What to look forward to at Council

It's going to be a busy time over the next two weeks with budget negotiations. Right now is the calm before the storm where the left is waiting for the next piece of information (say, a more accurate surplus) to base their strategy on and force Team Ford to react and explain their insistence on using all of the surplus for reserves. 


That's a tough position for Team Ford to be in if it gets there- budget strategies are pretty esoteric, particularly in contrast to the more concrete alternatives that it could fund like a bus route or student nutrition programs. 


For now, here is your schedule to look forward to. 


Over the next week and a half various councillors are holding town halls in their ward (or nearby ones). It's a chance for people to have their voice heard and ask questions about the budget. Quite a few have already had town halls or consultations, but the table below shows upcoming ones. Kudos to John Parker for holding two in his ward, particularly when he'll be in the position of defending most cuts. 

Councillors will use these sessions as feedback on where to stand on some of the more contentious issues, especially middle councillors Josh Colle and Josh Matlow. 

In the midst of these will the budget wrap-up for the Budget Committee on Monday January 9. There might be a couple of amendments here from Chin Lee which should give a good idea as to where the point of compromise is on various issues. These will likely be voted down handily by the Ford-dominated committee, but also pay attention to how Michelle Berardinetti and Frank di Giorgio vote. These two are more or less necessary votes for Team Ford to win on many issues, and where they deviate could mean the failure of a proposed cut or an amendment down the road.

Once the Budget Committee makes its approval, it will get sent to Executive on Thursday January 12 where there will be lots of media attention and little substance. Behind the scenes it's likely that Jaye Robinson and Michelle Berardinetti will be arguing for the value of various programs or floating different fundraising proposals. Little to nothing will change at this stage except for a couple of smaller cuts that will be saved. Look for these (for instance, a solution to student nutrition funding) to be announced early in the day to start with a good news story, much like preserving windrow clearing and no library closures were pre-emptively announced in previous meetings. Team Ford knows that the budget battle is largely about optics, and managing the news with mayoral announcements is one advantage they have. 

Between the Executive meeting and Tuesday January 17, there will be a lot of horse trading and pressure applied to various councillors as they debate in Council for three days. Matt Elliott's Ford For Toronto Council Scorecard will probably see an uptick in pageviews from City Hall computers too. 

For Council's opposition to win their issues, they'll need a three of Chin Lee, Jaye Robinson, Gloria Lindsay Luby, James Pasternak and Ron Moeser plus everyone to their left (including Colle, Matlow, McMahon and Bailao). Of course other councillors could join them on certain issues, like Frank di Giorgio, Michelle Berardinetti or Gary Crawford, but that works both ways. 

At the very least, there will be plenty to blog about. 

We're Cutting What Now?: Hardship Fund, Christmas Bureau and Child Care Edition

Over the next two weeks there's going to be a lot of talk about which programs and services to cut and which should avoid the chopping block. But you also get the sense that not enough is known about each of these programs, what they do and how much they each cost. 


Over the next week or so I'll do a series here at the Clamshell going through the various programs in a summary format so that when something comes up it's easy to look up information or explain a program to someone else. 


Today: The Hardship Fund, Christmas Bureau and three child care centres


Hardship Fund: This fund is designed to assist seniors, disabled people and the 'working poor' who live on their own and are not using any other kind of social program like ODSP with the purchase of needed prescription medication, wheelchairs, prosthetics, glasses and dental care. The idea behind the fund is to act as a care provider of last resort for people who fall through the cracks of other programs. 


The numbers: The Hardship Fund assists 1,300 people annually at a cost of $900,000. This works out to 60 cents on the average property tax bill. 


The case for it: Treating healthcare issues before they become worse saves much more money done the line. For instance, it's better to provide the needed prescription medication for an individual at home than wait for a chronic condition to escalate to the point where he or she needs critical care. But more than the hard costs, there's also the matter of respect and dignity both for the people in need and the city at large. After all, how can our city have respect and dignity for itself if it sells out those values for its seniors for 60 cents? 


