Ford currently doesn't have any interest in reconsidering his cancellation of Transit City, but if there's one thing we can count on, it's that Mr. Ford listens to his constituents. 

We have to spread the word that the province had already paid for three full lines of rapid transit. The people who are left out of Mayor Ford's new plan—like those watching full buses pass them by on Finch West—are the people we need writing to (and calling) Mr. Ford. Spending three transit lines' worth of money on burying a single transit line makes no financial sense. 

And why now? I think the political and populous will is there now. $65 million, the price Mayor Ford imposed on Toronto by cancelling work already under way, is an awfully good motivator. I wish I'd started 
SaveTransitCity.com months ago, but I'm glad I started it now, because I think we can get real change now.

You announced your soft launch last night. What kind of response have you received?People are excited and very supportive. There are a lot of people who wanted to participate in the sort of action that I'm organizing. It takes a first mover to get something started, but once people start seeing flyers and posters around the city, I expect it to snowball.

There's been a lot of great feedback, too, and I'm going to implement most of that before going wider with my campaign. 

Why do you think Transit City failed to gain traction originally and how does this site fill that gap?
Transit City actually did have traction. The province had fully funded the construction of three lines, and in fact City Council voted in favour of Transit City three times, including (then-Councillor) Rob Ford.

I believe the current opposition stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of Transit City as being "just streetcars" and somehow related to the St. Clair West reconstruction project. I hope that Save Transit City clears up both of these misunderstandings as it develops. 

For the average person who won't see transit websites, how can they get connected with this information? 

This is one of the most important parts of Save Transit City. I'm creating (and helping and encouraging others to create) posters and flyers to be distributed around the city. They'll inform and engage; I 
want people waiting in the cold to know that there was going to be a better way before Transit City was cancelled. 

I want those who think Mayor Ford only helps the city's budget to know that he wasted $65 
million without even bringing it to council for a vote.

These posters and flyers, and the awareness they bring, will get the citizens of Toronto to contact their Councillor and Mayor Ford demanding that Transit City be reinstated.

Is the original transit city plan politically viable? Is a compromise plan needed? 

Today's City Council is not fundamentally different from the City Council who voted in favour of Transit City. We have to tell our Councillors that we want solutions soon. 

Everyone wants a subway near 
their home, but it will take billions more dollars and many decades to build subways everywhere, and the first phase of Transit City would have been completed before 2020. (Sheppard East would have opened in 2014!) Subways also require a significantly denser population to justify their increased cost, and outside of Toronto's core, that population density just isn't there.

Rapid transit doesn't just mean subways, and LRT provides great rapid transit at a fraction of the cost of subways. Transit City is the right plan for Toronto, and it's time for Torontonians to start demanding our 
representatives put Transit City back on track.

Council Snack (sized news)- Photoshop Edition

Reddit had lots of fun with its Ford photoshop challenge. 

City Hall may have banned council snacks for its elected officials, but that doesn't mean us plebians should suffer. So here are your City Hall (news) snacks for Day 2 of the November session:


The big news of the day is the information coming out on the previously announced layoffs. Sue-Ann Levy feels the elimination of 2,338 positions including 1,190 firings is overdue, citing the struggles in the auto sector and media over the past few years as a parallel. If you follow that logic, you probably don't read this blog anyway. For bonus fun, see if you can find the glaring error/typo in her article (which has been part of the article for far too long). 


These layoffs and vacancies will have a direct impact on service and that's particularly bad for a mayor who has promised to improve 'customer service' so much. When they change the dispatch target times for emergency personnel and have a looming crisis with a firefighter shortage you're prioritizing your numbers over reality (more on this later).


Now also might be a useful time to remind Rob Ford of his campaign promise for no layoffs. 


In response, Adam Vaughan said these cuts are entirely avoidable and represent voodoo economics being driven not by reality but ideology. 


The other big news of the day was the proposal for a private-public partnership on the Eglinton crosstown LRT. There would be no problem for that on the construction side, but this includes looking at the operational side too. That is, that a private company would run the Eglinton line while the TTC would be publicly run. This sounds like it would have a lot of problems (Same pricing? Tickets? How to transfer? What about standards for employees?) It might also be worth mentioning that Ford's top strategist and policy adviser argued on his personal blog during the campaign to sell the TTC entirely.


