Frustrated with Harper and his government of looters in suits lying to us and taking our money to spend on jets that don't work and jails we don't need, and cheating to get elected? Take your frustrations out at Smack Stephen Harper!Numbers Game | Toronto Media Co-op
The City budget is not and has never been in a financial crisis according to figures released by the Wellesley Institute, an urban health research and policy institute in Toronto.
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Ford, along with the rest of the administration's allies have often repeated the $774 million deficit number as the current shortfall that has to be covered in order to balance the city budget. The perceived 'high number', along with proposed major cuts to key services such as childcare, nutrition programs and libraries, have scared a number of residents and prompted a backlash. This has allowed the Ford administration to promote a wider range of smaller cuts with less backlash.
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The irony of the $774 million shortfall number is that it has been exacerbated by the Ford's decisions to freeze property taxes in 2011 and eliminate the vehicle registration tax. If property tax increases were maintained at the GTA average (3% a year) and if the vehicle tax was not eliminated, no cuts would be necessary.
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“So we haven’t overspent for the last seven years, I guess,” Doug Ford said at budget deputations to Robert Cerjanec, a university student union representative. “Do you have any solutions to help the problem?” It was a question asked repeatedly by Ford-allied councillors.
Surprisingly, neither Cerjanec, nor most of the 300+ deputants referred to the Mayor's own Core Service Review consultation.
The consultation, which polled over 13,000 Torontonians in depth-on their budget priorities, found that participants overwhelmingly supported increasing "property taxes to keep the same level of City services."
Not increasing "user fees or taxes even if this means reducing the level of service" had the least support. The mean recommended "property tax increase for all participants was 5.15%."
The big question that Ford Nation supporters and trolls frequently ask is "do you want your taxes to increase to pay for these services?". As you can see by the above survey of 13,000 Torontonians, the overwhelming answer is YES.
Canada News: Ottawa to scale back health transfer payments - thestar.com
This has been Harper's plan all along - cut federal money spent on healthcare and social services. The premiers should not be surprised that the federal government is going to reduce the transfer payments.
Of course Harper's looters in suits will continue to waste Canadians' money on more corporate tax cuts and buying non-functioning fighter jets and building un-needed superjails.
Toronto agency backed by Mayor Ford spent $55,000 on single-source contracts - The Globe and Mail
Asked if there was a discrepancy between his anti-sole-source rhetoric and his backing of sole-source waterfront proposals, he said “it all depends” before referring all further questions to Michael Kraljevic, president and CEO of Toronto Port Lands.
“There are circumstances when sole-sourcing is acceptable,”
How much would it have cost for Rob and Doug to run their plan by council to see if they would support it before going ahead and spending $55,000?
Rob Ford's Gravy Train amount: $55,000
The Grid TO | Budget 2012: Rob Ford's sleight of hand
If Rob Ford hadn’t cut or cancelled all those taxes, we’d have enough to cover the entire budget hole without eliminating a single bus route, library hour or arts grant, without laying off a single staff member, and without drawing on reserves.
Just to repeat so it’s perfectly straightforward: Dollar-for-dollar, every single cut in the 2012 operating budget was made necessary by Rob Ford’s 2011 tax cuts. Period.
An unnamed “top official in Rob Ford’s office” told Robyn Doolittle of the Toronto Star that this was the plan from the beginning. In November 2010, he said that because of the tax cuts, the “safety net” would be gone: “Councillors will be forced to approve whatever we put forward.”
There are many Torontonians who think the city overspends on staff salaries, grants to community groups, bike lanes, transit and all kinds of other things. That’s fine. An honest politician could make that case, and cut those services deemed unnecessary or unwanted. And then, with the savings, that honest politician could either redirect the money to more necessary programs or cut taxes. Plenty of people would disagree loudly with those decisions, but at least the process would be prudent and truthful.
Instead, Ford cut revenue first so that a “crisis” would force us to cut services even if we thought they were necessary or desirable. It’s as if you looked at your household budget, decided that your spouse’s decision to buy organic vegetables rather than regular ones was making it a challenge to get ahead, and then quit your job as the first step to solving that spending problem. You could try to blame your sudden inability to pay the mortgage on your spouse’s gourmet-food habit, but it would remain obvious that your decision to eliminate income was the real cause of the crisis.
