Or, How To Get Toronto Financially Back On Track !!

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THE STATE OF OUR TORONTO.


Well, here you are, and you've chosen your Mayor. And you've made that choice based on his promises or ideas for fixing things up.

Good. The man you chose for the job was, fortunately for you, someone who is dedicated to reigning in the super-spending coalition in council.

Now, please just add this one small piece of reality to your support.

Just remember that:

After the Mayor is elected, he or she becomes a member of city council with one vote, same as all the other members of council

• and can only accomplish reforms that are agreed-upon by a majority of the other elected representatives of the city
• after a recorded vote in a council meeting
• during which everyone may express their views
• and vote according to them.

Can a Mayor --after presenting his/her great ideas to council-- with his or her one vote out of 45 (in Toronto we have 44 Councillors and one Mayor) be one-hundred per cent counted on to keep his/her promises, or to bring about the reforms he/she proposes when those reforms depend upon a majority of agreement by all members of council?

No! Of course not!

Nothing any Mayoralty candidate promises or proposes by way of making changes during an election campaign may be guaranteed, because anything that happens after the election depends on that Council vote; and when 45 people are voting for any changes or non-changes in the city, only the vote and not the candidate's promises will determine what happens.

Let's just say that your best chance to evaluate your new Mayor's performance is by examining his or her promises as good intentions as illustrated by what he would like to do rather than what he says he will actually do, because in all likelihood, actually doing it may prove to be a real challenge, and may not happen at all.

When choosing your champion candidate in any election, it is wise to stay away from someone who guarantees to keep promises they can't keep.


If after the election you change your mind about your formerly-favourite winning candidate because you believe his or her promises now seem pretty rash , it's too late to change your mind.

So, to prevent that catastrophe in future, do not choose your candidate because he or she promises certain things will happen if they get elected, because, in a very real sense, you are involved in a true-life contradiction.

You have chosen to face reality by picking the best fantasy.

For example, in the 2010 election,candidate Rossi told you he'll sell off hydro. It doesn't matter that Hydro Corporation is the former Toronto Hydro Commission and selling it off would be tantamount to selling off a part of the city's operation to private interests. Even if it were legal to sell-off parts of the city, he couldn't have done it unless a majority of the 45 councillors agreed to it and after that the provincial legislature, who originally created the Toronto Hydro Corporation to protect us from having it removed from our service agreed to the sale as well. When candidates Thompson and Smitherman told you they wanted to build billions of dollars worth of subways and charge automobile drivers a highway toll to pay for them. It doesn't matter whether the concept of charging one form of transit users exclusively for the benefit of another form of transit user makes any sense or not... they douldn't have done it unless council agreed to go ahead with the toll under the stress of hundreds of thousands of drivers that would be protesting loudly and bringing pressure to bear on their representatives in council to defeat the idea.
candidate Smitherman told you that he'd have completed Transit City for an additional 7 Billion dollars the city would then go into debt --for several generations-- to pay off with increased taxation. But in reality, he couldn't arbitrarily announce that the city would definitely have done it because his desire to go into those kind of deficit numbers depends upon the city council and what they would have wanted to do about it.
our new Mayor, Rob Ford told you that he'd cut the number of councillors on city council by half --in spite of the fact that in the preparation of the Toronto City Charter, the Ontario Legislature actually proposed that Toronto double the number of councillors to two per ward instead of just one in the 2010 election because elected councillors have typically been crushed under their workload and Ontario wanted them to be able to share it with an additional councillor in each riding. In addition to the negative (more difficulty in accessing one's representative directly due to the greater workload producing unavailability) effect of cutting the number of councillors available to serve residents of the city in half, Mayor Ford's plans are going to go for a vote before a new city council that, after they realize the implications of lessening the number of elected representatives on city council, is not going to be thrilled with the ideas of increased resulting workload, eliminating their own positions in an upcoming election, or reducing services to voters. In fact, any candidate can't just march into office and bingo! cut any numbers of anything he or she 'promises' they'll do. Election PROMISES all just hopeful nonsense and flim-flam, designed for the purpose of publicity; i.e., that --in Ford's case-- when you see a candidate desperately floundering about to find ways to cut costs, you'll think he's a really good guy to put in the Mayor's chair because he's cost-conscious without adding the floundering-about factor as a measure of how good a Mayor he might not actually turn out to be.

