Checking Out the Library Cuts

It’s really easy to lose sight of context when dealing with large budget numbers; It feels overwhelming and lends itself to information paralysis.

Luckily there are libraries and librarians and information resources to help us with that affliction. Unluckily, there may soon be fewer of those resources in Toronto if the mayor is able to usher through the proposed library cuts. 

Initially the Ford Team wanted to close libraries (insofar as Doug speaks for them), but in the face of an embarrassing public backlash that idea was subsequently dropped. Instead, the city faces significant service reductions, less staff and fewer acquisitions. To understand what these cuts mean and how we got here, here is some context:

“I will assure you services will not be cut…guaranteed”  -Rob Ford, October 2010.

“Ford told the Post in a sit-down interview that closing a library on a Sunday, never mind entirely, constituted a major service cut in his mind” -Chris Selley, National Post 

Toronto libraries are popular among residents:

• In the KPMG consultation, 86% of residents felt that maintaining the quality of library services was more important than lowering the cost. 
• 97% of residents identified the library as being necessary for the city to be livable and prosperous.
• 70% of residents were against reducing services and hours in a September Forum poll. 

Libraries have been pretty efficient:

• Since 2001 library use has increased 28%. 
• In spite of this increased use, staffing is down 10% since 1998. 

Doing more with less.

• According to several studies, libraries in general show a good return on investment too. The median study concludes that libraries return $4-5 for every $1 invested. 

The library cuts:

As the map below shows, the library service cuts will impact every region of the city:

• 100 staff were eliminated at last night’s library board meeting. Ford had promised in his platform to achieve savings through attrition and pledged not to fire anyone.     
• The 19,444 proposed hours to be cut is the equivalent of closing down nine of the smallest libraries full time.

• The cuts would include reducing circulation acquistions by 106,000 books (11%). If that baseline is maintained with minor increases over four years, it would be the equivalent of one less book in circulation for every Rob Ford voter.  
• The two above library cuts could be paid for by the cost of two small coffees at Tim Horton’s from each resident.

The rhetoric:

• Asked if he would close a library in his own ward, Doug Ford said, “Absolutely I would. In a heartbeat.” Hours will not be cut in Doug Ford’s ward.
• Ford ally Paul Ainslie was in favour of library closings so long as they weren’t in his ward. Instead, he suggested downtown locations might be more appropriate candidates. His ward’s newly renovated Cedarbrae Library faces a 9.5 hour service reduction.
• The newly appointed Library Board chair, Ainslie voted last night against consulting the public on the cuts. The vote passed and the public will be consulted.   

Team Ford faces many obstacles to pass this particular package of cuts. Libraries are very popular with voters, cutting them contradicts campaign promises and individual councillors know they'll receive an earful on the issue. All of this makes it difficult to be an ally of the mayor on this issue and open to a lot of negotiation.  

Tracking Rob Ford's Arguments in Council

It’s tough to keep up with the Team Ford claims at City Hall, but it’s necessary. Smart policy can’t be made when the discourse is flooded with murky misrepresentations or poor policy, so filtering those out is a helpful task.

This morning Mayor Ford spoke at Council and thus took follow-up questions from councillors. It may have been his worst performance on the floor of Council as mayor. He was constantly defensive and there was noticeable anger bubbling. Importantly, there were no outbursts.

Photo of today's City Council meeting by Jeremy Kai

There were, however, many misrepresentations or contradictory messages, well covered by people on Twitter (you know who you are). Among those messages:

• Ford said he was following the wishes of people who tell him to ‘stay the course’. Challenged on this, he was asked about his poll numbers and said that the last Toronto Sun poll had his approval at 72%. This poll is hardly relevant today as it was done in April.

• Ford repeated the suggestion of a 34% property tax increase, a number that originated from the Ford-Friendly Toronto Taxpayers Coalition. This number assumes a $774 budget deficit, which has been thoroughly challenged and refuted- it includes no other revenue sources or efficiencies.

• Anthony Peruzza asked about the $49 million (expected) cancellation fee from Transit City. Ford began to talk about the right of way streetcar on St. Clair, saying that it was a failure. This project was not a part of Transit City although the right of way is similar to various lines.

