At the risk of inviting abuse on the comment string, I found myself wondering last week whether Jarvis Street is the hill on which the left wants to die.
For the record, I strongly disagreed with the Ford camp’s bid to erase the Jarvis bike lanes, although I also revisited my irritation at the fact that David Miller’s council took such a long time to implement the City’s cycling strategy.
Bottom line: Jarvis does represent a symbolic win for the brothers Ford, an election promise kept for the car war camp. In the long run, however, it may also prove to be a pyrrhic victory (look it up). Symbolic politics, as Miller knew well, cuts in both directions, and Jarvis may become a rallying cry for 2014.
But right now, Jarvis is not the main course, and council’s left would do well to move on, and quickly.
Whether by accident or design, the lengthy council fight over Jarvis played right into the Fords’ hands because it drew so much attention away from the KPMG core service review reports, which the city manager’s office has opted to release in installment form over the course of two weeks. (It’s like a made-for-TV mini-series, except you already know the story ends badly.)
So far, we know KPMG didn’t find much waste. Some services are delivered slightly above the mandated standard. Cutting certain expenditures, the consultants said in conspicuously neutral tones, entails risk. Other functions (daycare, the environment) may not be within the mandate of a municipal government.
Indeed, the question lurking around the margins of KPMG’s reports isn’t, “Where’s the gravy?” The true question is, “Should the City of Toronto be doing things like providing subsidized daycare?”
The debate isn’t just about accounting; it’s also about ideology. But we knew that already.
While much of the media coverage of the core service review so far has focused on the options KPMG has put forward, there’s been absolutely no hint yet as to what city manager Joe Pennachetti intends to propose to the brothers in terms of a menu of cuts and service reductions, as well as the associated savings.
I’m guessing his office has already roughed out its recommendations, but there are political niceties to consider, so the reports must still grind through the standing committees before Pennachetti and the mayor’s office get to the big reveal.
As a result, we have an interesting little pause in the proceedings, one that presents the left with two potential courses of action.
The easier one is to adopt a reactive, opposition party–style approach. Either the mayor’s office or Pennachetti will cough up a list of recommended cuts, whereupon the left will go into attack mode, warning darkly of the mean, uncaring city Ford is preparing to foist onto Torontonians.
The more difficult course is for the left to capitalize on the interregnum and draw up an austerity plan that does not aim to maim. As the members of Karen Stintz’s Responsible Government Group attempted during Miller’s second term, the left can pitch its alternative to the mushy middle instead of simply lobbing grenades.
As Jack Layton would advise: proposition, not opposition.
One could argue the Fords will make their political choices and face the consequences in 2014. But certain cuts implied by the KPMG reports (and we haven’t even seen the ones geared at the TTC, public health, or the library board) are so extreme that they point towards a radical shift in the role of local government.
Some centrists may already be feeling uneasy about the implied changes. But as long as there’s no fiscally credible and politically plausible Plan B out there for them to consider, they’ll be easy marks for the Fords’ whips.
By the way, if a Plan B hinges on an unspecified Provincial bail-out, it automatically fails the smell test. The story of the Ford administration is all about competence, so it now falls to his critics to show voters that they could lead the city within the context of the current fiscal vice-grip.
Photo by Padraic
38 comments
I think Ford’s opponents should make the case against him on his own terms. How much are wasting taking out bike lanes, $200 000? How much is it costing to go nuts on graffiti? I don’t know, but someone should be able to produce a figure. How much to cancel Transit City? Millions? Ford has his own pet projects that cost the city money. He should be made to account for every one of them. Nothing is too small, remember that Ford made his name freaking out over stuff like $50 000 to water plants.
Let’s remember that Ford didn’t get elected by having a coherent alternative, he was always yelling about waste and not doing much else. If the left beats him at his own game, it blunts his populist strength.
Well done, more objective commentary like this will help settle down Council. I like the Project 23 idea proposed by AFUITBS and more political plays from those who can’t see the logic in RF’s behaviour.
For all the times I speak up in criticism, let me say nice article John. I agree.
I’ll only add that the lack of a persuasive “opposition narrative” is a manifestation that though partisan politics are already a reality in Toronto council, they need to be brought into the open air.