That’s what Rob Ford has done here. He calls it “respect for taxpayers,” but it looks more like a giant scam being perpetrated on the citizens of Toronto.
And still others would like to know more about the taxpayers coalition.
“An even more pertinent question: Who is the ‘Toronto Taxpayers
Coalition?’ It seems very strange that Doug Ford would be pumping a
non-partisan group in his talks that he has no links to. Also, it seems a
little stranger that there are no names whatsoever listed on the site.
Their ‘wiki’ only got action at the very beginning of the year and there
was just a huge flurry of comments and article updates. Who are these
people?”
Lost in the rhetoric is the fact that there actually is a "revenue"
problem, a problem that is deeply connected to the larger austerity
agenda.
The city's budget is inextricably tied to other levels of government.
There are very few city services that do not receive a significant
percentage of their funding from the federal and provincial governments.
What we are seeing at the city level are merely the local impacts of
austerity measures taken at higher levels of government.
Childcare is an excellent example. Roughly 80% of funding for Toronto
Children's Services comes from the province. Some of the provincial
funding is actually, indirectly, from federal funding via transfer
payments. For many years, the budget for Children's Services has been
significantly under-funded. There are currently almost 20,000 children
waiting for subsidized childcare spaces, in a daycare network that can
only accommodate 30% of Toronto's children aged 0-9 years old. The
strain on the system will only become worse in light of significant cuts
to the provincial Best Start funding and the federal Early Learning and
Child Care funding. With the loss of these funds, the city has created
contingency plans for cutting between 2,000 and 5,000 subsidized child
care spaces in the next year.
Such cuts will directly affect the ability of low-income parents,
primarily mothers, to get paid work to support their children. For these
parents, affordable daycare is a core service that must be maintained.
For KPMG, the private-sector consultants hired by Ford to find the
"gravy," at least 2,000 childcare spaces should be labelled as
"non-core" services that are ripe for the cutting.
These cuts, if they are made, will be made by Ford and his cronies,
but it was the Harper and McGuinty governments who set the stage.
The global recession of 2008-2009 has served as a convenient excuse
for the implementation of an austerity agenda by all levels of
government from coast to coast. While banks and corporations benefit
from extremely generous corporate welfare and the Toronto Police Service
is enjoying pay raises of over 10%, the brunt of the profitability
crisis is being borne by everyone else through cuts to services and
public sector jobs.
So there is money for fighter jets, at the same time as the federal
government cuts transfers for childcare funding. There is money to
expand Canadian military bases in seven countries, while the federal
government has cut $53 million from settlement services. As both the
federal government and the City of Toronto move to reduce corporate
taxes and increase the amount that individuals pay for services, the
austerity agenda results in the massive transfer of wealth from the poor
to the rich.
If politicians were serious about getting rid of the "gravy," they
would be looking to the banks and corporations that are profiting
immensely on the basis of public monies, to the detriment of everyone
else. More profits through the fire sale and privatization of government
services are the next station for the corporate gravy train.
The City of Toronto budget cuts are just the local impact of the
larger austerity agenda. They are not simply about surrendering to the
neoliberal dogma that budgets must be balanced. For right-wingers like
Ford and co., cutting government spending is a political goal in itself.
For example, reduced funding for public health nurses reinforces the
idea that generous City services are a thing of the past. It also
reinforces the message to public sector workers that their jobs are on
the chopping block and won't be saved by money from other sources.
Signs of trouble for the corporate gravy train
The City of Toronto is at a crossroads. While Ford has not yet
revealed his plans for gutting services, slashing City jobs and
privatization, the potential areas identified for so-called
"efficiencies" are frightening. On the chopping block are thousands of
unionized jobs and services including public libraries, childcare
spaces, night buses and recreation centres and programs. Recent comments
by the mayor suggest that he will be pushing for the cancellation of
the entire community grant program, a fund upon which many community
agencies rely in order to deliver needed services to marginalized
communities.
But there are reasons to be hopeful. For one thing, activist
organizations, unions, community agencies and community groups have not
been silent. A massive organizing effort is underway against the Ford
cuts. While the effectiveness of the efforts by these very disconnected
groups is certainly up for debate, there is real resistance. One major
barrier has been that the City unions, still rebuilding public support
following a disastrous 2009 strike and immersed in their own contract
negotiations, have been unable to provide significant leadership for a
broad fight back to defend jobs and services.
