City Budget in Microcosm: Alexandra Park

As Marwa Eldardiry walks through her Alexandra Park neighbourhood, she points to areas that gave shape to how she grew up, "This was where we used to play red ass, and over here we would play soccer or baseball." 

Eldardiry, a 24-year-old who recently graduated from Ryerson with a degree in planning, points to a small quadrant of nooks and crannies in Alex Park when she refers to her childhood sports. She goes on to explain how it's a self-sufficient community that makes the most of what it has. 

"In the summer the basketball courts are packed, and older kids help out the younger ones. It's a tight-knit community."  

Alex Park is tight-knit by virtue of its geography in addition to its inhabitants. Bordered by Bathurst on the west, Queen to the south, Spadina to the east and Dundas to the north, the dense neighbourhood has just under 5,000 residents. Many people live in public housing established in a 1960s project similar to Regent Park. Like Regent, it' s a low-income neighbourhood, with average income the second lowest in Toronto at $19,687 (2006 census).  

Yet Eldardiry speaks of a sense of pride in the community. "I don't know the stats, but everyone says that Alex Park has the best graduation rates of any public housing neighbourhood in Canada. People do well here." 

Local Councillor Adam Vaughan notes this too as he discusses the area's relatively low drug use that Public Health can attest to and strong outcomes for well-being. He adds that there are challenges that come with this success although it's encouraged, "The neighbourhood has a great degree of turnover that's tied to the educational capacity, the community. Because they are getting their kids educated and their credentials upgraded people have the ability to move to where work is when that work becomes available to them. You have a lot of kids in university, a lot of parents with foreign degrees and a strong emphasis on education and those values feed off each other in a positive way."  

Because there is a certain degree of turnover from this educational capacity, outside groups like the Atkinson Foundation have focused on retaining youth leaders like Eldardiry on community boards to provide direction, leadership and a sense of history to younger individuals.  

The latter is particularly important as history provides a sense of and context for the community. In 2007, beloved teenager Yonathon Musse (who was also a drug dealer) was murdered and it rocked the community. For many people it provided a wake up call to be vigilant about their choices and options. 

Next to the two basketball courts, a mural of the teenager adorns the brick wall. Other newly-installed art projects spruce up the area, including planters for area homes made by teens and a mural of a tree. These are the kind of small projects that build skills and confidence in youth and provide a creative outlet to connect with the area. They're also funded through grants.  

Asked about Rob Ford's general opposition to grants, Eldardiry is puzzled by the stance, "With grants, they're fishing rods. We know how to fish, we just need the tool to get it going."  

Services and programs are vital to how the community functions too. There are three nearby community centres, a community pool, a park and parkettes and a recently converted convent that is now a shelter for vulnerable women. Eldardiry is surprised these are the kinds of programs that Ford proposes to cut across the city, "I thought he promised no cuts, but then he does this." 

She adds that these are the kind of programs that made growing up in Alex Park special for her and are an important part of its proposed revitalization. 

Yet the budget process didn't examine the unique characteristics of areas like Alexandra Park and its nooks and crannies. According to Eldardiry, the process should be about social inclusion and integrating communities. 

But the lines on the Ford budget are looked at individually rather than responding to the city's needs with a vision for how it can improve. And so Alexandra Park, the labrynthine microcosm of Toronto's budgeting process, carries on with or without the help of the 2012 budget. 

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. 

Visions of Toronto in the Ford Administration

The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes ev'rything's been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna Toranna are now all that remain

-Bob Dylan, Visions of Johanna

When David Miller assumed office in 2003, the legacy of Mel Lastman provided a great challenge. Toronto had a crumbling infrastructure from years of deferring maintenance in favour of property tax freezes and the city’s signature cultural achievement in this time was a series of fibre-glass moose, an idea taken from Chicago.

In his inauguration address at City Hall, Miller recognized existing challenges but struck an optimistic, forward looking tone:

“So, my first appeal to you as Mayor is this: Let this Council -- let us -- be guided by that spirit of openness, which is built into the very walls that surround us. Our challenges are great. The opportunities are greater -- let us start today.”

Miller unveiling the City Hall green roof, a symbol of a newly green city.

Although he inherited a city marred by corruption and limited accountability, whose governance was most marked by gaffes and short-sightedness, Miller saw the potential for something larger. He had a vision that Toronto could be a better place, the aspirational world-class city to which he often referred.

His vision was that with civic engagement - active buy-in to dialogue and ideas from citizens and stakeholders- an open and transparent foundation could be laid to provide opportunities to exercise community-building.

The same cannot be said for Team Ford. The Ford inauguration was filled with the blustering divisiveness of Don Cherry criticizing left-wing pinko cyclist kooks, a marginalizing tone that has continued in various forms throughout the administration.