You said it perfectly here “The debate isn’t just about accounting; it’s also about ideology.”
Its the total budget! THE HUGE overbloated pay for everything everyone budget! Why do some get.. some not? Leaves and snow, day care, duplication of Land Lord Tenant Issues, Multi Layers of Servicing. Is there no Technology savings?
If your credit card was over limit 774 Million and they were raising your interest rate because you are spending too much would you not cut back?
OK Mr. Adam Vaughan, every project has merit You are in politics to make the tough decisions we need NOT to Pander to every vote. Fix teh crumbling Bridges! Fix the roads! Improve the water mains! Fix the transit dammit! Fix the waterfront planning! Tax new construction Increase Lot Levy’s. Fix the Toronto Housing your own to code. Toronto is its own largest violator!.
Instead we fight about brown bagging leaves or bicycle lanes.
Stop spending money you do not have! Saying let the rich pay? They are not here watching us, they moved on.
David Pylyp
Accredited Senior Agent
ITA Dan, if the mayor/members of council will insist this is about accounting not ideology (JL I will be using that as a soundbite, thank you) then they need to be beaten at their own game..
Trying to get away from funding arts and culture is my personal beef – I wrote the following post and sent it to Shelley Carroll so she could have a laugh (albeit grim) and suggested she pass it on to certain members of council. It involves simple, regular guy math and I included pictures for a mental health break as well. http://tinyurl.com/3uor8zr.
If some refuse to understand the experience, I say the numbers don’t lie.
Agree 100%, and we have already started to see some rumblings to this effect, with some councillors taking issue with the projected deficit number, arguing that the Ford camp is using a larger-than-likely deficit projection to justify larger-than-necessary cutbacks.
It might be more worthwhile, though, for progressives to hold their fire until the right issues the list of cuts. Wait for the public pushback to come, and then loudly proclaim that it does not need to be so, and look like heroes in the process.
It is also important to get some perspective on the KPMG reports. They are only the first round. They identify what services the City absolutely needs to provide, and what services the City could eliminate or cut back. That is a fairly broad-brush review. It doesn’t have much to do with priorities within those required areas, or ways of making required services operate more “efficiently”. Arguably, that’s where Ford Nation likely expects the “gravy” to appear. They don’t take issue with, say, most of Public Works being considered a “core service”, but they believe that it is full of staff that are sitting around doing nothing, and all it takes is someone to come in to lay down the law, and ZAP! you get improved service with fewer resources.
I looked it up, and it was spelled “Pyrrhic”.
I don’t know, I rather like making Jarvis the hill on which to die. Of all the stupid head-in-sand decisions Our Fordship has made to date, it is the richest in symbolism and the easiest to explain to the masses.
It’s not terribly difficult to come up with fifty pictures of bike lanes and streetscape improvements in other major cities and then show dumpy Jarvis in comparison. No other city is taking out bike lanes or pedestrian space or landscaping to put in 1950s crap like reversible car lanes…. I mean, it would be one thing if council voted to kill the bike lanes in lieu of tree pits and wider sidewalks, but they are putting the middle lane back! It’s just so obvious that Toronto is doing something backwards to everyone else. (Go ahead and google “remove bike lanes” and you only get Toronto results…)
You can make direct apples-to-apples photo comparisons to show Ford is dead wrong on Jarvis, and I wouldn’t throw that away. It’s much more difficult to do the same with more abstract concepts like LRT vs BRT or fiscal accounting formulae…
@Michael — Capital idea! 😉
Wait…
I hope he reads this, but David Pylyp, what are you saying? Your argument is just a lot of vocal rhetoric, going nowhere. “The rich” haven’t moved on, most of Canada’s billionaires live in Toronto.
What is it about Adam Vaughan’s voting pattern you have a problem with?
Explain how the argument “stop spending money you don’t have” sensibly follows after five demands for massively expensive funding.
How much money do you think gets spent on bicycle lanes by the city?
My apologies if I’m poking the troll, everyone else, but I really don’t understand what Mr. Pylyp is saying.
I assume he’s in favour of hiking taxes to pay for all the infrastructure demands he has?
