{"id":3247,"date":"2008-06-08T12:26:05","date_gmt":"2008-06-08T16:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/2008\/06\/08\/311-a-threat-to-lazy-pols\/"},"modified":"2008-06-08T12:38:09","modified_gmt":"2008-06-08T16:38:09","slug":"311-a-threat-to-lazy-pols","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2008\/06\/08\/311-a-threat-to-lazy-pols\/","title":{"rendered":"311 threatens lazy pols"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2181\/2372294139_a12d56345e.jpg?v=0\" height=\"333\" width=\"500\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This week the <em>Toronto Star<\/em> spent a few <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thestar.com\/article\/436582\">column<\/a> inches <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thestar.com\/article\/438962\">discussing<\/a> the lethargic pace of the City of Toronto&#8217;s attempt to bring a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/3-1-1\">311 telephone service<\/a> to life. While Toronto has been at this project for five years and counting, Halton Region began development of its 311 service three years ago and completed it in March.<\/p>\n<p>Developing a city-wide service in Toronto is inherently more complex than in Halton because it has to serve more than five times the population of that municipality. But also know that as a single tier municipality, Toronto is responsible for providing all the services that the Region of Halton provides and those that are administered by Halton&#8217;s lower-tier municipalities (Oakville, Burlington, Milton and Halton Hills).<\/p>\n<p>Now with that said, five years should be plenty of time to get a 311 system up and running. What&#8217;s stopping this process is, according to one councillor I spoke to, that the most marginal city councillors are scared for their jobs. These councillors make up such a portion of council that they were able to axe the 311 development budget in half, from $65 million to $32 million, effectively giving it the <a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/08\/04\/lobbyist-registrar-should-resign\/\">lobbyist registry treatment<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>What 311 will do is dramatically reduce the need for a constituent to call their councillor&#8217;s office to have a pothole fixed, a tree removed or garbage picked up (among other things). Instead, Jane Constituent will phone up 311 and tell a City staffer what they need. Jane will immediately get a tracking number and the request will be passed on to the appropriate department.<\/p>\n<p>For the councillors whose bread and butter is constituency work, the fear is 311 will work too well. If all goes to plan, calls to councillors&#8217; offices will drop dramatically because there will be a single user-friendly portal to access every City service. But if that were to happen, council&#8217;s laziest pols will have far fewer opportunities to take credit for wading into the bureaucracy on behalf of a voter, er, constituent. Instead, the dead weights on council might have to roll up their sleeves and dig into the real issues that face our city to demonstrate their utility to residents. What a concept!<\/p>\n<p><em>Photograph by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/watch-me-now\/\">slowitdown<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week the Toronto Star spent a few column inches discussing the lethargic pace of the City of Toronto&#8217;s attempt to bring a 311 telephone service to life. While Toronto has been at this project for five years and counting, Halton Region began development of its 311 service three years ago and completed it in<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2008\/06\/08\/311-a-threat-to-lazy-pols\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;311 threatens lazy pols&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4037,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9440,9439,408,9438,9433,9434,2452,9435,1883,9437,9436,339,19,341,391],"class_list":["post-3247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-9440","tag-burlington-hill","tag-councillor","tag-halton-hill","tag-halton-hills","tag-jane-constituent","tag-lobbyist","tag-milton-hills","tag-oakville","tag-oakville-hill","tag-telephone-service","tag-the-toronto-star","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-star","tag-usd"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>311 threatens lazy pols - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2008\/06\/08\/311-a-threat-to-lazy-pols\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"311 threatens lazy pols - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This week the Toronto Star spent a few column inches discussing the lethargic pace of the City of Toronto&#8217;s attempt to bring a 311 telephone service to life. 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