Team Ford: Library Edition

Library meeting bingo card created by the always awesome @neville_park at last night's library meeting.  

One important aspect of elections that is frequently forgotten is that voters aren't just choosing who occupies the Mayor's or Premier's or Prime Minister's seat, but an administration and appointees that allow that politician to function. 


So when you elect George W. Bush, you're also getting Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Alberto Gonzalez and Scooter Libby. For the Toronto Library Board, when you elect Rob Ford you get Michael Foderick and Stephen Dulmage. 


The last two library board meetings illustrate the shortcomings of these appointments.


Two meetings ago, Dulmage suggested 38 library closures, the elimination of library computers and the warehousing of books (read Daniel Dale's excellent summary, particularly the last two paragraphs). This meeting, he seemed entirely uninterested in the proceedings, swivelling around in his chair to look at the map behind him and fanning himself furiously (mind you, the room was hot). He even got into a petty argument about Tim Horton's during someone's deputation. All this from a guy who, according to Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler, was placed on the board at the suggestion of Adrienne Batra, Ford's Press Secretary. 


Which brings us to the more polished Michael Foderick. A lawyer, Foderick has long been in touch with City Hall, from the early days of the Toronto Youth Cabinet (at age 16) to being fellow TPL board member Cesar Palacio's EA. So you would think he brings an understanding of the process that would be beneficial to the board. But, based on last night's meeting, you'd be wrong. 


He put forward a motion that asked to fire the equivalent of up to 60 full-time library employees in spite of City Librarian Jane Pyper's insistence that this would be a safety concern. His motion also called for using $2 million in development charges to fund operating expenses, a policy that would violate provincial law. 


As Janet Davis tried to describe the problems with these motions and how it would hand control to City Hall's budget committee, Foderick argued that she didn't appreciate the subtlety in what he was doing. Which is, if you've ever seen Davis talk about subtlety, like telling the Pope you're more Catholic.


And everyone was exasperated by this. The audience laughed a few times. Visiting councillor Adam Vaughan threw up his arms as he walked out to visit the overflow room. Other board members were unimpressed; it took Dulmage to second Foderick's motion. 


In the end, his requests were referred to library staff for review where they will be turned down at next month's meeting. But you could have seen this coming. After all, this is an individual who, I'm told, is the only person who has ever been banned from speaking on behalf of the Youth Cabinet because he kept speaking out of turn and misrepresenting their interests. 


Rob Ford has his handlers like Mark Towhey and Batra to rein in his more ill-considered words and ideas (or one would like to think). But their appointments do not have that hand-holding, and it's here that we see the out-of-touch (Dulmage) and poorly-thought-out ideas (Foderick) in full force. If these individuals provide an open book to the thinking of Team Ford, then it's not good. 

The Customer Service of Governance

In addition to John Lorinc’s excellent Walrus article, there’s another piece of good city writing this week, this time from The Grid’s EdwardKeenan. Keenan’s article offers suggestions for how Team Ford can right their ship, from focusing on customer service to having meaningful dialogue with critical councillors and the general public.

The advice is really good; it plays into ways that Ford has branded himself in the past, fulfills campaign promises and appeals to individuals who want to give the mayor the benefit of the doubt. Above all, it’s just good governance.

Yesterday morning TTC chair Karen Stintz took up Keenan’s advice by coincidence. She and some of the TTC brass (Gary Webster, Chris Upfold) held a press conference at Bathurst Station to make an announcement on improving customer service, including engaging the public through town halls, a customer service liaison panel and extending service centre hours (see more details at Torontoist here). 

As much as I bristle at the term ‘customer service’ when it comes to government (as it reduces citizens to a one-sided business-style relationship), this is the good stuff. The TTC operates very efficiently from a technical standpoint but could stand improvement in how transit riders use it on a day-to-day basis. It’s also a cheap means for the agency to improve; costs (labour, infrastructure support) are rising faster than fare increases can feasibly be passed, and without changes to the operating subsidy any improvements will have to come from within.

This would have been a good platform to frame the next step for Ford to sell his ideas to the public, where he could say things like, ‘one thing that’s not gravy is treating people with respect.’ He could say that good customer service involves going beyond the minimum requirements and seeking ways to make sure everyone is involved in an open and transparent process that reasonably considers their opinions, needs and wants and he's a man of his word out to meet his mandate.

Here’s how his campaign literature spoke of these issues in his Taxpayer Protection Plan Backgrounder:

These three promises are important as they speak to the values of Ford as a candidate and the values he heard Toronto wanted for its governance. Clearly, transparency, access and real consideration were priorities for both.

But then Giorgio Mammoliti spoke last night. In an incident later related by Kristyn Wong-Tam and Janet Davis’ Twitter streams, the two councillors tried to attend a child care task force meeting chaired by Giorgio Mammoliti. Although they are on the Community Development and Recreation committee, they were refused entry. They were not notified of the meeting (although a sign was posted outside of committee room three), and were told by Mammoliti that he didn’t want the meeting to be ‘political’.

Wong-Tam responded with an open letter on Twitter criticizing the lack of inclusion and going so far as to say that the process contravened the City of Toronto Act. It doesn’t, as Goldsbie pointed out in early morning tweets, as the task force is not bound by the rules of committees since it has less than half of its membership from councillors (there was Mammoliti and six child care operators).

Mammoliti and Wong-Tam at July Executive Meeting. Photo by friendlyfeathers.blogspot.com

So Mammoliti was technically able to restrict Davis and Wong-Tam from participating, but that doesn’t mean 1) he did it in the best, most respectful way possible 2) he should have done it at all.

Maybe he could have recognized there was a strong desire for Davis and Wong-Tam to contribute, and, as per Keenan’s suggestion, given them a meaningful role in future sessions or aspects. Or maybe he could have asked the meeting attendees if they would like to have them come in the room for some or all of the meeting. Or maybe he could have said that he would be happy to brief them afterwards.

Just like customer service has to go beyond the bare essentials to be effective and valued, openness and transparency go beyond checking the City of Toronto Act to see if any laws have been broken.

This isn’t an isolated incident either. It’s a hostile attitude that’s been represented at all night executive committee meetings and in how various motions have been passed or brought up from the Jarvis bike lanes to the Fort York Bridge to the Dundas pedestrian scramble to the port lands fiasco or the citizen advisory committees that were supposed to be brought back to council for a vote (twice!) but have been forgotten or deemed unimportant. It’s this track record that sows distrust into the discourse.

Ultimately, this marks a failure of Team Ford. Sure, they haven’t kept their promises to have openness and transparency (real transparency isn’t voting on every speaking extension) but there’s a larger implication.

Good governance involves connecting people- opposition councillors, regular citizens- to the institutions that represent them. It’s not always easy to be respectful, transparent and open, but if there’s any ‘customer service’ that government should provide, it’s that.