Some unsolicited advice should the left decide to come up with a plan b. Explain what services you are trying to save and why, the trend so far has been to rage against the Mayor over every potential cut – you need to be far more selective. Snow removal and garbage collection are non starters for anyone who lives in a condo and could potentially backfire for you if your plan includes “saving” the service since people are already upset they are paying a tax for a service that they do not receive. Arts funding is also a weak point the left likes to argue that the arts create a “better” city but what I think is great art could be crap to you and vice versa even worse the trend of modern art to be controversial almost guarantees that a vocal constituency will want it defunded.
It is also important that you be far more consistent in your arguments during the federal and municipal elections many liberals questioned the law and order agenda pointing to the fact that the crime rate has been falling for years which means you should not turn around and despair cuts to the Toronto Police force even if you think you’ve caught Ford being “inconsistent”. We either need the cops we have or we don’t.
Lastly understand “the big picture”. Governments world wide are under pressure to reduce debt and balance their budgets therefore you are facing a strong headwind if you want to maintain the status quo and raise taxes.
The left-right thing is not ideological – it’s cultural. David Miller allowed suburban voters to look at City Hall and see only (as Karen Stintz once put it) “bags, bottles and bicycles.” And after Miller’s apparent capitulation to unions during the strike, these voters had had enough. I firmly believe that Rob Ford was elected because he seemed like a regular guy who was on their side. He would stop the gravy train, sure, but he was not elected as a small government tax-cutter.
And Jarvis may have soaked up a lot of the pinko oxygen recently, but I doubt suburban voters paid any attention to it. I think they have been focused on the KPMG reports, and are now beginning to envision how their city will change if these proposed cuts go through.
If the left wants to build momentum, it needs to frame the issues in non-pinko terms, to imagine how this all might appear to typical Rob Ford voters, many of whom are beginning to suspect they have been swindled.
And so, Rob Ford’s critics don’t need to present an alternative tax-cutting proposal or policy document; they need to present an alternative narrative, expressed in the language of the typical voter who probably does not read Spacing.
The Jarvis bike lane issue is not a vote getter outside of a small downtown group. Service cuts touches everybody and that is where Ford will meet his downfall. The Star and the Globe both had stories today about how Fords numbers make no sense. Showing that he is no “fiscal manager” gets at the core of his credibility.
1) I like the idea of putting forward an alternative budget.
2) As for Jarvis, it depends which part of the ‘left’ you’re talking about. Firstly, not all cyclists are left-leaning. But let’s ignore that for now. More importantly, we should make a distinction between the public, the media, and Council members. Should left-leaning Councillors make Jarvis their #1 issue. No, probably not. But in terms of public organising, and advocacy, it is the #1 cause to be focusing on. Most of Ford’s attacks so far have been aimed at things we DIDN’T have yet. The fort york bridge, Transit City, etc. It’s hard to organise people to save something they never had. Jarvis is different, for a few reasons:
1) It’s NOT “an election promise kept “. Ford said during the election that he WOULDN’T remove the bike lane. This is only one lie, in a long string on lies, that lead to the removal.
2) The democratic process was trampled to death in order to get the Jarvis vote passed. It would never have happened, even we had been given ANY opportunity for the public to actually weigh in.
3) We have a year to organise.
4) People are angry, because their safety is at risk – not just their convenience.
5) The momentum is there.
6) The symbolism works in our favour. Jarvis is a street that works for everyone. It has four lanes for cars, and two for bikes. It’s a moderate approach – the embodiment of the mushy middle. A road for everyone. A complete street. Isn’t that the approach we’d like to see for all policy development?
Councillors, in the meantime, should be focusing on the budget and the KPMG report. (and insisting on democratic process)
One last thing: The left should also wake up to voting reform. Plurality elections make a mockery of our democracy, pushing out community-based voices, polarising elections, allowing unpopular councillors to “win” their seats over and over, and ensuring that the majority of voters (who are mostly moderate or left-leaning) can be ignored.
The bike lanes shouldn’t have been here in the first place. The EA didn’t recommend them and the Cyclist Union went outside of the public process to get them. Now the traffic will go back to what it was with none of the improvements. Shame on them. The whole City loses on this one.
