Admiral Beez
Superstar
Cosmo feels you. But didn’t you buy a condo after the beacon? It shouldn’t be a surprise.
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2023 Toronto Mayoral by-election
- Thread starter SJD_Toronto
- Start date
TonyV
Senior Member
You live near me (referring to Allan Gardens). I’m not ok with “boots” but I struggle with how else to clear the mess. I won’t go near the place. I resent the loss.
DSC
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It is a chicken and egg situation. One could argue that City services are bad - or less than adequate - BECAUSE taxes are low. (Not to say that there is no waste in the City but, overall, very few cases of serious waste or fraud are found when there are investigations. The 'gravy train' really stopped running a while ago!)
zang
Senior Member
DSC
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Agreed! Several current City priorities would not be mine but with more money (from higher taxes) the problems would be less severe.
lead82
Senior Member
That’s exactly right. The priorities are wrong. The taxes are also being kept low for seniors who are on average the wealthiest generation that have paid for homes and can most afford the property tax hikes but are vehemently against them. Why for example do we have senior discounts as a society? I’d be fine to have just means tested discounts that would include truly poor seniors and other adults.
Same thing with Transit and policing. On Transit monies are spent on big projects but not to get people moving faster. Signal priority or bus lanes are way cheaper to build and could have resulted in an huge network in Scarborough but instead we wait for a 3 stop subway that will take 10yrs+ to build. Same with bike lanes. There is way too much talk and not enough on setting priorities and then funding them.
The waste I resent is the incessant chatter but no action except to push the ball further down. Instead we debate about flags and parades while the city crumbles and infrastructure and will never catch up to the growth we are already experiencing. Look how long it takes to have any reasonable action taken in this city to build even a simple bike lane. It’s like 5 years of study, a pilot, then rebuilt to make it permanent. That’s the waste I’m talking about. It human resource waste in that we are demotivating staff and smart people in the city by having them do paper work endlessly to avoid decisions and actions. Toronto needs less process and much faster decisions to be made and be bold and take some freaking risk and build stuff already.
Same thing with Transit and policing. On Transit monies are spent on big projects but not to get people moving faster. Signal priority or bus lanes are way cheaper to build and could have resulted in an huge network in Scarborough but instead we wait for a 3 stop subway that will take 10yrs+ to build. Same with bike lanes. There is way too much talk and not enough on setting priorities and then funding them.
The waste I resent is the incessant chatter but no action except to push the ball further down. Instead we debate about flags and parades while the city crumbles and infrastructure and will never catch up to the growth we are already experiencing. Look how long it takes to have any reasonable action taken in this city to build even a simple bike lane. It’s like 5 years of study, a pilot, then rebuilt to make it permanent. That’s the waste I’m talking about. It human resource waste in that we are demotivating staff and smart people in the city by having them do paper work endlessly to avoid decisions and actions. Toronto needs less process and much faster decisions to be made and be bold and take some freaking risk and build stuff already.
TonyV
Senior Member
Well I’m liking the passion I’m reading in this thread. The more I read you all, the more I think that some laggards who’ve been around too long at city hall need their butts kicked out of office.
“Patches instead of solutions” doesn’t work for long.
“Patches instead of solutions” doesn’t work for long.
lead82
Senior Member
I’m hoping if Olivia is destined to win that she go bold like Miller did. It was the last time the city achieved some great things in his tenure.
picard102
Senior Member
What did he do that was so bold other than keep taxes low and come up with transit city, that was a political hot potato in the next election?
TonyV
Senior Member
^ transit city was brilliant. Too bad that the following administration was stupid enough to scrap it.
Northern Light
Superstar
I'm happy enough to pick a few bones w/David Miller's time in office, but I think you're on the wrong track w/that assertion:
Miller actually did raise overall taxes, because he introduced the City Vehicle Registration Tax, he introduced the City Land Transfer Tax and he also shifted Garbage off the property tax bill onto its own dedicated fee structure.
Additionally, Miller did do a few relatively substantial things that were good.
Notably, the Ridership Growth Strategy for the TTC which significantly boosted every day service and reduced crowding.
He also bolstered Library hours, and made some other solid investments.
Now, could he have done more? Yes; Should he have done more? Probably; Did he underweight the need for a property tax increase? Yes; and did he pull some dumb stunts like selling the street lights to Toronto Hydro.....? Yup.
But overall, he almost certainly led the most competent administration since Amalgamation up to this point.
Granted, that's not saying much.........but still.
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marcus_a_j
Senior Member
Not sure why Bradford needs to slag Hamilton.
lead82
Senior Member
Bradford is dumb. He has no chance to win given these lame tactics.
As for Miller, many of the good things he did was mentioned in the post by Northern Light. Miller was no saint but he did many things right. His focus on the waterfront designs and push for actual proper funding for city services was rare for this city. Where would Toronto be without the City LVT. I hate paying it but it didn’t have any impact to Toronto real estate demand or pricing. The city needed the money. Transit City was a good plan (not perfect) but it would have done wonders if all those lines were running today. It missed the huge demand for downtown improvements. He accomplished more in his 7 years than Tory in 8 years. Tory has no real legacy beyond bringing calmness to city politics after Rob Ford. That was fine for the first term but a valid failure to do anything real in his second term. We are still waiting for SmartTrack BS .
As for Miller, many of the good things he did was mentioned in the post by Northern Light. Miller was no saint but he did many things right. His focus on the waterfront designs and push for actual proper funding for city services was rare for this city. Where would Toronto be without the City LVT. I hate paying it but it didn’t have any impact to Toronto real estate demand or pricing. The city needed the money. Transit City was a good plan (not perfect) but it would have done wonders if all those lines were running today. It missed the huge demand for downtown improvements. He accomplished more in his 7 years than Tory in 8 years. Tory has no real legacy beyond bringing calmness to city politics after Rob Ford. That was fine for the first term but a valid failure to do anything real in his second term. We are still waiting for SmartTrack BS .
TonyV
Senior Member
He is coming across as angry, isn’t he? So far, nothing constructive.
adma
Superstar
But he's probably inadvertently assured that "you don't have to move to Hamilton" will be, for Torontonians, a forever meme and punchline.
Incidentally, in my early and limited and largely downtowncentric or glimpsing-down-side-streets-from-the-streetcar scans around town, it looks like Olivia's got the overwhelming first-weekend lawn-sign advantage. Dunno about lawn signs, but Bailao had a dominant secondary street sign presence around the Stockyards or so (why not: I think that whole CP-corridor-to-Eglinton stretch from the Humber on east ought to be "Bailao central"), I did see a lone Matlow lawn sign, I saw the Mitzie campaign office on Dundas W, I saw a couple and maybe more Bradford lawn signs out in Bradford country but less then there "ought to be", nothing yet from Saunders (much less Furey), I'm not counting the street sign spam from the likes of Gong and I haven't yet really ventured into Etobicoke, N York, Scarborough to gauge what's going on *there*.
So Olivia's the so-far winner on "street visibility" grounds. As was Rob Ford in '10--I recall being taken aback by how lawn-invisible Smitherman was; like, there was no *enthusiasm* for him, other than to vote for him as the strategic "non-Ford"...