If you vote for any candidates based on promises they can't guarantee to keep in order to eliminate a deficit they can't eliminate with their proposals, the fantasy you're voting for is an impossibility and, sadly, just a sham.

This is not the entire story, however.

The Mayor is the most powerful member of City Council.

• He is automatically a member of the board of directors of all city corporations and all standing committees, in most cases with the power to hire and fire any other member of either variety of city board or committee members.
• He appoints the heads of all city departments in conjunction with the city Manager.
• He runs the one committee whose responsibility is to choose elected politicians to head the city's departments, and commands the loyalty (and very often the votes) of those politicians, numbering about 25 out of the 45 on Council, who become his caucus.
• This means that on any issue he requests to be put before Council, he has already discussed it with his caucus, who have voted to support it or not, and he walks into city council with an automatic majority vote.
• The only thing the opposition to any of his proposed bills can do to fight them is to show really good arguments why they should not be passed. 99% of the time, the arguments are not good enough.

Be glad you got a Mayor who is strong enough to stay the course through mounting criticism organized by the spendthrift "left" faction on council. Although, had I been elected instead, I would have done things differently; taking a proactive rather than a reactive approach to the office.

I would have done my best --using the power of the Mayor's office-- to remedy various topics you can read or hear about throughout my various websites.

1. Made all initiatives that will benefit you and the city without driving up the deficit a priority after becoming Mayor.
2. Established a course of doing city business that would rid the city of its deficit and enable it to increase its income as a financial power base to serve citizens as they justly deserve to be served without unjustly raising taxes.
   

These are promises I could have kept. And I had some more.

I have consistently pointed out that the voters' chief concern for the 2010 election needed to be the removal of a crippling deficit the city has accumulated over the past 14 years. Just paying the$200 Million in carrying charges we taxpayers dump into that debt every year takes away our opportunity to improve and grow in a reasonable fashion. If our tax money goes to carrying charges on that deficit it can't be spent on needed city services.


I've also shown you quite clearly, and will repeat for you in this series of website essays why the deficit problem can NOT, sadly be fixed by my opponents' clever money-making schemes, and how they might be otherwise effectively addressed.

Most of those candidate promises would, truthfully, have added to our future financial woes for many years and may, in all likelihood, have never shown any real benefit. I make the analogy of the expressed vain promises other candidates have made with wild schemes to end or vastly reduce the deficit in a single blow, of woodpeckers cutting down a rotten tree. No woodpecker ever chopped down a rotten tree in a single peck; and that's true about removing the position of deficit finance the city lives under as well. Like the woodpecker, if we want to chop down the rotten tree, we just have to keep pecking away and pecking away at it until it comes down.

• Conservative spending cuts,
  
• Generating additional capital,
  
• Making saving money a priority over spending it,
  
• Getting rid of the deficit as a city-wide project with everybody getting on the deficit reduction team,
  

will get the job done without extra discomfort and without adding any additional taxes.

So now that I've completed reminiscing about what could-have-been, what proactive steps can city council begin taking to fix things up financially?


There are expensive things we do that maybe can be done less expensively, but we will all have to pull together to do them.

1. Planning. I want to influence city council to stop new spending we can't afford. Where essential new initiatives must be proposed, I would like them to meet two criteria:

• can they be fashioned in such as way as to serve citizens of the city magnificently far into the future ? and if they will, then
  
• how do we make the funds available for them without increasing the deficit? Are there trade-offs that will not rob Torontonians of the benefits due to them as taxpayers?
  

In other words with the agreement of council, new spending will be considered not from the point of view of growth, development, and expansion but rather from the narrower focus of direct benefit derived from it for the city. In other words, city council will be encouraged to re-assume its status as servant of the people rather than assuming as it currently does that the people are the servants of the city.