@ John
For the record I voted for Rob Ford and I live in the Junction. I voted to break the union grip on Toronto and to have a municipal government that could contain costs. While it is true that the Mayor’s record has been a bit of a mixed bag I do not feel swindled quite the contrary I feel exhilarated. I feel there is an opportunity for the Mayor to embrace a Canadian city sized version of Ron Paul’s vision. A libertarian utopia where government is stripped to the basics and the city is built by the people who live in it from the money in their pocket rather than on high by liberal architects like Miller, Vaughn or Spacing. A city by the people for the people. Far from fearing the loss of city services Toronto should be exited at the prospect of how few of them we actually need.
Because government is not of-the-people. Love that that part gets left out of the libertarian ideology. But, point of order: Spacing hasn’t yet been elected to office. Dunno how that would work, maybe Ron Paul has some ideas.
Ahh the old Jon Stewart defense (paraphrased) we’re just a blog.no one here is elected so we don’t contribute to discourse in any way. Whatever dude.
No, I hope we contribute a lot, dude. What you said suggests you are confused about magazines and government though.
If you keep reading Joe S., the question I have for a minimalized government is this:
For millenia–for the first third of Toronto’s existence–cities managed sewage and garbage services by not providing them at all. It is very costly to maintain all those underground pipes and treatment facilities for the sewage works, and garbage garbage is a very finicky and costly matter. Traditionally, neither are services provided by local government, or any government. Both are late 19th century innovations.
On the other hand, for millenia, people–specifically young children–died of horrible diseases and infections that… it turns out… were entirely preventable, if only they hadn’t been expected to live in the midst of other people’s refuse and filth. But, as one acquaintance of mine has observed, history doesn’t remember them, and there’s not an omelette without broken eggs, so why care?
So, my question: would you agree to eliminate garbage collection and the sewer system, and their enforced usage entirely, in order to save a couple hundred dollars in property tax payments? It’s an easy way to keep government out of your face and property, right?
Curiously yours,
R.
You’re right to argue that it’s about ideology rather than money, although “ideology” implies a level of coherence that this bunch hasn’t demonstrated thus far.
But you don’t need a whole alternate narrative to demonstrate that Ford was talking out of his nether regions when he guaranteed no service cuts, and that he’s been pulling his numbers from the same place ever since.
Great piece, John.
“But right now, Jarvis is not the main course, and council’s left would do well to move on, and quickly.”
Council’s left will. It’s Toronto’s (downtown, middle class) activist left that’s less likely to get the message — and much to the Fords’ benefit. Politically it’s got no legs, but it sure does get our wheels spinning, and lately it seems like that’s all that matters.
Ironically, I think two terms of David Miller doing all the lifting for “progressives” (or whatever we’re supposed to call ourselves) also led to some serious political atrophy. People let him handle all the talk about barriers and inclusion and harmonization, so when the less wealthy, more excluded wards rose up and voted Ford, downtown activists had precious little language to deal with it, or even talk about it.
“Ford nation” has been decried as a simple culture war, but so far it’s the civic-minded hipsters (that’s not derogatory!) of the old city mostly latching on to lifestyle issues as if they were political life-or-death.
I do agree with Mez that there’s potential in the Jarvis issue, but I don’t agree it has potential just on its own merits. It has potential as a symbol of a much deeper problem with the right-wing’s approach: contempt for community. Downtown cyclists are just getting a taste of what many other communities have been having to swallow for decades.
The Jarvis debate has been interesting, especially with many new people getting involved. So, (SHAMELESS PLUG) I tried to tease out some of these issues in a strategic City Council primer – cheggitoot: http://linebreaks.com
Anyone who thinks that focusing on the removal of the bike lanes on Jarvis is the way to galvanize mass opposition to Ford really needs to give their head a shake… or two … or three.. It simply is not resonating with the ‘masses’ in the way that those posting on this site would like.
Maybe it’s not about the masses samg – not just yet. But a big chunk of the mass do bike. No heading shaking will change that.
This is not about the masses, SAMG. It’s about providing safe bike routes across the city. I agree this is not about getting the swing voter in North York to dislike Ford; this is much more about building a city, not tearing it down.