• In the same segment where he bemoaned the financial straits of the city and the structural deficit, Ford insisted the land transfer tax (which brings in close to $300 million) is ‘one we don’t need’.

• Gloria Lindsay Luby, who normally doesn’t speak much at council, challenged Ford on the land transfer tax, pointing out that Toronto has had the hottest real estate market in North America despite the tax. Ford said that’s irrelevant, it still hurts the market.

• Ford claimed ‘he gave the police a raise when no one said it could be done’. No one claimed this. (If someone can correct me in the comments, please do).

• Ford argued that the city should increasingly rely on a user fee model. Mike Layton asked him to define ‘user fees’ and then applied his definition to the vehicle registration tax. Ford insisted his definition of ‘fees paid by individuals who use the service’ didn’t apply (arguing if the money went to road repair it might).

• Ford cited the Toronto Sun (and Denzil Minnan-Wong) when discussing ‘gravy’, pointing to overtime paid by various departments. The City Manager later said this overtime was largely because of the G20. Additionally, the other option to overtime while maintaining service levels would be more costly- to hire more employees.

Responding to Ford-KPMG Talking Points

The upcoming Executive Committee meeting on the recommended KPMG service cuts will be well-attended and watched. Questions remain as to whether it will be as dramatic and eventful as the 'Citizen's Filibuster' in July and whether councillors like Jaye Robinson and Michelle Berardinetti will defect and vote against the report. One thing that we do know is the type of arguments Team Ford will employ to further their agenda. In the spirit of CodeBlueTO's  excellent Spacing article on arguments against Waterfront Toronto I've compiled the KPMG list below to provide my own humble bit. Reading some of Matt Elliott's old posts was a great help in this, so a hat tip to Ford for Toronto


1) "Toronto has a massive $774 million deficit. This needs to be solved".
This is an oft-repeated refrain that has been cited by most media sources and officials. 


Toronto does have a deficit, and its starting point was indeed $774 million. As happens each year, Toronto starts with a very high deficit and whittles it down, which Edward Keenan explains nicely at The Grid. The idea that this particular starting point is a 'tsunami' is misleading as it tracks with previous years pretty closely. Matt Elliott, writer of the superlative blog Ford For Toronto put together the nifty chart below:

In fact, $774 million isn't really the number we should be talking about as Elliott explains in that excellent post. Instead, we should conservatively be talking about a $530 million deficit. Other people have pegged the number much lower, such as left-wing councillor Gord Perks and Rob Ford's former Chief of Staff Nick Kouvalis (August 28 on The City) have pointed to a number closer to $300-$450 million (Kouvalis later recanted this on Twitter, oddly claiming he meant this in addition to the starting point). 

$530 million is conservatively the more accurate number we're dealing with at this time and using the $774 million is an effort to increase political leverage to make unpopular cuts. 

2) "We've inherited this mess from the out-of-control Miller regime. We're the only ones willing to talk about the problems we face". 

For all of the promise of accountability and responsibility coming from Team Ford, this is a frequent line. 

As suggested in the chart above, Toronto has endured large annual structural deficits since amalgamation. During the mayoral campaign Ford frequently pointed this out and criticized the Miller administration for only thinking of the year at hand. 

Yet in the first budget for Team Ford, Frances Nunziata- presumably on orders from the mayor's office- refused to allow mention of the 2012 budget. As Sean Meagher pointed out in his Citizen's Filibuster deputation, if Team Ford had planned ahead for the 2012 budget in the previous budget it would have had the lowest deficit starting point in almost a decade. 

But council was forbidden from talking about or planning for this year's budget-that-must-not-be-named. Now that it's here, The Voldemort Budget is-surprise- scary. All of that money from keeping the Vehicle Registration Tax and having an inflation-based property tax increase (which would just maintain levels, as this Spacing article explains) would be enough to pay for all of the KPMG recommended cuts. Even the Christmas bureau. 

David Miller left a $350 million surplus. By refusing to plan for 2012, Team Ford owns this budget and has turned what could have been a very manageable budget-that-must-not-be-named into a Voldemort Budget of heartless cuts.    

3) "Either we do these cuts or we face a 35% property tax increase. Some downtown NDP councillors want to do this, but I don't".

Rob Ford mentioned a few variations of this line of attack in his interview with Jerry Agar. 