I also want the city to begin creating wealth for itself. Too long have we been battling with senior governments who are just as fiscally challenged as we for additional funding to cover projects we can not currently afford. Rather than handing new development over to others, the city needs to consider whether and how it can retain ownership of its building renewal projects so that it can become a landlord of a greater number of dwellings than it currently does. This will mean a reduction in the amount of money collected by the new development tax, but will be more than made up for in the value of the land being retained by the city, rents collected monthly, and city services installed gratis in the developments.

A means of making more money assisting entrepreneurs by partnering with them needs to be examined, as does the establishment of the city's own financial institution under existing securities and exchange commission guidelines. The establishment of a city financial institution credit card with strongly discounted buying power within the city limits, and the establishment of group-secured micro loans can be a part of that initiative. The city needs more parking space in the areas serviced by its business districts and it needs more entertainment venues...all of these can be additional sources of ownership income.

Until now, all advisory groups established by city hall have been created to find ways to spend money or to maintain the status-quo. A re-examination of current city funding of potentially unrewarding expenditure also needs to be undertaken by a group of knowledgeable citizenry on behalf of Toronto, and the city's official plan needs to be adjusted to reflect their recommendations.

2. Overtime. People employed by the city will have to try to accumulate less overtime. This would include things like restricting the writing of Activity Reports to Pay Period Time. I think we can save a great deal of money if such reports were to be completed during normal working hours only; and if they are not, then rather than paying overtime for them, an appropriate amount of time will be allotted each day for employees who must write reports in the normal course of their work. Employees who constantly seem to be using more time than deemed necessary to write reports during normal business shifts would be subject to review, as they would be in any non-governmental service sector or private business. Cutting back on work reports completed in overtime will also result in the cutting-back of extra make-work projects I have heard some employees embark upon just for the overtime.

3. More efficient use of Electronic Inter-connectivity. All city departments and public utilities companies will be interconnected with an intranet announcement system to be checked on a mandatory schedule to ensure that each department is aware of what the other departments are doing in case any activity impinges on more than one, and to save any unnecessary duplication of labour. My fourth cash-saving platform: "Road Construction" is an example of how this idea operates as a huge money-saving benefit to the city.

4. Road Construction. Currently, the gas company may dig up the street in a narrow line and fill it back in order to repair an existing pipeline or install new feed lines. Instead of checking the line for leaks before it is filled back, the gas line is buried first, then checked and re-dug up in case any leaks are detected. Within the next several years, the water line will be dug up and filled back. Instead of checking it for pressure capacity before reburying the new piping, the water department workers will bury the lines and then test them for integrity, digging them back up when and if they prove weak anywhere. Sometimes the sewage lines are old and need to be replaced or one sewage line exists for both rainwater runoff and sewage instead of the required two. In those instances, the sewage piping will be dug up, replaced, and the excavation filled back. Within the next 15 or 20 years, the hydro people will be moving some lines underground, and have to dig to install new conduit for them. Sidewalks will have to be repaired over time, necessitating the breaking of the street surface to install curbs and gutters.

All this activity amounts to more money in the pockets of construction companies, but it costs the taxpayer unnecessary dollars through unnecessarily repetitive labour. It costs businesses their livelihoods as streets are closed to allow for the digging. Public transit has to be disrupted several times over several years instead of just once in a predictable time period. A useful new policy would be: "One break, one dig, one job, one refill." This means that when a road is broken or removed for repair, I propose that every single department of the city and companies using below-grade conduits of any kind will be required via a new policy of public works to participate and to renew their underground and resurfacing facilities at that time alone; because if anyone --short of attending to an emergency-- has to re-dig into a completed street within 30 years, they will be required to compensate the city financially for impeding normal traffic through the area, businesses for business lost through the re-digging, and the TTC for re-routing service through the neighbourhood rather than changing the entire route as is currently done. So, when there is a new sewer line being installed, the gas, water, and hydro as well as sewage people had better be on the job installing new conduit . No matter that overhead wiring above street level may not scheduled by hydro to go below grade for some time: the conduits will be ready and waiting when that time arrives. And that work needs to be guaranteed. Re-cementing the underlay and repaving of streets and sidewalks at the same time should be done by bonded paving companies correctly the first time, and guaranteed for thirty years against cracking or crumbling surfaces. Their guarantee in the form of a performance bond will appear on their tendering documents as well as a contribution for voluntary service to the Metro Conservation Authority, which I'll discuss later. In order to avoid having to pay for re-digging, the gas, hydro, water, and sewer contractors will have to make certain that all residential connections are included in the work and no new connections before 30 years have passed will necessitate new digging before the end of the mandatory period.

