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Pro-City citizens group--Meeting tonight, 9/11

Not to mention the fact that the "fools" running the city, even Lastman included, have held spending growth at just over half the rate for the provincial and federal governments since amalgamation. If they're fools, I don't want to know who runs Queen's Park and Ottawa.
 
Hydrogen said:
^It doesn't of course, it just shows that everyone can get very creative on how to tax others.

Unimaginative, as I have pointed out, the city government is not without sin with respect to municipal taxes. But, if suburban municipalities are raising their taxes in double digits as you point out, then it begs the question as to why they must do so!

Are we to simply accept that tax rates must go up at such a constant rate on a continuous basis?
Click to expand...

Of course you're right. I'm just pointing this out to show that it isn't simply Toronto that's being punished, and to show that it's quite reasonable to raise other taxes since Toronto has made a choice not to raise residential taxes. It's not the province beating up on Toronto. It's the province beating up on municipalities. I agree that it's much more appropriate to upload social services and fund them on the income tax base. I look forward to that being phased in as quickly as possible.
 
Here's a radical tax proposal: for every word that comes out of the mouths of politicians they pay me $100 to spend on stuff I deem necessary.

Yes folks, I believe the best solution resides in a dictatorship-style CEO that runs the town. Democracy is just a waste of money and doesn't really exist except for a bunch of loudmouths! (Oops I'm a loudmouth but I hate democracy;)
 
Mayor's game plan full of holes
September 14, 2007
Royson James

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/256558

This is a column minus opinion. No punditry – just dispassionate observations of Mayor David Miller's launch yesterday of a campaign for "a fair tax plan for Toronto."

The hall was filled with unionists, community and arts activists whose applause gave the distinct flavour of an election campaign.

Poster boards, flyers and brochures in the mayor's campaign colours, Ikea blue and gold, framed the podium. The trappings of last fall's partisan campaign have merged with the mayor's office and administration.

"We heard from realtors," Miller said in a jab at the Toronto Real Estate Board, which opposes imposing the land transfer tax. "Now we're going to hear from real Torontonians."

He announced a website, www.fairtaxes.ca, where citizens can go to vote for the new taxes. He didn't say how he plans to stop bogus citizens – real estate agents, Board of Trade members and other such "unworthies" – from accessing the site to give their unwelcome views on higher taxes.

Miller called on his fractured council to unite for the good of the city. We counted 18 of 44 councillors flanking the mayor as he spoke. Not one of them was from the opposition ranks – the 23 dissidents who voted to defer action on the tax measure until Oct. 22.

This is what the mayor wants you, the citizens, to do: Urge your councillor to hike three taxes – on buying a home, on car licences and property taxes. It's to save Toronto and make it great, he said.

Will the new taxes end threatened service cuts to libraries and community services? Yee-aa-ssss. Maybe. For a while, at least. But the TTC fare hike stays.

The mayor said he "greatly respects" councillors but said nothing about allowing a vote on the service cuts – made by staff, at the mayor's direction. Several councillors protested this as undemocratic and a stumbling block to council unity.

Though he said he respects his colleagues on council – and acknowledged that their majority vote to defer crucial new taxes was all about allowing time for the city to make its case to office seekers in the provincial election – Miller's own campaign studiously avoids such lobbying. He announced no strategy yesterday to put pressure on provincial candidates to obtain more Toronto funding.

These items were also missing from the mayor's campaign launch:

No announcement of savings or efficiency measures.

No launch of a group of "waste busters" to report on city waste.

No cuts to councillors' perks or 9 per cent salary hike.

No long-term financing plan to confront the $575 million annual shortfall.

The mayor was asked whether curbing councillor frills such as municipal golf course and zoo passes, and generous office expenses – an issue that infuriates the very citizens who the mayor hopes will lobby their councillors to vote in support of his higher taxes – wasn't one way to find the $700,000 needed to halt Monday closings at the community centres.

Miller replied: "The best way is to vote for the taxes."

A reporter wondered why Miller is only now launching a campaign to get higher taxes for Toronto. Why not three months ago?

"That's a fair question," Miller said.

"This is how we solve the problem," he said, waving the pamphlet outlining his three-pronged plan: new land transfer tax, new $60 vehicle fee, and a "fair and affordable level of property taxes."
 
The mayor was asked whether curbing councillor frills such as municipal golf course and zoo passes, and generous office expenses – an issue that infuriates the very citizens who the mayor hopes will lobby their councillors to vote in support of his higher taxes – wasn't one way to find the $700,000 needed to halt Monday closings at the community centres.