Second, Ford's own plan for shoring up legitimacy for his massive
cuts is backfiring spectacularly. A series of community meetings and an
online survey were meant to provide the veneer of public consultations.
There is no doubt that the surveys were designed in order to get results
supportive of Ford's agenda. The surveys asked respondents to identify
"where" cuts should be made, not "if" they should be made. If, despite
this leading question, a respondent felt that a particular service
should be maintained, they were asked to identify whether services
should be maintained by way of increases to property taxes or user fees
or both. No other options were provided. The expectation was that
self-interest would win the day and the survey results would support the
cuts. Instead, the almost 13,000 Torontonians who participated in the
survey voted overwhelmingly in favour of preserving city services. A
large majority were even in favour of increasing property taxes if
necessary.
These results are all the more hopeful in a context in which Ford
publicly called upon his "Ford Nation" to turn out in droves to
participate in the public consultations. It should not be forgotten that
while Ford rode a tide of popularity into the mayor's office, he did so
on a campaign that he would not cut services. The survey results
suggest that Torontonians expect him to keep that promise.
Similarly, the KPMG Core Service Review has found that the City is
legally obligated to provide the vast majority of its services, which
thus cannot be cut. As headlines in the local papers have trumpeted,
there seems to be little in the way of "gravy" to be found. While KPMG
has certainly identified areas for cuts, many of the suggestions in the
KPMG reports are deeply unpalatable to City Councillors, who will not
want to account to their constituents for having voted in favour of
cutting services like snow plowing and child care. The Toronto Star and
to a lesser extent the Sun, as well as the Globe and Mail, have been
critical of the proposed cuts as well.
Third, Ford has managed to anger some heavyweight interests. For
example, the mayor's brother and closest ally, Doug Ford, has been
attempting to unravel plans for the Toronto waterfront that have been in
place for years, raising uncertainty about $1.5 billion in private
sector investments. Not surprisingly, developers are hopping mad.
Ford's suggestions that he is prepared to slash the Toronto Police
Service budget will likely also result in serious push back. After all,
as the federal government's massive budget increases for prisons and the
military demonstrate, the austerity agenda has generally meant a
significant commitment to building up the security apparatus to maintain
public order. Ford seems to have gone off-script in this respect (which
is not to say that cuts to the police budget would not be at least one
welcome result of the austerity agenda).
Thus, Ford's corporate gravy train may be on some rickety tracks. The
Executive Committee will be making public Ford's plans for the 2012
Toronto City budget in September. This will be the next major step to
implement an austerity agenda which could cause immense suffering,
poverty and marginalization. Activists are targeting Councillors that
they think will vote against Ford's agenda, and communities are
mobilizing for this key September meeting and beyond. No matter what
happens, the results of this battle will be decisive for years to come
and will have repercussions well beyond Toronto.
Jackie Esmonde is a member of Toronto New Socialists, No One is Illegal (Toronto) and the Stop the Cuts Network.
This article first appeared in The New Socialist.
Read the whole article:
Toronto at a crossroads: Will Ford's austerity agenda be derailed? | rabble.ca
Trying to make sense of Rob Ford, his followers on city council and the reasons behind the cuts and spending.
We now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is/was no significant waste at city hall in Toronto. The Service Review done by the consultants hired by Ford, KPMG, concluded this. We also know that every year things are pretty tight for the city budget - expenses keep growing and income must be smartly managed to make ends meet.
But, what is baffling many people, including conservatives, is, the reasoning, or what seems to be the lack of reasoning, behind some of the decisions Ford and his followers on council are making. Cancelling millions of dollars in income and spending needlessly to change things when money is tight doesn't make any sense.
Here is one explanation, which is summed in that Ford may be trying to apply rules to what might apply to one business model, to the city administration - which would mean he is ignorant of business in the way of how different types of businesses will have different levels and types of expenses.
Here are 3 more articles trying to make sense of the reasoning behind Ford [Thanks to Orwell's Bastard for bringing these to light.]
The first one, from All Fired Up In the Big Smoke, points to the gangster/Sopranos-like political games Ford could be playing in order to win more support from specific councillors by threatening, indirectly, projects in their wards, and making examples of other councillors and their projects in their wards. Read the post for the details.