Let's think into the future of snow removal. While re-paving is going on, an ethylene glycol heating array should be installed and paved in below the road and sidewalk surfaces. Its operating humidistat/thermostat combination would start the glycol warming and flowing instantly when snow or hail falls, using battery-powered circulating pumps recharged by small, silent helical wind generators located on the light posts. The result would obviate the need for shoveling the public sidewalk to make it safe for walking and for clearing city streets with snow removal equipment. Over time, the reduced need for snow melting lake and river-polluting salt and chemicals and sewage-system blocking sand, and the end of snow-clearing machinery consisting of a battalion of noisy, polluting gas powered vehicles and street-destroying ploughs, will pay for the materials and labour required to install the heating systems. The 30 year surface guarantee will protect the heating conduit from being damaged by cracking or the necessity of repaving. After 40 years, the city may begin awarding a points system of tendering meritoriousness to companies whose work meets or exceeds the guarantee period. This will ensure that experienced companies who produce quality workmanship will be given a competitive edge in the tendering process over those whose work in the past has proved --by visibly crumbling-- to be shoddy.

Until all public and private utilities services are co-ordinated this way, a committee of the various services will have to be set up to prioritize where the jobs will be commenced and in what order. Eventually, all concerned services will be able to work in a concerted effort without conflicting over where priorities are located. This may take some time.

Any business adversely affected by the street construction activity will be permitted to apply for tax relief by showing reduced income due to that activity prepared by a chartered accountant or notarized under the Ontario Evidence Act. In cases where a business loss is shown, a reduction in property tax will be given to the business as a relief proportional to the amount of business lost compared to the amount of business during the same period in the year prior to the claim. The claim must be made within six months after the date of opening the road closure to normal traffic flow.

When paving contractors tender for the 30-year guaranteed work, in addition to being bonded for the time guarantee, they will be required to donate personnel or construction equipment to the value of a fixed percentage of the contract to the Metro Region Conservation Authority. Those personnel and equipment will be used to clean and rehabilitate all natural city waterways from wellspring through to delta by permanently blocking all sewage line runoffs of any kind into them as those lines are replaced by runoff management piping into a restoration facility prior to runoff being introduced back into the wild, building walls along grazing lands abutting them, providing spillways, dams, digging logs, rip rap and Gabion baskets to reinforce their banks, removing their concrete ditches, replanting, reforesting, and restoring their banks and marshlands to the extent of the upper edges of their floodplains, dredging their deltas, and flushing them out, and providing pleasing human access to them. The city will partner with other concerned municipalities in this effort, because our natural waterways are an important part of the city's future, and will be the source ultimately of our drinking water.

5. Transit City. The currently proposed "Transit City" is a misnomer, since it does nothing at all to improve public transit in the city. Anyone who takes the trouble to read a commonly-available transit map will discover that all routes to be "improved" by the installation of new streetcar lines along reserved tracks down the center of certain rush hour routes (glorifyingly referred to as LRT, or light rail transit in ROW's or right-of ways) will immediately notice that the streets where the lines are to be installed are already very adequately served by bus and streetcar routes. The skeptical would discover if taking these routes that the most severe jamming of passengers like sardines in a can occurs in the subways and the streetcars, where relief can be provided by adding just a few more vehicles --in this case, buses-- as could be done along the much less crowded bus routes being targeted for the mis-named 'Transit City'. Moreover, since 2006, all diesel buses have begun to be phased out and replaced by hybrid diesel-electric buses whose pollution carbon footprint is a fraction of the diesels; and bus motivation research (including Bombardier's) is currently developing totally electric battery-run vehicles, so the idea that the new LRT lines will be far more pollution free lacks substance.

Toronto does need a Transit City, but one that serves the riding public by making sure that they have adequate service within one or two blocks no matter where they live and that they don't have to wait in the heat or the cold longer than 10 minutes to get a ride.