The 35% property tax increase number comes from the Toronto Taxpayers Coalition (tacitly endorsed by Doug Ford, Sue-Ann Levy and Michael Coren, oh my!). The TTC that's not really the TTC based this number on the $22 million generated for every 1% increase in property taxes. Using the faulty $774 million number covered in number one here, you get 35%.

This is a completely unreasonable number. The number excludes any further funding sources for the city (land transfer tax, user fees, dividends from assets etc...), surplus money left over from the previous budget ($88 million) and actual honest-to-goodness efficiencies that departments can find to cut their budget. The number is also politically unfeasible and acts only as a scare tactic. 

Furthermore, no councillor has supported raising property taxes by this amount and I haven't seen any activist, journalist or deputant support it either. 

Saying 'either we make these cuts or raise property taxes 35%' is a disingenuous false dichotomy that uses a false number for cynical politics.

4) "We're being taxed to death in Toronto. This has got to stop". 

Rob Ford has essentially ruled out any property tax increase greater than 2.5% (he wants 2%) and feels taxpayers are unduly burdened. 

Toronto has significantly lower property taxes than comparable Ontario cities. While Toronto has a 0.79% property tax rate, Mississauga's is 0.96%, Ottawa's is 1.25% and Hamilton's is 1.48%. 

Additionally, Toronto offers more services than these cities and pretty efficiently as the KPMG report indicated. Within the KPMG report the lowest ranked policy priority from citizens was 'affordable taxes' (page four), so the idea that this is being demanded by citizens is contradicted by the report the mayor is relying on. 

Lastly, there's a secondary concern in having very low taxes. When the city goes to arbitration- as it soon will with the TTC in a very expensive process- the city will argue that it doesn't have the financial capacity to extend salaries in the manner the union wants. The arbitrator will then say, 'but you have extremely low property taxes compared to your comparables and recently cancelled a tax just granted to you by the province. You clearly have more capacity, and should pay accordingly'.

Toronto is not being taxed to death- far from it. This isn't to say taxes should be at Hamilton rates, but that there is public willingness and an economic argument to raise taxes reasonably. 

5) These aren't really cuts, they're efficiencies. 

Rob Ford said no service cuts. Guaranteed. He promised efficiencies and doggone it, that's what these are. 

While Ford's lead spokesperson acknowledged service cuts in a talking points memo to allies recently, the mayor has refused to do so. In the Jerry Agar interview yesterday, Ford was asked whether cutting 2000 daycare spots was a service cut. His response? "No, it's an efficiency. There are no service cuts." 

Someone on the Toronto subReddit made the appropriate analogy that it would be akin to saying cutting off three of your fingers makes your hand more efficient. This line is utter nonsense. Potentially cancelling the blue night bus? Service cut. Eliminating 2000 daycare spots? Service cut. Reducing snow shoveling, street sweeping, horticulture, getting rid of the Christmas bureau, reducing wheel trans, eliminating libraries or reducing hours? Those are service cuts. 

Importantly, Rob Ford told the National Post's Natalie Alcoba and Chris Selley that closing one library on a Sunday would be a 'major' service cut. 

Efficiencies are when you have the same service delivered at a lower price or increased services delivered at the same price (or better value, dollar for dollar). That is not the case here.

These aren't really efficiencies, they're cuts. 

6) "There's lots of gravy. Just look at all of these unionized city employees. How come we have more than at the start of amalgamation? We should have less."

This is a relatively new line of attack and the strategy is to position your tax dollars against the disliked unions. 

In 2000, Toronto had 2.4 million citizens and 45,000 employees according to this budget (page 3).   

In 2010, Toronto had 2.77 million people and 46,228 employees according to this city document. Granted, the number of employees has been low at various points- it was 40,000 in 2006- but it's hardly out of control like this claim suggests. 

And it does bring up another Ford campaign pledge, that he wouldn't fire staff but would finance his budgets through a managed 3% attrition rate. 

This wasn't the 'gravy' Rob Ford promised, in fact he promised to not fire anyone. City employee growth tracks reasonably well with population growth which makes Ford's claim less meaningful. 

7) "The People complaining are just the Usual Suspects, Unionists, Socialists or Jobless. They don't speak for the city."

