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.

2012 Budget: The Day After

Photo: Deborah Baic/Globe and Mail

Yesterday the budget happened and it's tempting to paint it with all kinds of significance. It's the kind of day that creates an easy narrative of absolute heroes and villains, but it's important not to get too caught up in the moment and lose context; the budget is part of a greater process that represents evolution, not revolution. 


First of all, how it happened. Rookie Councillor Josh Colle introduced an omnibus cuts bill two hours into the proceedings that protects: the school based child care rent subsidy, child care centre programming, priority centre youth programs, ice rink funding, pool funding, CPIP community grants, funding to shelters, reverses user fees on children's, youth and older adult programming in priority centres, adds $5M to the TTC to limit route cuts and also protects mechanized leaf collection.  


The $15M worth of cuts this motion protects was most of the $19M council's opposition won in the end, and Colle was painted as a hero for his work. Much of this is deserved in part for his willingness to stand up and advocate for the motion in the face of strong opposition from Ford allies. Giorgio Mammoliti accused him of engineering the motion for 'pet projects,' (even though there was little of anything in his ward), Speaker Nunziata editorialized comments about Colle's Dad Mike, the MPP for Eglinton-Lawrence, John Parker accused him of not answering questions directly (which is true), and Doug Holyday lost his cool and accused him of horse-trading.


Colle, who has been an infrequent speaker in Council (which many have surmised is because of the Mayor's opposition to the Lawrence Heights project, just passed in November) handled his own quite admirably which only seemed to cause further frustration on the Mayor's team. 


While this moment surprised many City Hall watchers, myself included, it was in the works for a while, as David Rider reports in this excellent piece. From this piece it seems the left wing of the newbies in the mushy middle (McMahon, Bailao, Colle and Matlow) grew sick and tired of the budget process in December and sought to find ways to protect services. Working with the stalwarts on Council's left, they knew they would have to get two of Jaye Robinson, Michelle Berardinetti, Gary Crawford, Gloria Lindsay Luby and James Pasternak (in addition to the increasingly frustrated Chin Lee). 


It was the latter two who took the plunge. For Luby, mechanized leaf collection was a dealbreaker for her in Etobicoke and protecting it was necessary for her support. From Inside Toronto:


"'(Leaf collection), for me, was absolutely important. Some of the other services (included in the motion) were not, but, you know, if I get support for leaf collection, I have to support them," she said. "It is what it is, but we definitely did a good thing for the City of Toronto...I had one chap write and say 'you rock.' I don't often get that'


Pasternak was likely a tougher sell, as there were a series of less prominent cuts that had an impact on his ward. According to Rider's article, Robinson and Berardinetti were lobbying for Pasternak's support right until the end and even the mayor confronted him. Various staffers mentioned that the amount of pressure the likes of Pasternak were under from the Ford administration was unprecedented in their experience.   


While Colle was the public face of Council's middle to protect the cuts, Pasternak took the biggest leap behind the scenes to make that happen.


For Luby and Pasternak, it raises some interesting questions. On the one hand, they'll gain some credibility among their constituents for protecting services, which a CUPE poll released yesterday showed was the public will. On the other hand, the Ford administration has shown a spiteful streak that targets specific councillors (like Wong-Tam or Layton on the Jarvis bike lanes or Fort York bridge). Pasternak is now that much less likely (read: not at all) to get a plum mid-term appointment or library funds in his ward that he has sought and Luby could be given a tough time on routine requests for her ward at Etobicoke Community Council. The Ford Team will likely want to serve notice in some way that this kind of opposition is not appreciated. 


Politics is a zero sum game of power and leverage, and so while yesterday was empowering for Council (and the middle in particular), it is disempowering for the Mayor's office. As Royson James notes in his reaction to the budget, if this budget vote occurred at Queen's Park or Parliament, it would be a vote of no confidence. 


The Ford team has their spin, and there's a grain of truth in it. It is true that this is a mostly conservative budget. It has a property tax increase lower than the rate of inflation, so it's a decrease in real terms, it has less spending than last year (although more taxes and fees) and it puts away more than $100M for reserves, which is good. 


But everything in politics is relative to expectations and the parameters for the given situation, and in this respect the Ford Team was clobbered. Their body language and general loutishness showed it too, and Mayor Ford reverted to an animal analogy to describe council's opposition as dogs salivating at budget money (animal comparisons have not served him well in the past, as Giorgio Mammoliti could tell you). 


Ford has thus far used the mayor's bully pulpit effectively to demand deference from council and forward his agenda, but this will likely decrease. Already councillors have been questioning whether the Ford-proposed 10% sale of Toronto Hydro has the votes to go forward and now that Pasternak has untied himself from the Ford administration, his critical vote on any transit plan will be pursued in greater earnest. 


As Josh Colle told me (for The Grid) after the vote last night, this vote wasn't a palace coup. But the budget was something that shaped all sorts of relationships, from citizens responding to City Hall, to the diminished authority of the Mayor's office, to Colle becoming the subject of headline news to Pasternak being the unlikely hero of this sprawling epic.