The case against it: Not only does every little bit help, but the Hardship Fund is exactly the kind of thing the provincial government should cover. Toronto is not in the business of covering the province's social service costs. Cutting the Hardship Fund comes with a request for the province to do its share and fund the difference, and with this we can go towards the more fair and equitable relationship with the province that Toronto needs. 


The politics: In September, there was a 23-22 vote to cut the fund in principle. Jaye Robinson was in dissent while Gloria Lindsay Luby, James Pasternak and Ron Moeser voted to cancel it. 


Candidate Rob Ford: When I'm Mayor, the gravy train party will come to an end, ladies and gentleman, and more money will be spent on seniors. That's where money should be spent. -Rob Ford speaking at a midtown seniors mayoral forum in June 2010.  


Further reading: The Toronto Star did a good profile on a senior who used the fund to get a bed she needed that would not give her bed sores: 


The Wellesley Institute also did a report on the fund.


The city website. 


The Christmas Bureau: Since 1956, a bureau that is run in the last few months of the year to co-ordinate charitable donations from outside groups. The idea is that one central body that has access to identifying the people in need of Christmas gifts (through social services) can more efficiently allocate the gifts,leaving outside groups to fundraise and promote their cause, which they are better geared to do. 


The numbers: The Christmas Bureau assists 138,000 children and families at a cost of $151,000. This works out be ten cents on the average property tax bill. 


The case for it: If this program didn't exist, it would be exactly the kind of thing Rob Ford would want. The Christmas bureau is already an efficiency; it ensures that there's not a duplication of resources and that the best candidates for gifts are connected with the program. Additionally, it's exactly the kind of thing that that makes our city more livable and lends credence to 'Toronto the Good'. 


The case against it: The Christmas Bureau is a nice to have but not a must have. This is the kind of program that the city should let the non-profit sector to take over. 


The politics: In September, there was a 25-20 vote to cut the bureau in principle. Ford ally Michael Thompson was in dissent while Ana Bailao, Chin Lee, Gloria Lindsay Luby, Ron Moeser and Jaye Robinson supported cutting it. 


Mayor Rob Ford: It's our goal to make this holiday season a festive and memorable one for everyone in the city of Toronto - Ford at the launch of the City of Toronto toy drive 


Further Reading: Torontoist did an excellent summary of the Bureau a few weeks ago. 


The city website 


Child care: The budget proposes closing three child care centers: St. Mark's at Queen and Lansdowne, Belleview at College and Bathurst and Greenholme-Albion in Etobicoke. Meanwhile, existing child care fees could rise $500 per child. 


The numbers: There are currently 55 city-run daycares and closing these three would save around $1 million annually, or 65 cents on the average property tax bill. The three daycares provide 100 child care spots and there is currently a waiting list of 20,000 for the city's child care subsidies. 


The case for it: Judging by the waiting list, there's clearly not enough capacity for child care demand as it is, let alone cutting it. These programs ensure proper care for children and enable parents- particularly single moms and low-income earners- to stay off social assistance, work, progress in their careers and add to the tax base rather than taking away from it. 


The case against it: With the province providing all-day kindergarten, the need for child care will diminish. Besides, what are we doing in this business anyway? Can't the private sector do it better?


The politics: A September vote to not pursue child care cuts lost 25-20, with Jaye Robinson, Chin Lee, Gloria Lindsay Luby, James Pasternak and Ron Moeser voting against it. 


Candidate Rob Ford: Ford pledged to invest more in child care with the money found from city gravy, as seen in his Financial Plan Backgrounder below:

Further Reading: The Toronto Star did a piece on this issue a few weeks ago that provides a good outline of how the debate will proceed in Council. 


The city website. 

A City Council Year in Review

It's the last day of a very eventful year in Toronto politics, and I would be remiss if I didn't take this chance to collect some of the stories and moments that caught our Twitter-addled attention. In particular, there's a number of stories and moments that make you sit back and think, 'Wow, that did happen. How could I forget?' 


The answer: easily. The non-stop rush of stories, quotes and proposals was like a permanent diet of sugar with lots of highs and lows but little substance. So yeah, you can forget things in that state, just like I'm sure I missed lots of great moments in my summary (leave comments to fill in the gaps). 