This means adding some buses onto existing lines, getting rid of streetcars and replacing them with buses that don't get held up if the one in front is stopped and that don't hold up traffic while passengers get on an off and let passengers on and off safely at the curb. Of course streetcars hold more passengers than buses, but that's a red herring. One streetcar doesn't hold more passengers than an extended bus or a double-decker bus, or two buses that run twice as frequently and are more reliable mechanically and easier to repair with aftermarket parts. Streetcars can't go into the side streets after passengers. Streetcars can't do express service runs. Streetcars can't be downsized to accommodate service routes that have fewer passengers using them. Transit City --a real transit city-- won't cost billions of dollars to install, dig up streets and cause businesses to lose custom through lack of parking caused by ROW's and street close-downs while they're being built. A real Transit City will end up serving everyone with great service, keep the roads shared by all kinds of traffic, and cost a small fraction of the proposed phony project.

The problem with the phony 'Transit City' is not just that it doesn't serve to improve Toronto transit service in any way. The major problem with it is its cost. For certain, the cost of installing unnecessary streetcar ROWs down our rush hour routes is going to be a
minimum of 2 Billion dollars; and quite likely to require $7-to-10 Billion to complete. That's only the cost to our city. The province will kick in at least that much again because it is funding the part of Metrolinx that lies outside the city proper, and the phony Transit City is just a misguided version of its in-town component's makeup, composed without taking a careful look at the alternatives.

6. Begin eliminating the debt deficit. Neither the city nor the province has the ready cash to spend on new ventures. Does this worry them? No, because both practice a form of economics called "deficit financing". In its simplest terms, deficit financing means borrowing the money to cover the costs of something you want but can't afford, and paying interest to the lender over time. The lender often doesn't care to recover the principle of the loan so long as it's well secured by the borrowing city, province, or nation, so long as the interest continues to be paid. At any time, the borrower may decide to pay off the loan or keep paying interest instead --which is usually low when the loans get very large-- but until it decides to pay off the loan, the interest is a ready flow of good cash to the lender and the longer this flow of cash continues the better as far as the lender is concerned.

Keeping in mind that the costs for running the city, some 9.2 Billion dollars annually, doesn't really diminish all that much, how does the deficit get paid back? Up until now, where have the city and the province been finding money they didn't previously have so that over and above the cost of running normal business they can also pay back their deficit loans?

Silly question. Of course, it's done by additional taxation. Nowadays, increased property taxes, the car tax, land transfer tax, the property development tax, the billboard tax, the garbage bag tax, increased TTC fare and metropass ridership costs, harmonized sales tax & GST, TIA, recently removed eco Tax, increased Hydro rates are recent additional taxation sucking money out of your pocket to pay for bad fiscal decisions. Additional gas taxes, tobacco taxes, tax on admission to places of amusement (sporting events, theatres, fairs, cultural celebrations, galleries, golf and other recreational pay-as-you-go pastimes, and circuses) and alcohol taxes (including beer) are within the city's power to levy, so you can expect those taxes to be instituted in future . And, of course, $200 Million of that already heavy taxation is directed annually towards carrying the deficit, which stands today at about 3 Billion dollars. Think about it. When the grandiose and totally unnecessary phony Transit City scheme becomes fully funded, the carrying charges will triple to meet the new size of the tripled deficit, and so will the taxation with which to pay them. That kind of deficit and that kind of increasing taxation will continue to be paid by your children and your grandchildren if you are of voting age today. Meanwhile, the city's streets will continue to remain in rough shape with people who have no place to live sleeping on them, and half the community centers and swimming pools will remain closed. Is closing swimming pools a serious matter? Not unless you have lost family members to a drowning who could otherwise have been saved by swimming lessons, and not unless swimming or aqua-fit is your preferred way to recover from injury or stay in shape, and not unless you don't care to learn scuba diving, kayaking, synchronized swimming, boating or lifesaving skills. Recently, the city appointed one of its cleverest and most adroit former Mayors, David Crombie, to head a committee established to find a way to keep swimming pools open. They couldn't do it because there is no money available. Yet the city is committed to spending $200 Million a year to fund a deficit it is bound to increase to build a brand-new streetcar line it doesn't need.