For council's opposition, the budget was about preserving services they value. But more than preservation, the budget changed relationships, an understanding of the city and levels of trust in City Hall. So in that way, the budget changed the city in small ways, but the most important ones weren't contained within the document.  


Further Reading:
Matt Elliott at Ford For Toronto breaks down the votes like the mensch he is.

Edward Keenan provides his typically excellent analysis at The Grid. 


Neville Park provides a really nice personal response and round up of the day. Added bonus: excellent use of a meme. 


John McGrath does his thing at Openfile, which is his typically good thing.


Torontoist had a bunch of coverage as you would expect, and kudos to Hamutal Dotan for making that happen. 


Marcus Gee provides a different view on the meeting for the Globe, one which I disagree with. Sue-Ann Levy has similar arguments for the Sun, but doesn't argue as effectively (or reasonably), so don't bother there.  

The Budget Question and Answer Segment

So since this budget has been launched some people I run into have been asking me some general questions about it. It's easy to get details confused by hearing snippets in the news here and there, so if you need to catch up this question and answer segment with an imaginary Ford supporter is for you. 

So I heard about this budget and it doesn’t sound that bad. After all, with a few cuts the $774 million deficit is taken care of. That’s good right?

The $774 was never the real number, it was the opening budgetary pressure. As this Wellesely Institute chart shows, this opening pressure is similar to the number for each of the past five years. The difference is that the previous administration chose not to publicize the opening number because they didn’t want to alarm the public. This administration chose a different approach for strategic purposes.

From the Budget Committee via the Wellesley Institute Countdown to Zero Report

Well the Miller years used lots of scare tactics too, like threatening to mothball the Sheppard subway line.

OK, this ‘but Miller did it’ argument is pretty intellectually shallow. Weren’t those the tactics Ford decried in the campaign? Miller was wrong to use those tactics and so is Ford.  

But the point is, the Ford proposal balances the budget. We can all be proud of that.

I suppose. That’s a pretty low standard though; the city is legally required to balance its operating budget each year and has always done so.

OK, point taken. But the Mayor said he found $355 million in savings and efficiencies. That’s impressive.

It might be if it was true. The Mayor gets that number by adding up all his service cuts, layoffs, unfilled vacancies and projected budget adjustments. It’s the latter that is crucial. The ‘savings and efficiencies’- service cuts, really- total $88 million and the balance ($267 million) are adjustments to previous budget estimates.

That is, they aren’t real savings at all. They are either more accurate (downward) budget projections or service cuts.   

That sounds a bit different. But Ford inherited an awful mess and clearly he’s doing the best anyone can expect.

Rob Ford inherited a $346 million surplus from David Miller. As Edward Keenan explains nicely in this piece, Ford used the surplus last year to pass tax break goodies. He cancelled the $60 vehicle registration tax that generates $60 million, and froze property taxes and TTC fares. Since the latter two need to rise with inflation to have the same value, these were decreases in real terms. If those items rose with inflation and the VRT was kept, they would have generated $300 million over two budgets.

Not only that, but Ford is balancing this year’s budget with an extra $83 million leftover from last year’s surplus. What it adds up to is a healthy financial cushion that Miller had built up and Ford took advantage of in a one-time binge last year without planning for this year.

Put another way, Matt Elliott has a chart on the subject. Everyone likes pictures. 

Well at least Ford is making those necessary cuts that Miller was afraid to do. That takes courage and conviction.

Also keep in mind that thing about ‘no service cuts...guaranteed.’ To break that promise requires- how shall we say- moral flexibility. But further to the point, these cuts are not necessary. After inflation-level increases on property taxes and TTC fares the budget generates a $139 million surplus while the total cuts are $88 million. So Ford could keep his zero service cuts promise (aside from the Urban Affairs library) and still have a surplus to put in reserves.

OK, but Ford also promised to avoid touching those one time unsustainable surpluses to fund the city’s business, and that’s what he’s saying here.

It’s curious how he uses that argument to justify the service cuts he wants but neglected it when funding his tax cuts, isn’t it?

Oh, and in that same budget last year, Speaker Frances Nunziata was instructed by the Ford Team to forbid any mention of planning for this budget. So all of this ‘planning and prudence’ rhetoric is a bit rich.

Point taken. But the cuts aren’t all that bad. I mean earlier we were talking about closing libraries or bus routes full time and shutting down tons of wading pools, but it’s only a handful.

Ah yes, the ‘well this could have been worse’ argument, ably analyzed by Cityslikr over at his blog. First of all, I guess how bad the cuts are depends on who you are. If you’re a minimum wage worker who relies on the already crowded Dufferin and Finch buses you’ll be paying more for what will somehow be worse in time and crowding. That 'well this could have been worse' argument probably doesn't feel that great. Or if you live near one of those libraries that have 12 hours cut a week, that might be some quality time reading to your son or daughter that you lose. And while no libraries will be shut down like last year, 20,000 hours will be cut which is the equivalent to the 9 smallest libraries closing full-time. Not only that but there will be 150 fewer staff members compared to last year, a number that the chief librarian has referred to as unsafe for current programming levels. Or there’s the wheel trans service if you have dialysis, the wading and swimming pools, the nutrition programs that serve 14,049 kids, the drug prevention programs...