Late last night the Toronto Star's chairman announced via an editorial that the paper intends to lodge a complaint with the integrity commissioner for the mayor's refusal to include them on press briefings and notifications of conferences. As they should. The administration's Star freezeout is juvenile, embarrassing and wrong. In spite of this, the Star provides the best coverage of City Hall of the four dailies and good on them for it. 


At council there were some key items. Most notable was a late-night vote to sell Enwave, which passed handily. It's a profitable city-owned enterprise but it makes sense to sell it. It's well positioned for growth but is under-capitalized, making it a good opportunity for an outside investor. Additionally, further expansion could help with providing strong environmental options for downtown tower energy use. The debate for Toronto Hydro is a different story and that will come up in January. 


There was debate on the city's naming rights policy and there are significant changes to it. Most importantly, city staff have discretion for naming rights on contracts up to $500,000 whereas previously it was a tenth of that, $50,000. Little to no naming rights go for more than $500,000 so it looked like it was intended to be a way for the Mayor's office to take power from council by having 'staff' make all the decisions. 


But a motion from Paul Ainslie nixed that and likely unintentionally. His motion expands the policy to city agencies, boards and committees, meaning that they will eventually go to Council. We all know from Ainslie's Twitter account how much he loves corporate ads, so this has to be unintentional. But there were some bad items too. Adam Vaughan motions to not sell sponsorship targeted towards children (a position Public Health supports) and not selling naming rights on heritage properties both failed. 


Mary Margaret McMahon's motion to allow backyard hens was referred to the Licensing and Standards Committee meeting on January 25, where I'm guessing it will be voted down. Twitter produced many successful puns on the subject though.


Council also voted to support sideguards on trucks in principle. I say in principle because they have no authority on this. Rob Ford was one of three votes against. Ford was also one of three votes against another Lawrence Heights project vote. 


My vote for worst vote of the day goes to Denzil Minnan-Wong, who was the sole vote against receiving a petition from 20,000 people in support of arts funding. Voting against receiving a petition? What the fuck is that? 


I don't really give many hat tips to Speakers Frances Nunziata and John Parker because they have been aggressively partisan in their rulings and the former consistently loses control and or track of the meeting. But both rightly admonished Ford ally Giorgio Mammoliti for abusing points of order and unfairly berating staff for not producing a document on short notice (Layton was criticized for this yesterday). So good on them. 


And good on Giorgio Mammoliti (weird sentence is weird). After a couple councillors, particularly Gloria Lindsay Luby, worried that some street names might be 'too ethnic' for people to pronounce, Mammoliti hammered this argument. To paraphrase, he argued: This is who we are and if these people are part of our history then they deserve to be represented. Have trouble pronouncing their names? Then learn them. Failing that is a slap in the face to immigrants. 


I don't get to write this much so I will- right on, Giorgio.  


I don't follow the theatre community, but I'm told a big-name producer was in attendance this morning and is looking at doing a production based on City Hall, which is great theatre in and of itself. It sounds good if this is better than the reportedly lousy fringe plays produced on Ford this past summer. Goldsbie, Nicholas Hune-Brown and Cityslikr are all much bigger theatre buffs than myself and seemed excited.


Over at Reddit, the hivemind went to work on photoshopping our Worship in a thread that has more than 500 comments and the results are pretty great. I posted my favourites on Twitter, but here they are again. 

Rob Ford on not turning that dial

Following the results of a provincial election Rob Ford spoke with Metro Morning’s Matt Galloway this morning and insisted nothing had changed (Transcript from NOW here, CBC audio here).

In a way, Ford couldn’t say much. He couldn’t say that he really wanted Tim Hudak to win and dislikes that the balance of power is held by the New Democrats or that his relationship with Dalton McGuinty might now change. Instead, he fell back on his previous rhetoric, which is really the rhetoric of every radio interview he’s given for a year (see below for a word cloud of his topics).

He stuck with his $774 million number, insisted that cutting the $70 million vehicle registration tax was a savings to the city, that taxpayers wouldn’t be burdened with financing the Sheppard subway line and that the KPMG recommendations were efficiencies, not cuts.