The 2nd one is from Toronto Standard, entitled There's a Word For This: Uncompetence, This article explores how Ford is being wilfully and knowingly incompetent because competence is something the elites do, so he must do something else. Read the post for the details. Here are some excerpts:
Meanwhile, in the next circus ring over, the consultants the Fords hired at great expense to hunt down all the waste in the city’s budget are reporting back this week. The results are being dribbled out day by day. So far, we’re on day three.
The surprising results are not surprising at all: The gravy is a lie. While the reports from the consultants at KPMG suggest nips and tucks, the fact remains that the city has to deliver a lot of services that are required by the province, and it’s already running a fairly tight operation. Cuts will be tough.
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Incompetence is mismanaging city departments and letting costs get out of hand in the first place. Uncompetence is running on a bogus platform. Uncompetence is cutting taxes in a budget crisis, mandating deep service cuts. Uncompetence is having a better option to fix the situation, but ignoring it because it’s not your style.
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The 3rd article, Searching For Council's Conservatives, from Ford For Toronto, looks at how Ford and his Conservative allies on council, are not following any Conservative ideology or reasoning. The conclusion of this article (I've included the excerpt at the end below in bold) pretty much sums up my thoughts on this.
Excerpts:
The consultants — who already have a checkered history with this kind of thing, having once produced a report arguing amalgamation would save the Toronto municipalities a significant amount of money — are clear that they aren’t even really looking at efficiencies as much as they’re laying out a list of things that could legally be cut from the city’s portfolio of public services. That this stands contrary to an election promise made by the mayor seems to have been tossed to the curb.
[Yeah. What's up with the Ford supporters suddenly being gung-ho behind him to cut services, when one of his big campaign promises was to NOT. CUT. SERVICES. !!!???]
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I’m not sure what you call the ideology that drives these decisions, but it can’t be conservatism, can it? Certainly not principled conservatism. A conservative would demand to see a business case before spending public money modifying infrastructure. In the case of Jarvis, Birchmount and Pharmacy, there wasn’t one. A conservative wouldn’t turn away provincial money — which the city has said it needs –, especially if there was a guarantee in place that the new positions could be eliminated should the funding ever be removed. (Which was the case.) A conservative wouldn’t call on the provincial government for funding only months removed from electing to decrease the city’s own revenues, and hours removed from opting out of committed, ongoing provincial money for public health.
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I don’t lean even slightly to the right politically, but I would like to think I understand the merits of conservative thinking. It’s about mitigating government risk, off-loading ambition to the private sector and, in times of economic hardship, turning to austerity as opposed to reinvestment. That’s fine. As much as I disagree with that line of thinking on an ideological level, I respect it. I can hold it in my hands and argue against it. It feels firm.
But what we’re seeing at Council these days isn’t that. It’s a weird mishmash of spite-based decision making and conservatism-when-convenient, held up by the enthusiastic wishes of a “silent majority” that only communicate through the cellphones of the mayor and his brother. It’s all glazed over with a slapdash of pseudo-libertarianism, the kind that exists in the minds of high school students who are like halfway through reading Atlas Shrugged.
Rob Ford is Rob Ford. I can’t fault him for that. He’s maddeningly consistent in his anti-government views and has been for years. What disappoints me — and continuously surprises me — is that he has commanded the support of a cabal of once-sensible Liberals and conservatives on Council, and has driven them to this point where Toronto is now governed by a Council with no consistent guiding ideology, principles, or direction.
Here is a note Mark MacLennan posted on Facebook.
Toronto Cuts Just Beginning
by Mark MacLennan
To those who push for the removal of the Jarvis bike lane, it is
worth considering that the Ford plan will not bring back the two-way
centre lane: rather, it will see the removal of the bike lane and the
introduction of a left turn lane. That is all.
And speaking with Garcia, you can see she tends to agree. “There is
really no reason to remove [the Jarvis bike lane] other than an
ideological position against having a bike lane on an arterial [road],”
she says. “This will set a negative precedent that we can do bicycling
planning based on ideology rather than evidence.”
UPDATE
The Jarvis, Birchmount and Pharmacy bicycle lanes will be removed (at a large cost to Toronto and to cyclists on these routes). The vote July 13, 2011 was 28-19 in favour of removal.