I get it, I get it. And my heart bleeds for all these cuts, it really does, but shouldn’t a lot of those be the province’s responsibility? I mean, we’re just doing what’s right for Toronto.

Yeah, that’s a fair argument to make. Things like certain pools should be covered by the school board and social programs like shelters for the homeless should be funded by the province. That’s a debate worth having. For now, I’d feel more comfortable maintaining those programs while negotiating with the province. Our primary responsibility is to our citizens, not our budget.

I wouldn’t quite phrase it that way, but agree to disagree. But one thing that really gets me going is this property tax hike. And the TTC too. This is awful, and I can’t believe Ford broke his promise.

Not quite- Ford never promised no tax increases. As Dylan Reid explained a couple years ago in a must-read Spacing article, property taxes are only an increase in real terms when they go above the rate of inflation. And 2.5% is a reasonable estimate for the rate (in fact last year was an unusually high 2.9%). As for the TTC fare increase, between labour, fuel and infrastructure maintenance, the TTC’s budget increases above the rate of inflation each year and this really can’t be controlled. A 10 cent fare increase just maintains the inflation rate and if we wanted flat fares we would have to triple the proposed TTC cuts. It’s unfortunate that service has to be cut while enacting a fare increase, and that’s something that I strongly disagree with. Based on this Grid interview with the TTC’s Chris Upfold, I’m guessing some TTC brass do too. 

Well I support the Ford layoffs. I mean, that’s something that’s long overdue. We have more employees than at amalgamation and a lot of them are deadwood. Good riddance.

Any large bureaucracy- including the private sector- has de-motivated or underused employees that could move on. But make no mistake, these layoffs will have an impact on service. In particular, the Fire department is already running behind expected times by two minutes, street cleaning will be impacted although that was a campaign priority of Ford and parks will see a dramatic reduction. For more, read Matt Elliott’s post debunking the idea that the city has an out-of-control employee count across the board. 

Well according to Ford’s presentation 54% of the growth since amalgamation belongs to Police, EMS and Fire. So there’s redundancies there.

It’s a lot harder than it seems. The fire department has dangerously low levels, with fewer employed than at amalgamation. EMS has increased their headcount by 150 the past 13 years but their response times are poor. The overwhelming amount of this growth has come from the police department (the budget has almost doubled in this time period), which Ford proved unable to cut this year. It’s with good reason too; the province mandates a certain level of police officers and provides money for each position. With 85% of the budget tied up in labour costs, it’s impossible to make a dent in the budget without impacting the front lines. When Bill Blair said he would have to fire 1,000 officers (just under 20% of the force) to meet Ford’s arbitrary 10% target, he wasn’t kidding.   

OK, but at least Ford is doing what he can. He leads by example, cutting his own office budget and all those silly little perks councillors get.

That’s true, he has cut his office budget. But when we get down to this level, it’s really just symbolism. It’s nice to take a close and critical eye at each budget line but with an operating budget close to $10 billion cutting snacks for councillors is pretty meaningless.

OK wiseguy, what bright ideas do you have?

Well Jack Diamond of Diamond + Schmitt Architects has a nice column in the Globe arguing for re-zoning parking lots to encourage better planning and improving economic development. It’s something that would give more developers more flexibility, make land more valuable and discourage car dependence (which also means decreasing congestion).

Toronto has a much lower rate for development charges than other areas $9,000 compared to $29,000 in Oakville, for instance. This is due to how the provincial formula is calculated which I’m going to investigate in a future piece, mainly because I don't get it. But it sounds like there’s room to change it there.

Also, that deluxe leaf pickup and windrow clearing sounds suspiciously like gravy.

But mainly, we need to look at alternative revenue sources in conjunction with the province, ensure they upload the services they promised to and push hard on 50/50 subsidies for TTC operations like we used to have.

OK, so let me get this straight. Rob Ford inherited a massive surplus last year, spent it all on tax cuts while not allowing people to talk about next year, has another smaller surplus this year that would still cover all services but insists on not touching it this time while having service cuts or eliminating entire programs for the TTC, libraries, the arts, programs for children, youth, seniors, the homeless, people with AIDS and HIV, 2300 fewer city workers, less street cleaning and snow clearing and dramatically decreased budgets to all city departments except the police and planning?

Um, yeah.

Where can I learn more about the budget and how can I participate?

The city website is a great place to start. This has all of the documents you need to go through.  In particular, make your way through the analyst notes on the 2012 operating budget.  If you want to compare to previous years, just change the year in the address bar.

Also, go to the budget meetings on Wednesday and Thursday at City Hall. There should be lots of people there from 9:30 AM- 9:30 PM both days. Sign up here by Tuesday at 4:00 to make a deputation by e-mailing the address in the top right. If you do so, direct your remarks towards Chin Lee, Michelle Berardinetti, Frank Di Giorgio and John Parker. These are the more moderate councillors who are relatively open-minded.

