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Mayor John Tory's Toronto

jje1000 said:
Joshua Hind on Tory's Smarttrack failures:








https://twitter.com/joshuahind/status/862655399090155520

Cityslikr follows with additional biting, yet succinct commentary:










https://twitter.com/cityslikr/status/862662118457389056
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Yes. Let's not forget that Toronto will be on the hook for a $700 Million bill if Tory's proposed SmartTrack stations are built. The net gain in ridership due to this investment will be small. Each of the TTC's 40 most used bus routes individually move more people per day than all of the SmartTrack stations would collectively move. This is the least cost effective transit proposal I've ever come across, and I suspect that Council might hand tory a rare defeat on this issue.
 
Great piece by Matt Elliot:
http://www.metronews.ca/views/toron...-on-why-toronto-boom-town-is-such-a-bust.html
Decades from now, when historians look back at this time in Toronto’s history, they’re going to be so confused.

“So,” they’ll ask, “in 2017 Toronto was experiencing its greatest period of prosperity – a growing population, a ridiculously hot housing market and an economy helping to push provincial growth to levels outpacing all G7 countries?”

Yep, all true.

They’ll continue. “Okay, but during this boom time, publicly-owned housing units were left to crumble, the transit system saw only meagre bits of expansion, and critical programs supporting the city’s most vulnerable were chronically starved for cash? How does that work?”
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I think a core reason Toronto is at this breaking point is that there is a sizable part of the city, post-amalgamation, in communities in Scarborough, North York and Etobicoke, who see the government's only role as curbside garbage pickup and installing stop signs. For better or worse, these are people who are concerned about their front lawns, their grandchildren, and their RRSPs.

Most importantly, these are the people most likely to vote on election day.
 
mjl08 said:
Great piece by Matt Elliot … I think a core reason Toronto is at this breaking point is that there is a sizable part of the city, post-amalgamation, in communities in Scarborough, North York and Etobicoke, who see the government's only role as curbside garbage pickup and installing stop signs.
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A portion with a disproportionately large amount of power. Voting weight per ward is not evenly distributed in this city, and until it is, the (relative) shrinking suburbs will always overpower the growing dense areas. The recent boundary review is great and all, but a vote in one area of the city will still only be worth ~70% of what a vote in another can.
 
salsa said:
What a squandered, wasted opportunity to invest in building a great city at a time when it should have been possible to do so. We get politicians like John Tory, his council allies and his predecessors who are the truest definition of "race to the bottom". Fuck them all.
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To be fair, most of Toronto's revenue leaves the city so it's difficult for city council to do much.

That said, better leadership would go a long way towards actually accomplishing things. Given what the city produces, there's no reason why big (and necessary) projects should be so difficult to fund.
 
zang said:
A portion with a disproportionately large amount of power. Voting weight per ward is not evenly distributed in this city, and until it is, the (relative) shrinking suburbs will always overpower the growing dense areas. The recent boundary review is great and all, but a vote in one area of the city will still only be worth ~70% of what a vote in another can.
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It is a step in the right direction, however. I believe there are three new downtown Toronto council seats which could tilt the balance of power. Take a look at at Matt Elliot's council scorecard. There are a number of items: funding for libraries, community pools, extra revenue tools, the Gardiner replacement, climate change funding, etc. that were lost by five or less votes.
 
mjl08 said:
It is a step in the right direction, however. I believe there are three new downtown Toronto council seats which could tilt the balance of power. Take a look at at Matt Elliot's council scorecard. There are a number of items: funding for libraries, community pools, extra revenue tools, the Gardiner replacement, climate change funding, etc. that were lost by five or less votes.
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It will definitely help, but I would prefer a system that is fair, not "fair-er". We spend massive amounts of money supporting sprawl and single-family dwellings in the suburbs, and the densest areas—where economy of scale for utilities/street cleaning/transit/garbage collection etc. truly come into play—seem to get disproportionately less power in their votes and per-capita city expenditure. I'm not saying we downtowners need to be rewarded for living like sardines, but I truly believe that any ballot vote that is worth more than a half a percent more than another is counter-democracy, and we keep spending the most money on those who have the most power-per-vote. At least if every vote had the same weight, we'd have a fighting chance at building proper infrastructure, programs, etc.
 
I agree completely with Zang that any substantial deviation from equal representation is anti-democratic. Sadly for Toronto, Ward boundary decisions are in the hands of Council rather than an independent agency. Councillors from underpopulated wards don't have any incentive to vote for fairer districting that would eliminate some of their jobs.
 
City staff on ‘notice,' Tory says amid bid-rigging probe
Mayor leaves door open to more city staff leaving amid the probes.