"There are 2.5 million people in this city and we've heard from about 400 individuals over the process of consultation. Letting them say which programs they would like to keep and which ones they don't want to keep for 2.5 million people, to me that doesn't make sense." -Giorgio Mammoliti to Inside Toronto

While Team Ford simultaneously says that they've done historic consultation, staying up all night listening to people, they also dismiss them out of hand as having unrepresentative voices. 

Aside from the fact that activists, unionists, socialists and the unemployed are also Torontonians who have a valid voice and contribution to make to the discourse, this line of argument is also untrue. Anyone who was there at the Citizen's Filibuster knows that the day was not just remarkable for its length, but the diversity of people and causes who were there. 

Another argument ties in to this one, that 'these people' are just out their to protect their own self-interests. In a way, that's true- they feel invested in their community and value services provided for it. Much like, say, some people might be self-interested and value having a lower property tax rate. After all, in the Habermas vein, that's what politics is about. 

What's really going on with this is an attempt to categorize the opposition into a caricature and devalue that voice so as to ignore it. And really, that's undemocratic.

 This argument ignores the reality of the diversity of people speaking out, is anti-consultation and cheapens the political institutions the mayor's office is supposed to uphold. 

8) "Why are we in the business of running zoos and theatres? It's about wants and needs. When we ask people 'what do you need', it's not running a zoo". 

This argument suggests we need to re-prioritize and have a paradigm shift (ugh, that phrase) in how we think of government. 

This is a somewhat reasonable argument. It's important to re-assess the role of government to make sure it's on track. We should force ourselves to re-think what the status quo could be too. 

However, for that to be done, a simultaneous efficiency and value study has to be conducted to find out what those priorities are. People have to be genuinely asked and listened to for what they need so that subsidized dental care for the poor can be evaluated from both the citizen's and a 'business' perspective. 

This was not done. The scope of the KMPG report was explicitly limited to discovering what could legally be cut and giving limited recommendations. The value the city gets from the services it delivers (the intangible benefits of the arts, say) was not considered. The limited consultation that was conducted was dismissed as 'not statistically valid' by Ford ally Denzil Minnan-Wong. 

Wants and needs cannot be determined until you find the value of each service in consultation with citizens.

9) "We need to run this city like a business. I'm going to do that."

With his experience at Deco Labels, Rob Ford positions himself as the man with the knowledge to get things done at City Hall. 

I'm not going to cast aspersion on Ford's experience at Deco Labels, but I don't think his 'business strategy' is right for the city. 

I work in business too. Businesses conduct thorough cost-benefit analyses to make prudent short and long-term decisions to optimize profit and limit risk appropriately given their profile. That means they invest in themselves and cut sometimes and most of the time they're doing a combination of both. 

However, this mayor is so idelogically opposed to the idea of government that he is unwilling to look at ways for the city to invest in itself. So the argument of how arts funding spurs a multiplier effect of city benefits falls on deaf ears. Good businesses are open-minded, think creatively and plan for contingencies. They look at the market for the cost of debt- interest rates- to see whether they can get capital at cheaper rates than the returns they generate. With interest levels at record lows, cities with business savvy and good AA+ credit ratings like Toronto can see that as an opportunity for wise investment and measured growth.  

Good businesses do not exclusively cut. They grow because they believe in themselves.

If the city must be compared to a business, it's one that should rightly face a shareholder revolt for not finding value. 

10) "This is the City Manager's report, not ours. We're just following staff."

We're just responding to data and acting accordingly. Why are you making this all political?

Ah, the age-old 'we're just following the wishes of staff' argument. It's a great argument because councillors are not really allowed to criticize staff- Joe Mihevc drew some 'ohhhhhs' when he criticized Pennachetti for producing the Waterfront Toronto-TPLC report. 

The thing is, everyone knows staff are influenced by political pressure and the mayor's office in particular. To think otherwise is just naive.

City staff aren't immune to political pressure. 

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Team Ford will give lots of reasons to justify their actions including some of the above. Many of them are demonstrably false or shallow arguments and should be treated accordingly. 


Note: An earlier version of this article stated Matt Blackett wrote the Spacing article with arguments against the proposed Waterfront-TPLC changes. This was written by CodeBlueTO and the article has been edited to reflect this. Apologies for the error and thanks to Matt Elliott for pointing it out.