Also, follow the #topoli hashtag on Twitter, Matt Elliott’s blog Ford For Toronto, Cityslikr’s All Fired Up in the Big Smoke blog, the Openfile, Torontoist and Spacing coverage and the reporters from the four dailies. There’s some other great blogs and columns out there, but I can’t list everything.

Also, e-mail or call your councillor- you can find out who they are here. Ask them questions, develop a more informed opinion, offer suggestions. (You can check out how they vote by looking at Matt Elliott's awesome scorecard here.)  In particular, speak with councillors' Executive Assistants. They can offer really good suggestions for what you can do and any one of them worth their salt should get back within 24 hours. If you want to speak on specific issues within the budget, they can point you in the right direction. 

For particular issues, some councillors are more helpful than others. A quick rundown:

General budget questions: Shelley Carroll and Gord Perks probably have the best understanding of the budget's intricacies on Council. Both answer Twitter questions regularly (@shelleycarroll and @gordperks) and are approachable and accessible at City Hall. 

Arts: Recently swing vote Gloria Lindsay Luby introduced a 20,000 strong arts petition at council and Jaye Robinson (@jayerobinson), another crucial swing vote, is also a supporter. Most any defense of arts programs for council votes needs them behind it. 

Wading Pools and Pools: Swing votes Josh Matlow (@joshmatlow) and James Pasternak (@jamespasternak) were both vocal in support of funding for TDSB pools as trustees, Matlow saying that confronting the issue motivated him to run for council. 

Children's Nutrition Programs, other programs for children: Janet Davis (@janet_davis) and Kristyn Wong-Tam (@kristynwongtam) are both on top of these issues, Davis in particular. Josh Matlow and Michelle Berardinetti (@councillorMB) are the point people defending the Toronto Youth Cabinet. 

Libraries: Libraries will probably have a lot of changes in their reductions between now and the final budget. For now, library board member Jaye Robinson will play a key role. She's a defender of libraries and also a supporter of increased corporate sponsorship. 

TTC: This impacts pretty much everyone, so it makes sense to focus on your region. If you live in North York, tell swing vote James Pasternak how you feel about the Finch bus whereas if you live in midtown contact swing vote Josh Colle to discuss the Eglinton service. If you need background, get in touch with opposition Councillor Joe Mihevc, who I'm sure would be happy to share his thoughts on the TTC and who to speak to. 

Layoffs: Ask your local councillor how this will impact services in the area and what strategies are being used to maintain service. 

With that, I hope you understand the budget slightly better.  


More questions? Criticisms? Leave a comment. 

On Occupy Toronto and why Trust Matters

Like the financial system, democracy is predicated on trust in the institutions that serve it and the means by which they're expressed. For finance, that means that people trust banks to protect their money, banks trust each other to reconcile their massive overnight lending, and we all take a leap of faith that money- the tool by which this is expressed- means something.

It's a complicated relationship, one that's easy to take for granted until no one trusts Lehman Brothers or the Icelandic Krona.

And trust is at the root of our democracy, the root of any institution really. It's this characteristic that enables us to defer to authority and consent to be governed. Unfortunately, the public's lack of trust in the Ford administration- and rightly so- erodes the confidence in that institution.

This problem came up today at the City Hall press conference to discuss that confluence of financial and democratic trust, Occupy Toronto's protest at St. James Park.

The story will lead all the papers and trending topics on Twitter, but the Mayor was otherwise occupied and did not speak about it. Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday did an admirable job filling in for the mayor; despite his politics he is a genuine, genial and honest individual and the right replacement for a sensitive subject.

It's a problem that Ford, who often invokes his authority as the elected Mayor, declined to take ownership of an important decision. It's a problem that he wouldn't express himself while limiting the expression of the Occupiers. It's a problem that Holyday cites 'social workers' as the city staff who have had a dialogue with Occupiers, because that misses the point.

It's pretty disrespectful of the Mayor, to both the Occupiers and general citizens. A case can be made that the Occupiers should be moved-Sue-Ann will take care of that- but one can't be made that he should have been there to answer questions. Instead his absence distanced himself from justifying the decision and alienated himself from the democratic process.

The Occupy movement, whatever its flaws and limits may be, is largely built on a mistrust of institutions and the imbalanced power structure provided. It's something we see at City Hall too, where the Mayor's own people don't trust him to speak about the subject and decline the opportunity to build a personal case for why he feels eviction is unfortunate but necessary.

And so confidence in our Mayor erodes once again, but hopefully not the office. We need something to trust, something to believe in, something around which we can build.

We can dislike the Mayor and his actions, but Democracy is too big to fail. So we reform the institution of City Hall with higher expectations, increased vigilance and good ideas. If that can't be done than the currency of our citizenship is further devalued until our democratic deficit becomes a bankruptcy.

Extended Analogy Day: Sports Edition

I meant to post this yesterday to go with the Analogy Day themed posts...but I didn’t.

I previously posted on the business analogy with City Hall, and I still think it’s very flawed, but let’s look at two of our mayor’s passions to put it in terms that might relate to him: sports and business.

Mayor Ford is more of a football guy, but I think the appropriate analogy here is to the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays of Major League Baseball. And he did leadoff his Empire Club speech with a baseball analogy, so this probably isn’t too far off-base.