@ Richard
Would I get rid of government provided garbage and sewage collection so that individuals can choose their own (private) providers? Certainly. Would any children be harmed by this transition? No. Would service improve? Beyond a doubt. Without rehashing all of the issues here our police do not stop crime (see G20, Mothers Day Tamil standoff), our garbage men do not collect garbage (countless newspaper articles) and when they do they mishandle it (Star expose on the green bin program) and sewage does not get processed (see $150K fine to the city of T.O. for improper handling). The idea that big government should handle anything more than interest payments on our outstanding debt is a sham that Torontonians need to be disabused of. Individuals can do it better, cheaper, in a more environmentally friendly way and without the strikes. Moving individuals, families, blocks, neighborhoods and cities off the grid is not moving backward – it is evolving beyond the broken model that started with “The War of the Currents” in the 1880s.
Hi Joe,
Aren’t you a little concerned your argument seems to boil down to relying on the basic competence, and decency of individual human nature?
Again, everyone was entitled in the 1560s and 1820s to have their sewage and garbage handled privately. Not coincidently: typhus, cholera, and bacterial infections killed millions… mostly children, who can’t help the neighbours they get or the parents they have to raise them. If just being “off the grid” was the answer, then it seems to me the competence and decency you inherently expect within individuals would have come forward, and we wouldn’t have had the ghastly disease and mortality statistics we did.
I mean, if you’re making the case for a less intrusive state. Aren’t real world examples like Haiti and Uganda and Yemen pretty solid examples of the type of society that produces? I don’t think those governments are doing much more for the average citizen than effectively “paying off the interest on the debt”.
R.
Joe Smith, I’m not sure I understand why you believe the private sector would inherently be able to do things more efficiently and more cheaply than the public sector.
Have you considered what happened to the London Underground when they experimented with privatization of services? It ended up as a failure, costing the government and the people more than it would have not to bother. (See: http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2010/05/11/london-undergrounds-privatization-experiment-dead-as-remaining-ppp-is-bought-out/)
Have you considered that attempting to privatize municipal services might turn out more or less the same way? Do you have any examples of the privatization of city services ending up being a great success for ordinary people?
I think it’s a fallacy to assume that incompetency is a trait exclusive to the public sector alone. We can exchange examples of city services being inefficient as much as we like, but that doesn’t necessarily prove that the private sector would do a better job.
@Smitty, @Mez,
I have less and less patience for symbolic politics.
David Miller won in 2003 because he told Torontonians that a busy island airport would ruin the waterfront and, what’s more, indicated the city’s willingness to sacrifice other communities.
Mea culpa: I accepted the argument. But the island airport hasn’t ruined the waterfront, as best as I can see. The metaphor didn’t pan out. What’s more, Miller gave Porter a lot of free advertising.
Rob Ford won in 2010 because he told Torontonians that there’s a war on the car. Regardless of what he said during the campaign, the Jarvis Street bike lanes were a useful symbol of the alleged war, and had to be sacrificed. It was inevitable.
BUT: Council’s decision to erase Jarvis won’t ease congestion downtown, nor will it keep cyclists off Jarvis or any other road, for that matter. The metaphor won’t work out. What’s more, Rob Ford has given the Cyclists Union a lot of free advertising.
You can see where I’m headed. The city is far too complicated for metaphors, with the possible exception of McLuhan’s notion of a global village. So while symbols work for campaign strategists, they don’t work for ordinary citizens who depend on city services to a greater or lesser degree. I fully recognize that a Plan B alternative to the core service review won’t succumb readily to sound bites. But the councillors who don’t hold municipal government in contempt — left, right and centre — have an obligation to articulate the value of we have in this city to residents who have busy lives and may not be paying as much attention to these decisions as activists may want.
Torontonians, including the mayor’s supporters, will certainly become aware of what the Fords have approved in their name after the fact. But for the next two months, councillors, of all political stripe, have an opportunity to take back this debate. And not, I’m hoping, with symbols.
@ Richard
I have unshakable faith in the decency and competence of ordinary people so I have no concern about relying on it.
I just do not see the relevance of the examples you have given so I will not be replying to them.
@William
My example of privatization working off the top of my head would be Sandy Springs Georgia. We could go back and forth on this so let me just say that in my view there has been a steady and frightening degradation in the quality of public services under Miller and Mcguinty. Caledonia alone if it happened anywhere but a G8 country would be evidence of a failed state so in my view all options need to be on the table urgently. If you were a resident of Caledonia who would you trust to protect you and your family the OPP or Blackwater? Think about it.