But I would like to thank everyone who checked in at this website in 2011, gave it a chance and added their support. I hope to work on it more in 2012 than I did in 2011 and that you'll continue to read.  


Top words of 2011:

• windrow 
• depute
• uncompetent
• cuts efficiencies
• liberry

Celebrity cameos: 

• Margaret Atwood 
• Woody Harrelson
• Marg Delahunty
• Yelly Granny

Headscratching moments from Giorgio Mammoliti:

• Proposes to turn island into red light district 
• Videotapes Dyke March
• Rails against alleged opium dens
• Creates pro-Ford Facebook page and pledges to weed out 'communists' 
• Claims Janet Davis bullies him 

Best memes:

• Rob Ford Metro Bowl kickoff 
• #matlowmurdermystery 
• Ford Math

Fake numbers of the year:

• 774 million 
• 35% property tax increase
•  4.6% police budget reduction

Quotes of the Year:


"It's pretty hard to hide 300 pounds of fun." -Rob Ford responds to questions on transparency and accountability. 


"[The questionnaire is] not statistically valid" -Denzil Minnan-Wong on the city-crafted KPMG citizen survey, which didn't produce his desired results. 


"It's not backroom planning, it's called backroom vision" -Doug Ford on his surprising Port Lands proposal


"One thing we realized when we got to City Hall was that the bureaucrats...are working hard: 12, 15, 16 hours a day. Joe Pennachetti is working hard. So there's not a lot of 'gravy' at City Hall, per se." -Nick Kouvalis on waste


"We're going to be outsourcing everything that's not nailed down." -Doug Ford


"That really happened?" Moments:

• Karen Stintz argues that the Jarvis bike lanes prevent a constituent from getting home in time to feed her family
• Doug Ford talks about Tim Horton's, Margaret Atwood and libraries
• Doug Ford is super charming at Budget Committee
• Denzil Minnan-Wong rides a bike 
• Doug Holyday proposes road tolls
• Frances Nunziata reads the Pride Proclamation
• Doug Ford writes a $1000 cheque 
• A flying shark in council

Council's best votes:

• The Port Lands consensus
• Changing minds on public nurses
• This speaking extension vote from Kristyn Wong-Tam. 

Neglected issues:

A potential 2014 Ford sign, graciously designed by Matt Fucking Elliott

• The report on citizen committees which was supposed to be delivered in July (still undelivered)
• The terrible Astral 'info pillars,' given a pass until it was too late
• The potential sale of TO Hydro- a huge financial decision which receives limited attention because it's complicated and there are limited numbers for public consumption
• The various civic and board appointments made, which were largely political and lacked diversity. 

Disappointing Votes:

• Gloria Lindsay Luby votes against looking into studying waste outsourcing west of Yonge St. further, arguing that it won't change anyone's mind. A couple of weeks later we learn that Green for Life, which won the contract, bought out Turtle Island, which services Luby's Etobicoke. From this, Etobicoke's garbage collection is now unionized and Luby was upset. 
• Josh Colle had promised to support keeping the Jarvis bike lanes in e-mails to constituents. But when the Mayor placed a hold on a Lawrence Heights Development Project vote, Colle got the message and changed his mind. 
• Jaye Robinson, arguably the most important swing vote, purposefully sits out a key vote on civic appointments at the side of the chamber. The vote is a tie, giving the Mayor a key victory that day. 

Neville Park tells Twitter to channel its anger

Best articles:

• Ivor Tossell goes on an extended riff on Fordian uncompetence in the Toronto Standard, and it's pure gold. 
• Trish Hennessy does important and startling research on Rob Ford voters in this post on her blog Framed in Canada.
• The morning after the most exciting day in 2011 Toronto politics, Edward Keenan manages to keep his eyes open to write about the deputation slumber party and the smell of democracy in the morning. His Ford fact checks were also must-reads. 
• Cityslikr is at his passionately indignant best in this post on how all you need are 23 councillors.
• You could choose any number of articles from Matt Elliott's Ford For Toronto, but let's go with this one on the false budget choices the Mayor proposes. 
• Other excellent writing in 2011 came from Openfile's John McGrath, Torontoist's Hamutal Dotan, the Globe's John Lorinc, and the Toronto Star's Daniel Dale. In fact, one of the great things to come out of 2011 from Toronto politics was the great writing that appeared (I'm neglecting a bunch), a lot of which appeared online.  