Vince Naimoli Era

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays (who would later drop Devil from their name) were an expansion baseball franchise in 1998 owned by Vince Naimoli (read more in Jonah Keri’s book The Extra 2%). Naimoli was a successful local businessman who made his fortune as a turnaround specialist. What he would do is buy failing companies and slash every expense possible until they were profitable. He was very good at this and subsequently applied this approach to his baseball team.

The thing is, a baseball team is not a utility company. A lot of the success of the team from a business perspective comes from ensuring a positive fan experience. Naimoli didn’t appreciate this. Instead, he pursued his mission of cost-cutting with single-minded intensity. These included:

• ·         Having a zero tolerance policy for outside food in the stadium. When an elderly woman was denied entrance because she needed almonds for her diabetes, she had to wait outside the stadium until after the game to leave with her tour group
• ·         A high school band that was scheduled to play the national anthem was asked at the last minute to pay for tickets for each student
• ·         Naimoli thought the Internet and e-mail was a fad, and refused to pay for it for team staff. This meant that they had to setup their own access and the sales and marketing team was reaching out to groups from Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL addresses.

This penny-pinching and thriftiness alienated fans and local businesses, who did not want to be a part of the team culture. For Naimoli, it was just business; he is renowned nationally for his philanthropy and giving nature. 

Likewise, Rob Ford is noted for helping others out of pocket and genuinely caring. But this approach is disconnected from how people are treated at City Hall. Consider the parallels:

• ·         At the first all-nighter Executive meeting, a mobility-impaired woman was denied her speaking slot when she didn’t have enough time to get from the overflow room to the main room.
• ·         Ford has consistently railed against the 25,000 free metropasses that are given out, many of them to TTC employees who use them to get to work and people who are blind or otherwise cannot get around the city.
• ·         Despite promising to use better metrics to improve service for citizens, Ford and his allies voted to stop expanding 311.

Naimoli wasn’t just a spendthrift. At times, he got impatient with the time it takes to build a team and abandoned a youth plan to overspend on over-the-hill players. These were unwise investments motivated by a desie to have something shiny rather than something good. In turn, the team cut back on investing in the future and gave up draft picks and prospects.

Likewise, Rob Ford abandoned the paid-for and planned Transit City plan in order to pursue the white elephant Sheppard extension that could well be one of the worst financial and planning disasters in Toronto’s history in the odd chance it gets built. He and his brother also tried to sell off the Port Lands for a shiny Ferris wheel, monorail and megamall. And now there’s an attempt to solve capital problems by selling 10% of the dividend-returning Toronto Hydro. All of these decisions are short on analytical thinking and borne out of impatience and impulsiveness.

While Naimoli was owner, the Devil Rays were the laughingstock of the league. They couldn’t do anything right and had historically bad seasons. That all changed when a couple of Wall Street investors recognized the mismanagement had an opportunity to grow. 

Prudent Investment and Creative Thinking

Their first aim was to win back the fans’ trust by treating them with respect and going the extra mile to show that. So they refurbished the stadium, had great promotions at the stadium and gave free parking to all fans who attended (note: please don’t do the latter for all citizens!) They also knew they had to seek new revenues for their small-market team, and began an innovative concert series after games that diversified their demographics.

Not only did the Rays improve their fan experience, they won. On their very limited payroll, the Rays improbably put together a winning team due to out-thinking their competition. Using innovative metrics and tactics such as re-thinking the value of draft picks, young pitchers or why the sacrifice bunt is a bad idea, they identified the best ways to grow and manage a team. The team has since made the playoffs in three of the past four years while playing in the toughest division.

Rob Ford's 25-Person Roster

It’s the Tampa Bay Rays success story that we were promised in the campaign (save the subway idea, which has always been bad) but instead we’re getting Vince Naimoli management. Toronto is really fortunate in that it has a lot more opportunities to grow than a small market baseball team, although it can use some of the same techniques. Tampa recognized that they had a limited payroll given their market size and worked within that. But they also realized that they had to seek opportunities to grow that market size and internal revenue in order to be sustainably competitive.

This realization and thinking- the recognition that investment and creativity done right produce real results- is what we need in this budget process and general city planning. Vince Naimoli failed because he couldn't adapt his experience and outlook to the needs of his franchise. He failed to look deeper into the situation where opportunities existed and went for the quick-fixes. The city of Toronto is far more important than a sports franchise or most any business, and we can't afford those practices. 

Analogy Day: City Hall as a Business

National Geographic

So today is analogy day here at the Clamshell, something Cityslikr has addressed recently. 

Analogies are powerful and useful rhetorical tools as they can transfer the properties of an argument into a parallel that is more relatable and understandable. Unfortunately, analogies can be used to misrepresent or hide the flaws in poor arguments.

But today we’ll go through some Fordian analogies and see how they hold up.

First up:

We need to run government like a business

Recently Team Ford has also trotted out the ‘we need to budget like families do,’ a canard that has been debunked. So too has this ‘government like a business’ nonsense; government exists to take care of things that the private sector and its profit-seeking motive is ill-equipped to.

