Thursday’s Headlines

16 comments

1. And to think we used to believe the problem with municipal spending was councillors – it turns out to be Police Chiefs who refuse instructions from their Service Board. Shouldn’t be surprised with Fantino as a predecessor but it’s time that Blair was pulled up short – he will do the touchy feely stuff that Fantino wouldn’t but I think that free pass is about done with this stunt.

2. Blair says that he “Won’t alarm public by threatening police cuts”. Too bad TTC riders and library patrons are fair game, though TTC manager Webster sure made it quite clear he was extremely unhappy about any cuts to his budget.

   Blair had more time than the TTC, which had plans for emergency cuts, and has no excuse for not having any sort of plan.

   Blair should have at least promised a carrot if nothing else, like a continuation of the traffic blitz that has seen diamond lanes enforced for the first time, er, ever?

3. Well, based on the reaction to the TTC’s attempts to cut their budget, we can expect a flood of angry right-wingers demanding that we privatize the police department, whining about overpaid union workers, and claiming without proof that the police surely must have millions of dollars in “efficiencies” that they could deliver if their feet were put to the fire by a Real Mayor(tm).

   Any day now.

   I’ll be waiting. Right here.

4. I’ll take libraries over cops, thanks.

5. Smitty> I’d argue Toronto’s fantastic library system has thus far kept a lot of people away from the cops and, uh, on the side of good.

   The library cuts are much more costly to Toronto, long term, than the actual thing(s) that is/are being cut.

6. I have many problems with Toronto’s Police force and its approach towards serving and protecting. Specifically it’s focus on law enforcement (we try to catch bad guys) rather than policing (we prevent bad guys from doing bad things) and its reliance of automobiles rather than foot patrols. However, I have to applaud Chief Blair for refusing to participate in “I told ya so” politics.

   The great thing about the Tax Deferral is how wrong both sides have been on this issue.

   For thinking themselves so strategically clever the Councillors that voted for deferral should all have to publicly apologize. Which one of these geniuses do you think was the first to suggest “If we take our taxing powers, throw them in the trash and then completely fuck ourselves over the province will have to help us out, right?”

   Equally, for playing Kindergarten politics and trying to rub Councillors stupidity in their faces, the Mayor should have to take a “time out”. Leadership means constant, positive action and by immediately seeking massive cuts instead of rolling up his sleeves and taking a second crack at his taxes, the Mayor showed infantile judgment and should also apologize.

   So with all these apologies floating around who gets the nod today? Well, it’s Police Chief Blair for doing the political equivalent of saying “Bitch, are you for real?” and refusing to take part in a Council shoving match which we are unlikely to look back upon fondly.

7. Wow, I am kind of offended. Like I said before, more cops does not equal less crime. Yes, we need police for some things, but sticking more cops on the street doesn’t magically make crime go down.

   Cut some beat cops and some desk cops, it will save us a bunch of money.

8. Cut some beat cops?!?

   How about cut some police cars, or cancel this ludicrous car repainting project. Beat cops are the key to effective community policing and if we could get some more out of their cruisers and onto their feet the police might finally begin to enjoy a positive relationship with the people of this city.

   If more cops don’t equal less crime, I can’t see how less cops would either. The police don’t have a staffing issue (too many OR too few), what they have is a philosophical problem concerning how the police act towards the public. The TPSB needs to start demanding that the police start policing and stop enforcing the law. The former needs beat cops to be on the street interacting with people, walking a beat. The latter is where we can cut. Fewer SWAT teams, patrol cars, helicopters, tanks or whatever else eats up the budget and only serves to make people more wary of the cops. Less of all of these things, and I focus again on the cars, would not only put the police officers where they need to be but would also be a big plus for people concerned with pollution.

9. Josh – I don’t understand your specific criticism of Miller here. After the vote, he really didn’t have the option of taking a “second crack”. Council doesn’t reconvene until September 26th, and to even reopen the debate on the taxes then, he’d need a two-thirds vote – that’s 30 out of 44 councillors. The next closest opportunity is on October 22nd, when the deferment period ends. The only thing to do in the interim is to make cuts to adjust for the lost revenue over the deferment period; cuts which, due to the nature of the crisis, are going to be massive. How else would you have had the Mayor proceed?

10. Josh, the idea isn’t that fewer cops would equal less crime as if it were a stand-alone equation of crime – cops = less crime. The concept is that if you take the police budget down a peg then you have room to invest in the things that eliminate the root causes of crime, thus reducing the need for policing (which is far more expensive than prevention.)

11. Ben – Had the taxes been approved, how soon would the city have started to see the money from those taxes? It takes time to implement the infrastructure to handle the acquisition and dispersal of new moneys. I have a hard time believing that we were going to start seeing cash overnight. If that’s true then it leads me to believe that the need for this new money was impending but not immediate. Believing this as I do, I can also conclude that the Mayor did (and still does) have an opportunity to have the debate reopened sooner rather than later and that’s where his focus should be, not in making raspberries and his council enemies.

    If councilors like Maria Augimeri are any indication, there may be others that voted for deferral that are feeling a little sheepish about their cowboy tactics and might welcome another shot at getting this right.

12. Adam – I agree with you completely. There are areas of the police budget that would be better spent on carrots than stick as the old saying goes.

    But we’re not talking about reducing the budget for reinvestment. We’re talking about reducing the budget period. And as anyone that’s ever done a budget know, once the money’s gone it’s really hard to get it back. That will make the ideas of refocusing the police, ideas that I think you and I share, very difficult.

13. Shawn> I think you think you’re disagreeing with me, but I’m not sure. When I said I’d take libraries over cops, I meant, we’ll keep the libraries, thanks – cut the cops.

14. Smitty> I didn’t think I was agreeing or disagreeing, just going further on about the value of the library.

15. Ah. Lovely.

16. Josh, based on your comment, you (and most of the people in Toronto) aren’t quite getting why the cuts are being made right this second. Cuts aren’t being made now because the City won’t recieve the new tax revenue during 2007 (if the taxes were approved in July they would have been ready for implementation as of January 1, 2008.)

    Cuts are being made now because the City is attempting to find $100 million in the final four months of this year that can be used to help balance next year’s budget. Since $100 million for the final third of the year annualized is $300 million, the number of additional cuts required to balance the 2008 budget won’t be as great.

    Per Josh’s more recent comment about police: the opportunity to cut from the police budget without being branded “soft on crime” or anti-police (evidently a concern of Miller’s) is, to understate the matter, rare. Miller has tried to bolster the number of beat cops during his term but he’s refused to cut even the administrative costs of the TPS because Blair and the Police Association squeel everytime a politician tries to trim the excess bacon on their metaphorical back.