So while the power dynamic at Queen’s Park has changed Ford’s rhetoric really hasn’t. To be fair, he mentioned TTC operating subsidies more in this interview than he has in the past but this was something Galloway specifically asked.

Savvy politicians are ones that are able to adapt to new and unique circumstances. They can read the changing situation, frame concerns into opportunities and use these skills to both govern and seek partnerships with others (other levels of government, businesses, community groups). Ford, however, is not one of these politicians.

Matt Galloway: Awesome Interviewer

As this interview and others shows, there’s little acknowledgement of the changes around him. He goes so far as to deny existing problems and his role in them, claiming that it’s factually incorrect that David Miller left him a surplus (he did).

All of this poses a problem for Toronto. The city is in a great place to have some real leverage at Queen’s Park. Negotiation of bills will be between a centrist and left-wing party that are both more predisposed to cities than the conservatives. Not only that, they’re parties that need to look to Toronto for electoral success; the Liberals to maintain their seats and the NDP for any future growth as the north and cities like Hamilton have as much representation as they’ll get. Bear in mind that when the NDP and Liberals last shared power federally, the “New Deal for Cities” was launched (and subsequently dismissed with the conservatives). In fact, it’s a project that Toronto-Centre MPP Glen Murray advocated before then as mayor of Winnipeg .

While there’s uncertainty as to what the new provincial alignment means for Toronto, that also means there’s opportunity. Will the NDP prioritize their promise to return TTC operating subsidies to 1990 levels? Will the Liberals say no to a restriction on TTC fare increases? How will they negotiate uploading? All of these questions are great chances for the mayor to work with the province, but they require the ability to seize opportunity, promote smart investment and facilitate negotiations. This is not the mayor’s strong suit and it’s not a place where Council can effectively work around him.

Later on in the interview Galloway changed gears and asked one of his trademark soft, personal questions that can yield insightful answers, “What do you love about Toronto”?

The mayor responded:

This is a great city. We’ve cleaned it up. There’s less graffiti than there was a year ago, it’s a cleaner city than there was a year ago.

He went on to say that the city has been cleaned up and connecting this to the idea of a ‘very, very prosperous year’ for the city (despite the supposed financial disaster).

The rhetoric is consistent, as Ford has always criticized graffiti. However, it’s unfortunate that Ford didn’t do something more with the moment. It was an opportunity presented by Galloway to say something more than the usual, to connect his personal experience of the city to a larger vision of what it can be. He could sell listeners on what that vision might be, get them to buy-in to the value of it like he will have to do with McGuinty and Howarth.

But he didn’t. He went with the talking points, the ones that got him elected, the same ones that have him at alarmingly low poll numbers. Without Ford’s style changing it’s unlikely Toronto will be able to realize the full potential of its new relationship with Queen’s Park.

Consistency can be admirable in a politician, but constancy is not. Sadly for Toronto, it’s a characteristic that inhibits capitalizing on opportunity and, in this case, limits a vision for the city to mere static.   

Pasternak Foolishly Supports Ford's Sheppard Folly

Most sensible people can agree that in the face of overwhelming evidence, it’s OK- perhaps even admirable- to change your mind. When the critics are proved right and you’re forced to alter your plans or argument, it’s time to look at the value of the original idea rather than doubling down and trying to plow through.

There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that the Sheppard subway extension is not the right idea. Current TTC Chief General Manager Gary Webster opposes the idea, transit expert and former TTC Chief General Manager David Gunn has called it ‘a joke’ and even Ford ally and current TTC Chair Karen Stintz has expressed reservations about the plan and the idea for Webster’s ouster.

The Toronto Environmental Alliance- not a pro-Ford source mind you- provides this handy map to quantify the impact of cancelling Transit City in favour of the underground Eglinton LRT and Sheppard subway extension:

Not only would Transit City serve more people overall (subways don’t serve ten times as many people as Ford claims), it would also connect more communities. Importantly, this would also mean the property values of these neighbourhoods  and overall business activity would increase, thus improving the city’s tax base. Transit City may not have been perfect, but it would serve more people for a better value.