But just for a minute, let’s play this game. Let’s grant the analogy that government should be run like a business in order to look at the quality of the management.

It’s really hard to quantify what makes a great executive, but let’s use the definition that they deliver value through measured risk and meeting target deliverables, set a positive tone for the company with their leadership and sell others on why their particular company is a worthwhile enterprise.

Delivering Value and Meeting Targets

Delivering value as an executive requires a blend of skills, from using analytical thinking to measuring the tradeoffs in various choices to meeting the targets you set out to achieve. Let’s look at the biggest projects of the mayor’s team to evaluate progress in this area.

Recently there’s been a lot of talk about the mayor’s “Transportation City” plan, which involved cancelling Transit City, building a Sheppard extension and burying the Eglinton LRT line.

I’ve previously written about the lack of value on theSheppard line, and it seems the invisible hand of the free market is giving a thumbs down to it as well. Initially Ford promised $4 billion of the $4.6 billion would be funded by the private sector, but it turns out unicorns do not exist.  

He also asked the province for an advance on completing the Eglinton LRT line on-budget even though his plan has lacked the analytical foresight  common sense to deal with the Don Valley.  The Sheppard line was promised to be completed for the Pan Am games, but now that promise has been reduced to completing one station.  These are not the project management planning characteristics of a skilled executive.

Likewise, Team Ford’s Quixotic gravy crusade is going poorly. Thus far, around $30 million worth of ‘waste’ has been cut, but these include things like the Christmas Bureau for needy children and the Hardship Fund for low-income seniors—hardly what voters had in mind. Despite these cuts, the Ford Team will fall dramatically short of their promise to find $525 million inwaste for 2011. 

Transportation City and the KPMG project failed to measure real value and tradeoffs, analyze problems in implementation or get anywhere close to achieving what the Ford Team promised. If these results were announced at an annual shareholder meeting, the stock would immediately plummet and the demands for management’s resignations would be instantaneous.

Setting a Positive Tone

The CEO is seen as the leader of the organization, the person that sets the tone and direction of the workplace.

In the past week I’ve spoken with a number of City Hall bureaucrats for various reasons, and have added the question to each of them to characterize staff morale. Universally, they say that it is either terrible or the worst it is ever been. One staffer thought it was just her department for a while but then when she asked around discovered that was not the case. Many staffers offered unprompted comparisons to the Mel Lastman years, saying that times were tough then but no one doubted his passion for the city.

This was the common theme of comments from city staff, that they are led by an administration opposed to the very idea of government, and thus them.

This is a problem. You want to change how the city works? Great. That involves motivating a great team- 45,000 employees, in fact- to buy into and implement your ideas. Sometimes workplace culture needs changing, but you don’t go about demonizing people and then hope they adopt your ideas.

A winning CEO has a winning personality to motivate those around him or her, and that is not the case here.

Promoting the City

Lastman, for all of his shortcomings, also had no problem promoting Toronto. He understood that a mayor or CEO is chiefly a cheerleader for their organization and they can grow through more recognition and investment.

Rob Ford, for his purported business acumen, has not used this approach. Instead, he has said whenever he can that Toronto is close to broke and doesn’t have any choice but to cut beloved programs, including libraries and childcare.

This is not a culture that attracts investment or respect. Granted, pointed and realistic conversations about the city’s finances are important and should be encouraged. But that’s not what we have here. Instead, we have an administration that’s focused solely on one ideological angle- cutting- at the expense of growing what they have.

It’s short-sighted management. To continue the business analogy, I didn’t buy an iPad Wednesday because Apple has a good balance sheet. I bought an iPad because Apple provides a good product. Their balance sheet is due to the products and services they provide, just like a city prospers based on its liveability.

Executive Summary

So if we really are treating the city like a business, our management sucks. It hasn’t delivered the value they promised, it hasn’t treated its employees or investors (citizens!) with respect and it hasn’t improved the city’s image.

Since it’s Analogy Day, there is a certain kind of executive that the Ford management style is reminiscent of.  It’s a corporate raider style. It’s an outsider coming in, not caring about respecting other stakeholders or underlying value and stripping assets for short-term gain before bailing. It’s not a great growth strategy and it’s not something one should want to be compared to.

NEXT UP: Re-thinking the gravy analogy

A sad day for cyclists and non-cyclists alike

This ghost bike on Bayview was a memorial for Alan Tamane. 

A cyclist died today. More specifically, a woman in her 40s was hit by a truck driver making a turn as she was going south on Sterling at Dundas. It’s been described as a preventable collision, which makes it all the more sad. It seems one vehicle just lost sight of the other, and in these incidents the cyclist doesn’t win.

On Twitter, many people brought up Rob Ford’s unfortunate 2007 quotation that cyclists earn the consequences of biking on the road with cars: 

“my heart bleeds when someone gets killed, but it’s [cyclists’] own fault at the end ofthe day.”

It’s an unfortunate quote and one that Ford probably regrets in some respect. The thing is, I believe Ford when he says his heart bleeds in these incidents. He strikes me as a genuinely empathetic guy at times, like when he speaks emotionally about Jack Layton’s passing or talks about how he was motivated to turnaround the lives of young people through founding a football team.

