Rob Ford is City Hall’s star pupil. Seriously.

19 comments

1. You also know its the most unscientific research ever done when Del Grande gets an F when he spent the weekend with the Sun’s Sue Anne Levy trying to find ways to cut the $400 million from the city’s budget. Maybe it was becuase they suggested a 6% tax hike on property taxes (even though Del Grande voted against the recent property tax hike of 3%).

2. The Toronto Sun is the newspaper for the illiterate and innumerate. It is a cartoon. Why shouldn’t it promote a cartoon character?

3. “The federation based its grades on how councillors and the mayor voted during this year’s budget debate on 12 of Councillor Rob Ford’s cost-cutting recommendations. Ford, a city council penny pincher, unsuccessfully urged councillors to do away with their free golf and TTC passes, municipal plant-watering services, free food at council meetings and other expenses”

   Those aren’t very objective criteria, are they? Rob Ford wins no matter what.

   Giving Toronto city councillors free TTC passes, a rather inexpensive thing to do in the grand scheme of things, lets others see that Mr. or Ms. City Councillor is trying to do something good for the environment and is just like us other regular people, us transit riders. As noted in the Sun article, compared with their counterparts in Mississauga, they are paid less. Those Mississauga councillors even get a huge car allowance of $17,300. Toronto councillors could have it a lot sweeter for themselves, but they don’t.

   All these cuts that Ford proposed seem to be mostly symbolic. They don’t mean much when the city is facing such a huge problem.

4. Adding to DJ’s comments: Every time he speaks someone has to mention that if Rob Ford is spending $0 on his office, staff and other expenditures it means one of two things; either he’s paying for things out of his own pocket which makes him a liar and a hypocrite OR he’s a much less effective councillor than one that spends their allowances responsibly. On the other hand, it would also be fair to suggest that being a malcontent likely doesn’t cost a lot of money.

   I would agree that councillors probably should have given up their free golf passes a while ago. Although not worth alot of money and mostly symbolic they should realize that when a credit card company has to bail out our skating rinks, the public might need a gesture or two right now. But by pairing that with a call to end municipal plant-watering Mr. Ford took something sensible and made it quite silly. Does he not realize that dead trees and flowers are also very symbolic?

   As for the Toronto Sun (earmuffs kids) well, fuck them anyway. The issue of a silly councillor is certainly worth discussing; the issue of a silly, nearly defunct, irrelevant, bush league local newspaper is not.

5. Ford, a city council penny pincher, unsuccessfully urged councillors to do away with their free golf and TTC passes

   The thing is, the free golf and TTC passes city councillors get don’t “cost” that much at all. There is a difference between their price (ie. the potential revenue lost by giving them free) and their cost, so that eliminating them saves very little, if anything.

   Take the TTC passes, for instance. Even though a year’s worth of Metro passes cost $1200, it doesn’t “cost” the TTC $1200/year to ferry Howard Moscoe around town. Cutting his TTC pass wouldn’t put $1200 into the city coffers.

6. The problem with this article is that the Sun is basically cribbing it all from one side — a lobbyist group.

   The actual report card is here:

   http://www.taxpayer.com/pdf/City%20Council%20Votes%20on%20Waste%20and%20Savings.pdf

   it outlines the specific votes that were used to ‘grade’ the councillors.

   What would make the card more relevant as a data source would be to attach dollar amounts to each specific issue voted on — that way you could at least tell whether there was anything substantive or not being voted on.

   It’s very difficult to get an understanding — from either side of the debate — of where the dollars get spent. Everyone loves to talk in generalities, and you can’t tell the scale of things.

   We should not be so dismissive of the ‘symbolic’ cuts like eliminating free councillor parking or passes, etc. I’ve read the argument ‘it’s only $x million, a tiny fraction of the $500 million we are short, so it’s pointless’ a lot. Well, if David Miller is willing to clumsily hack out service cuts over similar amounts (such as close libraries on Sundays just to save $400k) — then suddenly those “insignificant” amounts got a whole lot more significant to me.

   It will be interesting to see who Miller appoints to this outside panel of reviewers.

7. Notwithstanding everything, that Doug Holyday looks like a socialist seal to me.

   But in all seriousness, if Holyday voted with the Mayor in favour of cutting golf passes, they would no longer exist as a perk today.

8. We should not be so dismissive of the ’symbolic’ cuts like eliminating free councillor parking or passes, etc. I’ve read the argument ‘it’s only $x million, a tiny fraction of the $500 million we are short, so it’s pointless’ a lot.