In contrast to Miller, Ford’s vision is not about building of any sorts, but cuts. As David Rider persuasively writes in a column for the Toronto Star, these cuts are more representative of an animus towards government than the fear of structural deficit. After all, why freeze property taxes and cancel the vehicle registration tax before balancing that deficit?

Rob and Don give the thumbs up at inauguration. National Post.

Granted, Rob and Doug have revealed glimpses of vision here and there. However, the projects they mention include a monorail leading to an NFL stadium, a triple decker Gardiner and compounding Lastman’s Shepperd subway to nowhere.

These proposals, all of which have claims that the private sector will love to pay for them, are laughable enough that satire seems unneeded. Actionable, forward-looking projects like the Fort York bridge or the Jarvis redevelopment have been spitefully killed (the latter due to bike lanes) while Team Ford has mused about selling off Waterfront assets. 

But earnest, realistic city-building can still be found at City Hall. Three councillors, Adam Vaughan, Kristyn Wong-Tam and Josh Colle, currently have projects underway at different stages of development. These projects are each private-public-partnerships (P3s), a favoured form of engagement by the Fordites. While the structure of each deal is appealing to the administration and provide strong value for development money, there are shallow reasons that Team Ford could find to oppose each proposal.

Adam Vaughan and the John Street Cultural Corridor

Artist's rendition of proposed John Street corridor.

Adam Vaughan has been working on the John St. development for some time now in an effort to capitalize on an identified cultural corridor. The street has a lot going for it in terms of different cultural landmarks. It runs from Queen’s Quay and the Rogers Centre Skydome in the south, touching on: MuchMusic, the National Film Board, the Bell Lightbox, Scotiabank Theatre, Princess of Wales and Royal Alex theatres, Roy Thomson Hall and CBC headquarters before ending at Grange Park in front of the Art Gallery of Ontario. The idea is to link Toronto’s cultural institutions together in a way that encourages people to make the connections as they engage with the street. John is currently broken up by stretches with narrow sidewalk, a disengaging streetscape and little infrastructure.

Partnering up with the local BIA for the $50 million project ($10 million to be paid by the city) the proposed plan seeks to preserve historic buildings, promote business and tourism. More controversially, it would also ‘pedestrianize’ the street (although with removable bollards to allow necessary traffic through) while lining the street with trees and stylized benches.

It’s a pretty good plan that has local business and institutional support and would be a good goal to have complete for the 2015 Pan Am games. It’s not perfect either; Dave Meslin rightly took issue with the cycling stats compiled by consultants in the environmental assessment for instance. The biggest challenge though will be passing the perception test that the project is not ‘gravy’ and doesn’t represent a ‘war on the car’.

Kristyn Wong-Tam and Downtown Yonge's Public Space

Kristyn Wong-Tam’s nascent project will face similar challenges. Working closely and remarkably quickly with the Downtown Yonge BIA, Wong-Tam co-ordinated with local business owners and hired urban planner Ken Greenberg (all money paid by the BIA). The idea is to decrease traffic lanes between Dundas and Gerrard in order to increase room for pedestrians which their study shows is the dominant user of the area. It would also give potential to block off the road for festivals or events and aims to re-vitalize the declining stretch of businesses from Dundas to Gerrard. As with Vaughan’s plan, it uses the P3 structure encouraged by the administration but likewise would limit car use. Also, there’s the fear that as Wong-Tam is another left-leaning councillor the project could be spitefully nixed.

Rendition of Yonge closure by KPMB Architects. 

It’s a fear that would be nice to dismiss as misplaced paranoia but the record on the Jarvis bike lanes and Fort York Bridge shows otherwise. It’s something that Mushy Middle councillor Josh Colle has most certainly noticed. The newly elected councillor for Eglinton-Lawrence had a hold placed by Rob Ford on the Lawrence Heights Revitalization project in advance of the Jarvis Bike Lane vote. (The project aims to renew the neighbourhood through strategically placed mixed housing). The hold was somehow lifted after Colle voted in favour of the bike lane removal, an idea he previously opposed. The message was sent: approve our vision of cutting this part of the city down or we will cut your ward down.

Josh Colle and Cynical Games with Lawrence Heights

Having a vision is difficult. It requires nuanced planning, forethought and engagement. This is not how Team Ford rolls. They operate on divide and conquer strategies as they did with Colle, not collaborative stakeholder buy-in. They operate on slogans like ‘gravy train’ and ‘the war on the car’, ephemeral taglines designed to dismiss actionable, forward-thinking project like John St. and Yonge St. They threaten or axe projects not for policy but for political gamesmanship. 

******

But most of all, they operate without a vision. Miller wasn’t perfect, but unlike Ford he exhibited this quality. If Toronto is to have a vision during the Ford years, it will be led from the darkness by the wisdom of councillors and citizens who see the shortcomings in the administration’s outlook. Politicians are expected to be leaders, and the hallmark of leadership is the ability to see beyond.