It’s the latter that John Lorinc uses as a departure point to discuss Ford’s character and how that informs his policies. Lorinc writes that Ford should rightly be lauded for his efforts, particularly in taking hardscrabble youth, (half of whom live in public housing), and providing a positive space for them to grow. But Lorinc points out that here’s where the Fordian gulf exists: despite being motivated to help these individuals, he fails to make the connection between youth and social programs and their welfare.

The same is true for cyclists. I’m sure Ford is genuinely saddened at what happened today on Sterling St. To be clear, this death was not just the result of one person’s view or one particular policy or the lack of bike lanes in the area. Preventable cycling deaths are the result of a lack of collective action to connect the empathy we feel on days like today to meaningful policies and cultural shifts.

In doing so, we create the conditions for lasting change that addresses the underlying concerns. Hopefully then we don't lose sight of each other, our hearts can bleed a lot less, and incidents like the one today are more infrequent. 


UPDATE: Her name was Jenna Morrison. A yoga teacher, she was married and had a three-year-old child and was expecting another. 

The Fordzone: Going too far and losing control of the issues

In the last week City Hall further descended into the Fordzone, that special spiral of increasing absurdity. It started with This Hour Has 22 Minutes’ Mary Walsh confronting Rob Ford on his driveway in the guise of Marg Delahunty and ended with a newly appointed library board director ridiculously proposing 38 libraries closed and all computers gone.

These events were the bookends to a week that included: a ban against shark fin soup (complete with a flying shark!) that Ford was one of four votes against, the Scrooge of the Jarvis bike lanes, Denzil Minnan-Wong, expensing the Bike Union membership he used as a prop in the spring, and Ford outsourcing his gold business cards to his family firm at up to four times the cost of city printing (Update: Ford has pledged to reimburse the city for this out of personal funds).

These incidents garnered indignation and an amount of attention disproportionate to their actual importance. In particular, the Marg Delahunty incident generated hilarious hashtags, one-liners and the inevitable Halloween costumes. The incident, which was presented with varying shades of truth from both the Ford camp and CBC, unnecessarily dragged on for days. Like the other incidents, this was a character study in microcosm, one that for all of its he-said, she-said drama revealed little in the way of policy.

In a way, it’s unfortunate. After all, there are real and serious issues more worthy of discussion, such as the merits of a $200 Million garbage contract awarded with little details last Monday and the potential sale of city assets worth $600 Million that will be discussed at the Executive Committee level tomorrow.

But it’s clear people connect to talking about the more character-driven, emotional issues. That makes sense; they’re more accessible issues that provoke a visceral reaction. The challenge, then, is to link the two kinds of issues in real and meaningful ways.

As Ivor Tossell points out in the Toronto Standard, the Marg Delahunty incident is an indictment of risk assessment on the part of Ford. So the questions should become:

• ·         Is Ford and his three 911 calls the person we should trust to provide a measured response to a crisis for our city?
• ·         Is Ford, with his varying versions of the Delahunty incident, the person we should trust to be honest with a $9 Billion budget?
• ·         Is Ford more out to represent ideological conservatism or the public in issues like shark fin soup and selling city assets?
• ·         Does the Ford Camp choose people to speak for them on the library board and elsewhere who are both competent and representative of Toronto’s values?

Ford enjoyed a lot of success during his campaign in part because he was able to tie small incidents like the chipmunk suit into a larger narrative of waste, entitlement and mismanagement at City Hall. Without that connection, the incidents are rightly devoid of meaning.

But there is something here, in terms of both the Ford Camp’s policies and character: it’s an administration that has gone too far.

Ford goes too far in his overreaction to Marg Delahunty and he goes too far when it comes to an attempted takeover of Waterfront Toronto.

His delegates go too far when they go out of their way to thumb their noses at cyclists and they go too far when they suggest shuttering over a third of Toronto’s libraries.

The Mayor goes too far when he misses the majority of the shark fin soup debate only to return to be one of the few to oppose it, and he goes too far when the only thing remotely liberal about his tenure is the relationship with the truth. 

As the city further moves into the depths of the budget debate, it’s important to create distance from the Fordzone spiral and see the greater issues. They’re issues that, yes, are informed by the character and emotions of the individuals at play. But moreso they’re issues that must be discussed meaningfully before that opportunity is too far gone.

      

Ford Focus (Group)

Edward Keenan on Twitter (see his Grid post here):

The frustrating thing: most voters want more services, and they want lower taxes. They consider both top priorities. See also: California. ...Which is to say they don't actually fit on the political spectrum at all. They emphatically support directly contradictory policies.

Sol Chrom:

…this is one of those rare occasions when the answer is actually quite easy, if not especially palatable: Toronto voters need to Grow The Fuck Up.

Cityslickr on All Fired Up in the Big Smoke:

Ford voters were duped which is a hard pill to swallow and not a constructive point of departure in reaching out in going forward from here.

The question is, how do we bridge such a chasm of perspective?