@Shawn, Moya… the comment about the “masses” was alluding to something Iskyscraper said about how the Jarvis lanes decision was the one most easy to to explain to the “masses” about how wasteful Ford is being. I’m not one to say that people should not advocate for things they feel are important. The point I was making (which I think Lorinc and Scottd and some others also make) was that at this point in time, fighting for Jarvis lanes is not likely to change anyone’s min… particularly since their creation was highly acrimonious. I did not vote for Ford and I believe it’s important to continue to challenge what he’s doing in many areas. But I can see why he’s mayor. And I can also see that the bulk of those challenging him have, in most cases, vastly over-estimated the resonance of the particular issues they are focusing on (eg Jarvis, pedestrian bridge).
@ Moya –
“this is not about getting the swing voter in North York to dislike Ford; this is much more about building a city”
Unfortunately, the two are now intrinsically related.
@ John –
I see what you’re saying, but I wonder if the examples are more scapegoats than meaningful symbols.
As you’ve demonstrated, societies run on stories. Ford had a better story than his rivals, and more people wanted to hear him tell it, so he got elected.
He chose to tell a dishonest story, and use symbols, referring to prejudices, to create a reality. There’s nothing preventing him from doing this — in fact it’s good politics — but there’s also nothing preventing people from using the new reality to create new symbols (to create new realities).
Hammering away on the loss of a single bike lane just for its own sake would be political illiteracy; using the *methods by which it was lost* as a symbol for deeper rot at City Hall could be political strategy – if it keeps people mobilized (the biggest hurdle to issue-by-issue politics), and allows them to identify with communities who’ve already been suffering the rot for years. Isn’t that one of the forces that would be needed to give weight to a Plan B? I don’t know. Honestly asking.
In either case, the lane is lost, and yes, “progressives” should get off the hill as you say. But if they do it together, and they look for others…? As I write in the piece on my site, “more remarkable [than the loss of a single lane] is how many people came out to City Hall to oppose the cut, many of whom had never been before. Even balanced against a political loss, this is a Good Thing.”
Hope that made sense, I am a wee bit heat-stroked.
Not about Jarvis anymore, samg.
Joe> Something I ask libertarians, but never ever get a good answer: can you point out a successful, economically vibrant, high standard of living city that abides by libertarian principals?
Sean> While they may not meet the textbook definition of “libertarian” the cities / communities I think we could try to emulate would be the previously mentioned Sandy Springs, Mennonite communities (obviously without the religious / Luddite aspects) and Altadena in Southern California. We should be moving away from big government programs, services and interventions to an urban homesteading model with private not public services filling the gaps. The Sandy Springs example is profiled in a YouTube video and the mayor claims that they were able to procure services for $25 million from the private sector that would have cost double had they been provided by the public sector. Another significant benefit of moving away from centralized government utilities would be the ability to avoid Chernoble / Fukushima level disasters if we had a significant number of homes and businesses of the power grid for example. It is important to understand the immigrants that founded Canada were profoundly self sufficient and that was the base for everything we have today getting back to self sufficiency she be easier for us today given the level of technology available to us that was not available even one hundred years ago.
Joe> Ok, that’s a good small city (town?) with what appears to be a like-minded population. But any real Alpha (or Beta or whatever’s next) city with big city needs and dynamics?
Shawn, I realize it’s not about Jarvis… Just think that the focus on these lanes has probably been more detrimental than helpful to the cause of cycling in the City… And I’m including the outcome of the 2010 election in that assessment… But people are entitled to advocate for what and how they want.
There is a plan B sort of. It involves demonstrating to the City of Toronto to “look outside the box”. Unless the Mayor and Councillors are bent on ruining the City life, we offer so far the best solution. The City has options to use to create new revenues that can wipe out the debt and budgetary shortfalls feared without increasing property taxes or user fees or selling/leasing City owned assets. Our team has written to the Budget Committee and will work with them and all concerned for an opportunity to guide the City away from unsustainable short term fiscal solutions to long term, progressive sustainable path.