Issues for 2012:

• Budget
• Collective Bargaining / Lockout
• Ford's Transit Proposal
• A proposal to cancel the five cent bag fee 
• 25% reduction in Land Transfer Tax
• A prolonged discussion on whether Ford will go to Pride and lots of guessing even though no one will really know anything, including Ford's inner circle. 
• Port Lands follow up in June
• TO Hydro sale in January
• Whether any Ford allies will defect 

This unicorn chaser from Neville Park summarizes the Sheppard plan

Save Transit City: The Website

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Library Board Meeting, December 12, 2011: Storify

The Port Lands consultation wasn't the only major city event happening at the Reference Library tonight as the Library Board discussed cutting 19,400 library hours, 300,000 items from collections, bookmobiles and literacy programs. 


Like the Port Lands meeting, I was unable to attend this due to illness but put together a Storify to track the meeting for posterity's sake. Pay special attention to Stephen Dulmage, who has emerged as one of the most hilarious secondary characters in the City Hall circus. 


Special credit goes to Patrick White (@nut_graf), David Nickle (@davidnickle) and Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler (@adamcf) for their diligent reporting. 

Port Lands Consultation: Storify

Remember way back when, three months ago, when the city was caught up in its absurdist Port Lands drama? Yeah, crazy times. 


Part of the consensus agreement was to hold public consultations on the plan for the Port Lands, with special attention to 'accelerating' it. This will result in a report in June, and tonight was the first meeting. 


What continues to amaze is the depth of public understanding and enthusiasm for this issue. I'll let the Storify below tell the rest (may take 15 seconds to load):

Quick thoughts on deputations and attacks

Over at the Posted Panel, Goldsbie and Chris Selley discuss the nature of deputations and at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke Lucas Costello guest posts on how to make an effective deputation within the narrow constraints provided. I thought I'd pile on because I feel the deputation process is a telling site to understand the current administration and the engaged public's (mostly Ford critics) relationship to it. 


 During the budget committee meeting last week Doug Ford commented that this administration has 'conducted more public consultation than any administration in history.' Which may well be true for Toronto, but is a very different thing from listening to what the deputants have to say. 


 We know what to expect from these deputations now. Some are passionate and heartfelt, others informed and nuanced and there are some that are neither here nor there. Instead of the deputations being a place to understand where people are coming from, what their priorities are and how to make better policy decisions, it's about politicking. 


 But for Team Ford the politicking isn't just between them and the likes of Gord Perks, Shelley Carroll and Janet Davis. Instead this is extended to the general public that feels compelled to show up to share their views. 


This was on full display on Thursday morning, when Team Ford sent in Frances Nunziata and Giorgio Mammoliti to aggressively question and undermine the deputants. This tactic was borne out of a sense that the Mayor's team lost the message of the day before (they did) and would assertively take it back. It was a very Parliamentary dialogue in its worst sense, filled with ardent and weak attacks. 


Nunziata asked whether deputants would be willing to voluntarily pay more taxes on an individual basis, thus betraying her lack of understanding for what taxes really are. Mammoliti asked where deputants were from so as to dismiss their opinions if they happen to live downtown. Doug Ford offered commentary that essentially none of the deputants offered solutions, although what he really meant was that few offered solutions he personally agrees with. 


 This approach is a real shame too. The deputation process is in principle an excellent idea, but the fact that the administration sees the people who use it as part of the official opposition (and thus fair game for attack) is another sign of the cyncicism and means-to-an-end approach that underlies Team Ford. 


 On the other hand, the fact that 350 people sign up multiple times in spite of the fact they know they won't be listened to (in fact, actively undermined) speaks to the public valuing the deputation process much more than some politicians do, and it's heartening that there's that energy to protect it.