Keenan, Chrom and Cityslickr were each responding to a blog post by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternative’s Trish Hennessy, a strategist with a sociology and communications background. Hennessy’s post relays the results of focus groups done of Ford voters in September, the results of which would likely surprise most observers. The participants- again, all Ford voters- were optimistic people who identified as Torontonians and:

“expressed a hope and vision for the city that is positive, united, safe, clean, green, diverse, welcoming, vibrant and easier to get around in…. They still believe in the value of public services, and many want better public services – especially when it comes to public transit, which is becoming a symbol of a city in need of a fix.”

This plays into the angle that Ford was promoting at his Empire Club speech, that the talk of waste and mismanagement- putting aside the extent of what that is- can be perceived as opportunity. That is, an opportunity to build the city at no personal cost to voters. All it would take is a little grit to take on the system and speak up for the little guy. In fact, focus group attendees saw little to no ideological differences between Jack Layton and Rob Ford, suggesting a powerful conflation of Ford’s populist personality over their policies. Whereas Jack Layton was big on new ideas for improving the city- something Ford voters like- this is not the mayor’s focus. At the Empire Club speech, he said:

“Everyone has their own idea of what Toronto should become. Some want Toronto of the future to be a world leader in “green” practices. Others see Toronto as the world’s next financial hub. Still others want Toronto to be a global centre for arts and culture. 

Whatever your dream for our city is, it depends on one thing. Your dream depends on our ability to make our own choices, to chart our own course, to shape our own destiny. 

The sad truth is that we are losing our ability to make our own decisions. Toronto’s financial foundation is crumbling. If we don’t fix the foundation now, our dreams for the future will collapse.”

Ford is right on one thing; it is very important for the city to plan for its financial future. However this quotation shows that he is not the person his voters thought they elected. The future ideas and priorities he speaks of are others’, not his own. It was much like last week’s Metro Morning interview in which he was unable to articulate what he loves about Toronto. How can you cut expenditures if you don’t know how to value them? To what end do you secure financial stability? What’s your city?

As Hennessy’s research shows, Ford Voters value city services but there is a disconnect between the cost to deliver these services and the taxes they require. CCPA Research Associate Hugh Mackenzie has an excellent 2009 speech on the subject in which he concludes:

 “We need to have that adult conversation about the public services we need, and the taxes we’ll have to pay to provide them, and we need to have it soon.”

Mackenzie speaks with the same urgency as Ford, but his urgency is to speak of the values and priorities of the government and its citizens. Which leads us back to Cityslikr’s question: how do we bridge this chasm?


Below are a few points made by others with my own humble thoughts:

1 Civic Engagement

As Chrom points out, the ‘sure, tax cuts with no impact on services are feasible’ sense indicates a lack of understanding of city budget issues that could be interpreted as wishful thinking. To remedy this requires involving people in the civic process and delivering information in a manner they find meaningful. 


For instance, Hennessy's research shows that conservatives (more likely to be Ford voters although they go across partisan boundaries) respond to more emotional explanations. They use empathy to identify with situations and connect with arguments that they can identify with personally. So rather than saying, "Rob Ford lied and his so-called solutions will worsen Toronto's structural deficit," what might be more effective is "Rob Ford mislead us and soulless cuts to the Christmas Bureau, Hardship Fund and Libraries hurt our friends and neighbours who need help the most. This doesn't represent the Toronto we value."     

2 Improve Language

Further to the previous point, terms can be improved too. For instance, taxes are abstract numbers, and thus tough to connect to the real tangible things we value. This only gets further obscured with murky terms like 'gravy train'. 


Something like the Vehicle Registration Tax, which Shelley Carroll admitted was a failure in being sold to the public when she voted to repeal it, was framed poorly. The language of the fee- it’s more a fee than a tax- focuses on the act of paying it rather than what it does. But if it was the Road Improvement Fee? That’s something that gives drivers responsibility over their roads, knowing that there are significant costs involved in maintenance and these must be shared.

3 Speak About Costs

There’s no free lunch and it’s counter-productive to pretend there is. Instead, we need to be willing to acknowledge all the things we value about the city and acknowledge that there’s a cost to them. Love libraries? Yeah, well they cost money. Think transit is important? Well that costs a lot of money too. Paying taxes is OK so long as they’re used reasonably and invested wisely. But people have to know where those taxes go and why they’re needed.

4 Speak About Successes

We only ever hear the bad news from government and yet we still expect perfection from them. Those are high standards albeit good ones to have. The thing is, we could celebrate what we do well a bit more. Celebrate the fact that the Toronto Public Library offers some of the broadest variety of programs at a median cost and enjoys a high use per capita rate. Celebrate the TTC’s safety record, efficiency and fare box recovery. Celebrate the urban planning that is slowly bearing fruit on the waterfront.

To engage in a good, meaningful conversation about what builds Toronto people need to know that by and large it works pretty well. They need to feel a connection between the taxes they pay and the services they receive and that they have responsibilities to share in supporting the resources that Torontonians value. That may not convince all 60 of those Ford voters from the focus group, but sets up the infrastructure to cross the bridge over the ‘Ford Nation’ chasm.