The fact that four senior transportation staff no longer work for the City of Toronto should put all city staff “on notice” for job performance, Mayor John Tory said Monday.

The Star and other news outlets on Friday quoted an internal city email saying three managers and a supervisor are “no longer with the organization” after a shakeup in response to an ongoing probe of potential bid rigging for paving contracts.

After an unrelated news conference in Scarborough, Tory told reporters that the auditor general’s report revealed “mismanagement,” “incompetence” and “not wrongdoing per se but just failure to adhere to the kind of standard that we would expect.”

Saying goodbye to senior staff was “not my decision — council certainly encouraged the city manager, and he had my complete encouragement, to do whatever we had to do to both take any cloud away that existed over the transportation services paving area . . .”

Asked if more city staff could be shown the door as a result of the probe, the mayor said: “It’s not up to me to decide that but I guess anything’s possible. I think, certainly I hope, everybody who works there now, and across the city for that matter, will be on notice — the public have the right to expect that people are going to perform in a manner that is competent and diligent and the vast majority of our civil servants do every single day . . .

“Where people are found by the auditor general, or anybody else, to have fallen way short of that standard I will certainly be saying to the city manager, as I did in this case, ‘I’d like to see some changes made here because you just can’t go on saying to people that you’re going to continue the same behaviour and expect a different result.”

The city refused to comment on the departures, which come amid an OPP investigation into the auditor general’s recent findings on troubling patterns in contract bidding that may have cost the city millions. The city would not say if those who left are getting severance payments.

Tory said he had “reason to believe” the OPP finished all or part of the probe triggered by city officials telling police of possible illegality. The OPP did not respond to a request for comment from the Star on Monday.

The Star reported last month that auditor general Beverly Romeo-Beehler found companies may have been working together to drive up the contract award price, with the winning bidder at times sub-contracting the work to the losing firms. She did not name the companies.


Paving contracts are managed by the city’s transportation services division, whose staff the audit also focused on.


In her report, Romeo-Beehler concluded “transportation staff possessed a poor understanding of the red flags indicating contractors may be engaged in fraud, bid rigging and collusion” and that staff “could provide no plausible explanation” for troubling occurrences like the apparent market domination by a small number of companies.

City manager Peter Wallace spoke forcefully to council last month about the need for change, noting outdated practices that saw bids being managed mostly on paper and inconsistently across districts. He noted a lack of resources and modernization that have allowed those problems to persist.

The Star has reached out for comment to the ex-employees — Jacqueline White, director of the North York transportation district; Hector Moreno, road operations manager for Scarborough; Trevor Tenn, road operations manager in Toronto & East York; and Bruce Shaw, a maintenance contract inspection supervisor in North York.

At press time none of them had responded.
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http://www.metronews.ca/news/toront...-notice-tory-says-amid-bid-rigging-probe.html
 
Tory changes course on relief line subway, forms alliance with York Region mayors

After threatening to block planning for a Yonge subway extension, mayor pledges to work with York to secure provincial transit funding.

“We have two projects that they recognize and I recognize go together, and that really both need funding,” he said.

“I think we’re in a stronger position today having come here together and appeared in front of you together and appeared in front of the public together to say we need all three governments to participate on both of these projects financially, we need it sooner than later, because we’ve got to move forward and get on with these things.”
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Councillor Josh Matlow slammed Tory’s decision to link the relief line to the Yonge North extension, characterizing it as “a reckless and irresponsible management of our transit priorities.”

He said advocating for the extension to Richmond Hill risked delaying the relief line, which he said is urgently needed to reduce crowding on the existing Line 1 subway.
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https://www.thestar.com/news/city_h...y-forms-alliance-with-york-region-mayors.html
 
why doesn't tory run for premier as that is the way he is a cting. its unreal. The DRL has been talked about and needed for how long now? Way longer than subway north extension that some say GO would suffice. This is insane. lets promise Aurora subways to while we are at it. Insane. I have had enough of Tory with his Gardiner plan and never mind the scarborough subway and now linking the DRL and north yonge extension together. Its insane. I hope someone credible starts to run soon against him.
 
This shit move was lost in all the news yesterday of his DRL flip flop. Six years of work wasted so that large property owners don't have to pay more.


Mayor John Tory shelves proposal for a dedicated fee to fund stormwater management
Toronto has opted, after years of study, to not follow Mississauga’s lead with a dedicated levy to help pay the huge and rising costs of stormwater runoff and basement flooding protection.

Mayor John Tory’s executive committee on Tuesday shelved indefinitely, at his urging, a city staff proposal to go back to stakeholders for more consultations and then, in 2019, give councillors options for a stormwater charge.
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https://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2017/05/16/toronto-flushes-plan-for-stormwater-fee.html
 
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