In contrast, Sheppard lacks the density to support a subway extension. According to the Pembina Institute, subways require a density of 115-140 people per hectare to make them economically feasible. Sheppard currently has 68, slightly more than half of the minimum needed (LRTs require a density of 70 per hectare). Granted, this is expected to grow to 102 by 2031, but that’s still not meeting the requirement 20 years from now. It would mean 20 years of massive ongoing subsidies to a subway line that would bleed money from the rest of the system. Ridership on Sheppard is projected by Gunn as being 5,000 riders per hour and he claims 20,000 are needed as a starting base (other numbers suggest 10,000). Those missing 15,000 fares per hour would have to be subsidized by poorer service and overcrowding elsewhere.

Team Ford is a big fan of the free hand of the market giving the thumbs up or down to the value of ideas and products. So far, the Sheppard line has been a big thumbs-down. Ford went cap-in-hand to see Premier Dalton McGuinty today to ask for $650M allocated for the Eglinton LRT (a reserve for cost overruns) to be shifted to Sheppard. Of course, this is partially due to difficulties in attracting private partners for Sheppard. The idea here is to indicate to other partners such as the Federal government and private industry that the start-up capital is there to make it happen. After all, no one wants to take the first risk, particularly if they think it’s a bad idea and don’t have a safety net. So far, the market has responded, and it’s a deafening no to the Sheppard extension.

But that hasn’t stopped Team Ford. The Sheppard extension- which has had no public consultation (in contrast to campaign rhetoric)  and no council vote yet (despite what seemed to be a promise to Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne)- remains a priority. It is a foolish and wrong-headed priority, support for which normally wishy-washy uber-mushy councillor Josh Matlow has called ‘intellectually dishonest’. 

While it’s unsurprising that this hasn’t stopped Rob and Doug, a tweet from James Pasternak today stood out for its nonsense:

Pasternak is seen as a thoughtful conservative, as seen in his critique of the city’s buyout packages. But this statement is pathetic politicking and pandering of the first degree.

Pasternak prioritizes his own ward, which is to be expected and can be understood to an extent. But to do so in a way that completely ignores the volume of the distressed downtown Yonge-University-Spadina line (720,000 daily weekday passengers) and claims that the Sheppard Line, (47,000 daily weekday passengers) being connected is somehow more vital? That’s not thoughtful at all.

In fact, it’s stupid. It's exactly this kind of talk from reasonable councillors that shouldn't be tolerated and should be called out. There’s all sorts of other more vital priorities that could be done in more cost-effective ways. Additionally, as August Murphy-King points out, Transit City would have taken care of the Downsview to Yonge St. link too.

Pasternak won his ward with only 19% of the vote, largely on the name recognition of being a local school trustee. He could carve out a respectable role as a thoughtful and reasonable conservative on council, willing to consider and discuss the merits of various plans based on real numbers and expert advice. But in this moment, Pasternak has chosen the Fordian route.  His thought and consideration here- like Ford’s idea for the Sheppard extension- is dense.

Team Ford's Terrible July: A Review

Most people can probably agree July was not Team Ford's best month. But looking back on each day with some excepted for weekends or slow news days, it was exceptionally bad. Bad enough to affirm the most cynical views of what a Rob Ford mayoralty would look like-- filled with gaffes, spite, bad policy-making, juvenile taunts and divisiveness. 

Team Ford's July in all its glory is below:  

July 2: Giorgio Mammoliti videotapes Dyke March and alleges some people unfurled a QuAIA sign.

July 3: Rob Ford conspicuously absent from Pride Parade and any Pride Week event

July 4: Mammoliti says all Pride funding should be withdrawn because of QuAIA appearance

July 5: Former TTC manager David Gunn says TTC planning is heading off a cliff, calls Sheppard subway plan ‘a joke’.

July 6: Sue-Ann Levy furthers the sense there is tension between Team Ford and TTC Chair Karen Stintz by attacking her performance in a Toronto Sun column, suggesting she has to go.

July 8: KPMG releases their first core services report. It concludes 96% of services provided by Public Works and Infrastructure are essential. Other reports will suggest high numbers for essential services and point to libraries, pools, Riverdale and High Park farms, fluoridated water as areas that could legally be cut. 