Rather than embarking on such an expensive course, I think Toronto would be better off creating a genuine Transit City, and not going into a debt that will be as much as our entire city budget today. It's important to note that such a debt would make our operating budget-to-deficit ratio 1:1, or about 100%. There are no words to express the insanity of such a move.

7. Citizen participation. One day a year, the Mayor throws a big cleanup party. The rest of the year, people throw their gum on the floors of the TTC stations and the sidewalks all over the city.

How may this be stopped?

Does the city have the power to ban chewing gum sales within city limits? Or to impose sever taxation on gum purchases? After all, a precedent has been set by charging for plastic bags in the supermarkets to prevent pollution. Perhaps the gum manufacturers would like to avoid the city investigating such a possibility by providing Toronto with liquid nitrogen spray equipment and gum scrapers, and specially designed gum disposal baskets. Then, combined with a harshly enforced bylaw against littering, vandals making the gum mess might be stopped. Like the groups who adopt highways and keep them clean, various groups in the city might be interested in adopting a subway station and keeping it gum free in return for having their name as publicity all over the station, even renaming it temporarily for the adoptive group as some major theaters do for their sponsors. An adoptive group might even wish to re-design and renovate its station, which would be fine with me because a great many of the stations are in disrepair, and even if the city paid for materials to do the renovations, the volunteer group would provide the organization and free labour to do the job --assisted, where necessary, by TTC skilled professionals.

Toronto spends large amounts of money each year on planting annuals on the boulevards and planters beside the roadways throughout the city, and on city employees and contractors who do the gardening and maintenance. Meanwhile, there are civic garden groups who tend gardens in the city's parks because they live in the neighbourhood, want their environment to be beautiful, and enjoy gardening. All annual plants need to be replaced with perennials in order to save money spent on both new planting and also on removal of the annuals at the end of the growing season. Interested civic groups could adopt gardens throughout the city, design and plant them with expert city help wherever needed, and hold a competition at the end of the year with cash awards granted to the most impressive groups. Cash awards, new perennials, organization and all, the city will make money on this project from the start, and the amount of money it saves will grow every year.

If the city embarks on a Toronto beautification project, with tax relief given to home owners who beautify their homes with trees and gardens, it will over time become quite a beautiful place to live. I hope that people who live in places that are beautiful tend to be prouder of those places and less likely to destroy their beauty through deliberate vandalism and pollution that currently costs the city an unnecessary expense. People who visit the city will be more encouraged to establish their own homes here. Who wouldn't prefer to live in a city of beauty compared to a city of squalor and unimprovement?

In summation of this series, I have given you three promises I can keep if you choose me as your new Mayor; and what you have been hearing are seven of my ideas for reducing and eventually eliminating our $3 Billion deficit altogether.

Accomplishing any of those ideas will take partnership from the new city council, from you all working towards making Toronto into a beautiful city as it becomes a financial powerhouse, and from the city's business associates. Hopefully, those associates might go along with what I think are commonsense moves for the city, but the real truth is that I don't know for certain how much they will understand that it's all about cutting back spending wherever that spending is unnecessary.

If it wasn't about saving a city drowning in deficit overload, it might not pay to try to make any changes in the existing agreement, for example, withBombardier and the Ontario Government to step back from streetcar orders that were contracted for in 2009. It's a cinch that if some reaching out to their corporation to honour whatever part of the contract has already been honoured by them is not made, and they are not persuaded that it is in the best interests of the city to rewrite that contract we'll have to accept delivery of all 204 of the beasts or end up being the focus of a lawsuit. All we have to offer these business partners in return is accepting delivery of already-started production vehicles and guaranteeing performance of the remainder of the contract in the production of some other kinds of new vehicles to replace the proposed big ungainly streetcar LRT before too many of them are made. Our deal would be as fairly as possible to cover the expenses already laid out by them and to divert the remainder of those funds to other more sensible and money-saving expenditures.

We learned that stopping a deal in mid-performance and not offering compensation ends up costing us dearly when the federal government was successfully sued for $35 Million to cover the costs of the construction companies who did not build the island airport bridge that David Miller claimed would cost us nothing to stop.

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