   I think you are confusing the point. These perks may be worth X, but they only cost Y, and Y is a lot less than X.

   Go back to the TTC example. Providing councillors with free passes doesn’t “cost” the city 44 x $1200 = $52800 (and note that even *this* is a far cry from “$x million”), even though that may be what the retail value of the passes is. Rather, the cost of ferrying around all 44 city councillors via TTC for the year is maybe an extra $250 in fuel and wear and tear on city streetcars…

9. “the folks running the CTF are drinking the same potent booze that Ford consumes at Toronto Maple Leafs games”

   Haha. This made me laugh for several reasons.

10. I should make one further note: there are a lot of ideological councillors, both left and right. But there is no example of Ford on the other side of the political spectrum. To equal Ford’s ardent belief in all things taught by Milton Friedman there would have to be Marxist-Leninist Party member on council.

    And kevin >> I really should have written “drinking the same Kool-Aid” instead of “potent booze”. But I’m a graphic designer who occasionally writes. I’m no Shawn Micallef when it comes to wordsmithing (or a Hamish Wilson for that matter).

11. I bet more people actually read this SUN line up here than in the actual SUN itself. Most of their readers turn right to the sports pages, which aren’t half bad. They skip the right wing stuff — most of them are smart enough to realize that the sun hates them. My dad knew, but he always bought it for the sports and said the rest was “from the dogs butt”.

12. Matt> I’m with you, I’m a lighting designer that’s just starting to blog more frequently so I was starting to feel bad using a crude argument like “fuck them” in regards to The Toronto Sun in my above post. But then I read Adam’s article of Sue Levy’s “proposals” and I decided that however ineloquent, I’ll stick with “fuck the Toronto Sun”.

    And if Rob Ford was spending his money on booze at least he’d be spending it on something. Great ideas have come from some serious drinkers. Hell, there’s a statue of Churchill in front of city hall and for a guy that was pickled much of the time he said some incredibly intelligent things.

13. “Go back to the TTC example. Providing councillors with free passes doesn’t “cost” the city 44 x $1200 = $52800”

    So we should forgo that revenue and just give the service for free when everyone else has to pay for it?

    To extend that argument absurdly, if we provided every taxpayer with free passes it wouldn’t “cost” the city anything either. The only real cost in your view is the operating expense amortized over everyone.

    Sorry, you haven’t convinced me. I’d still vote for cutting the perk.

14. For me, the biggest reason to keep “perks” like TTC passes and golf games is to encourage the councillors to evaluate the city services they are supposed to be overseeing. That way they can discover any potential problems firsthand, rather than relying on constituents to complain.

    They’re also a cheap way to increase the appeal of the position, in order to attract the best candidates. I’d rather offer them a round of golf than a salary increase equivalent to the green fees, since the perk has a lower direct cost to taxpayers.

    But keep in mind that we want our councillors to actually use city services, since they have the power to improve them.

15. For me, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation lost all credibility long ago.

    Anyway, presumably councillors aren’t a big enough group to influence the TTC’s service levels, so the actual costs to carry them around are minimal — e.g. extra fuel for their weight.

    It’s the revenue impact that would be bigger, but still tiny. It all depends on how many councillors kept taking transit. If they all decide to buy their own Metropass, the TTC collects the extra $52,800 yearly; if they all switch to driving, biking, or walking, the city gains nothing.

16. Is the CTF an actual organization, or just a few cranks with a website and a fax machine?

17. I’m w/ Nate on this one. Look at the revenue side versus the cost side. They can pay for their own Metro/Golf passes… Cut the perks.

18. The worst thing about these “perks” isn’t that they cost the taxpayers money, it’s that they’re so clearly in the wrong that having to debate them puts other more important issues on the backburner.

    Perk issues are also easier to debate, compared with wage questions, as they don’t require a councillor to be particularly versed in the subject to have an opinion. For many councillors that’s an ideal situation.

    Councillors make a decent wage and can afford their own Metropasses. In fact, it might be a good idea for councillors to not only “eat their own dog food” as they say but also to feel the effect of rate increases. I also wouldn’t mind seeing who the real enviros are on council. Look to see who immediately trades the TTC for a car when passes aren’t free and you’ll see their true colours.

19. The only problem with the “perks” , and I don’t consider a TTC pass a perk, is that they provide easy bombast for people like Ford to go on about. And it is often the easy bombast that gets the most ink.

    The CTF are actually poorly named as they are not about anything but having zero taxes. They should be called the Tax Libertarians or something else. For the rest of the real world taxes, dues, tithes have been needed to get stuff done and that is not going to change.