July 11: Ford ally Denzil Minnan-Wong declares community consultation and surveys statistically invalid, irrelevant. 

July 12: Denzil Minnan-Wong moves up Jarvis bike lane debate by a day in a move that seems designed to avoid bike supporters showing up. They pack the chambers at 2:00 when debate starts anyway. Rob Ford votes against all community grants .

Denzil Minnan-Wong's pitches to cyclists were always awkward

July 13: In addition to voting down Jarvis bike lanes, Team Ford votes to not debate accepting provincial funding for two public health nurses (this includes Ford votes by Mushy Middle councillors Beradinetti, Moeser and Lindsay Luby). Rob Ford also votes against AIDS grants.

In the Toronto Standard, writer Ivor Tossell adds a new word to the Toronto political lexicon, ‘uncompetence’.

July 14: Ford loses a vote on implementing a stop light in a school zone (he was against). His team huddles in response, presumably over how the war on the car has continued.

On the radio, Doug Ford claims that the library system is bloated and that his area has more libraries than Tim Horton’s (there are 39 Tim’s and 13 libraries in Etobicoke).

July 15: Ford does a fact-allergic interview with John Oakley to spin the opposition to the KPMG reports coming at the standing committee meetings.

Marcus Gee, a Ford sympathizer during his campaign and to this point, writes a scathing critique of Ford’s budget numbers and mayoralty in the Globe and Mail.

July 17: Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler, the co-founder of Fair Elections Toronto, is allegedly threatened by Doug Ford who is one of the councillors his group has an outstanding audit request against. 

July 18: At the Public Works committee, Ford loyalists Mark Grimes, John Parker, David Shiner and Minnan-Wong vote against having the Medical Officer of Health report on what the implementation changes would mean and against comparing the savings in the KPMG report to priorities from the public consultations. 

July 19:  The news that left-leaning councillor Janet Davis was unanimously kicked out of a Civic Appointments meeting hits the media. Giorgio Mammoliti unironically calls her a bully.

July 20: Organized by Critical Mass, over 900 cyclists protest Jarvis bike lane removal by taking over the street.

Photo by Hyedie Hasimoto of bike protestors at City Hall. 

Also today, Fair Elections Toronto loses their audit application for the campaign finances of Giorgio Mammoliti, Doug Ford, James Pasternak, Michael Thompson and three losing candidates.

July 22: The Toronto Star and Globe and Mail report that Team Ford is looking to fire TTC head Gary Webster due to a lack of support for their Sheppard subway plan.

Meanwhile, Ford answers another softball-laced interview, this time from Stephen LeDrew, with misrepresentations and falsities. He then implores Ford Nation to come speak for five minutes at the Executive Committee meeting on July 28. 3 of the 169 speakers go on to support service cuts in the committee meeting.

July 26: Breaking the mainstream news after being posted on Facebook, Rob Ford allegedly gave a fellow driver the finger as she and her six-year-old daughter gave him a Mammolitieque thumbs down for speaking on his cell phone while driving.

More importantly on this day, Mushy Middle councillor Josh Colle essentially admits he was squeezed to vote against Jarvis bike lanes due to a hold Ford put on a development project in his ward. 

Discussing her criticism of potential library closures, Doug Ford engages in a war of words with Margaret Atwood, dismissing her as someone he doesn’t know, wouldn’t recognize on the street and doesn’t have standing to contribute to the debate as she didn’t run for office. 

July 27: Doug Ford ‘clarifies’ his Margaret Atwood comment by saying exactly the opposite of what he originally said.

Doug Ford in media scrum. Globe and Mail photo. 

July 28: Executive Committee Meeting begins at 9:30AM with a vote on limiting speakers’ time from five minutes to three minutes and deciding that the meeting will not be broken up into separate days. 344 people sign up to speak.

July 29: At 7:57AM after a wide array of creative, thoughtful and passionate deputants the Committee votes on moving forward all measures. Ford’s executive, including Mike Del Grande, Giorgio Mammoliti and Denzil Minnan-Wong dismiss the strong opposition as union supporters, a vocal minority and a ‘socialist party’.

July 31: Mercifully, the month finally ends. 

Ford at Executive Committee meeting. Carlos Osorio/Toronto Star