Miller replied: "The best way is to vote for the taxes."


What a f**ken moron. Perhaps if/when the city addresses all the rampant waste that takes place, maybe then Torontonians will be able to take Miller's tax 'solutions' seriously. I'll be very surprised if this latest initiative of his has any effect on swaying the opinions of those against his tax drive [aka the majority of Toronto taxpayers]
 
Waste, huh? You mean like what was going on in Mike Colle's office at Queen's Park? Or at HRDC?

It's amazing the extent to which people are convinced that the municipal government is somehow uniquely wasteful and therefore undeserving of any new resources. Is it wasteful? Sure. All bureaucracies, including private-sector ones, are in some way. Is it any more wasteful than any other level of government? Most certainly not, and probably a lot less so (see the above-cited statistics on spending growth).

My particular favourite factoid is that during the most egregious example of "waste" in recent Toronto governance--MFP--it was all the righties currently howling about efficiency who were in charge. Cute.
 
Of recent times, I have to wonder if Miller is just blindingly stupid?

His little strawman jab at realtors is idiotic as realtors won't be paying the land transfer tax, real Torontonians will be paying it. Realtors may lose business, and of course losing business is always good for the city. But the mayor has not seemed to be all to concerned about businesses in the city. Business is unworthy of his attention.

Of course, the mayor has already played his little tax scheme as a blackmail tactic, telling councillors that their community centres will stay open longer if they agree to the new tax plan.

I have to wonder if this is Miller's old fashioned NDP stripe shining through: The solution to all things is to tax to the max? In the long run, his problems won't be solved, financially or systemically; but while he's in office he'll get a whack of cash and can pretend to have solved problems while actually having burried them in a thin coating of dollars.

There is a provincial election on, and who has Miller attacked? The people right in the city he is mayor of. I don't see him getting on the back of the three party leaders to exact promises from them. What a missed opportunity.
 
The HRDC "Billion Dollar Boondoggle" did not exist. Newspapers made big headlines of it for several years until the final report came out saying that less than $100,000 was involved. I remember it got one article buried in the back pages of the Globe. The Tories still used it to bash the Liberals in the last election, and nobody ever called them on it.

Here's a quote from a column in the Globe a little while later. "The media, so quick to demand accountability of public officials, shows very little of its own. The Human Resources Development Canada "billion-dollar boondoggle" consumed the media for months in 2000 and has attained mythical status as an account of waste and mismanagement. As it happens, an exhaustive audit concluded that the amount that went missing was not $1-billion - it was $85,000. The "scandal," in other words, was phony. The media caravan moves on - but the damage is done."
 
allabootmatt said:
Is it wasteful? Sure. All bureaucracies, including private-sector ones, are in some way. Is it any more wasteful than any other level of government? Most certainly not, and probably a lot less so (see the above-cited statistics on spending growth).
Click to expand...

The fact that waste also takes place in other levels of government should not be a reason for anyone to simply sit back and accept the waste thats taking place with our municipal government. If Miller wants more tax money, he should first impliment serious measures to reduce wasteful spending [and there's plenty of it] before jumping on his tax campaign. As well, his recent theatrical tactics of closing the community centres and libraries on Mondays, shows what a scheming one-tracked bafoon he's become. A caller to CityTV the other day suggested that Miller should use his famous broom and sweep himself out of office. I couldn't agree more.
 
I really don't think the strategy of making the most painful cuts possible in order to make the taxes seem more essential is a very good one. It's pretty transparent, and it's bound to create a backlash. An atmosphere of crisis may create opportunity, but it certainly doesn't make the mayor look like a strong leader. Closing the community centres obviously will save virtually nothing, and that simply makes it harder for him to dismiss (quite legitimately) claims that cutting back on councillors' perks would have no meaningful impact on the deficit.
 
There is no way that the city can come up with $600 million dollars in savings. As unimaginative points out, the examples being cited may save millions, but not hundreds of millions of dollars. At the same time, there would need to be tax increases in excess of what the mayor is demanding in order to cover this shortfall. This all should suggest that there is something systemically wrong with the taxation and funding arrangements in place. This fact should be the focus of the mayor during a provincial election.
 
I agree with you, and I think that the cuts the city is looking at, while as painful as possible, are a drop in the bucket financially. It's not like they're laying off the community centre employees for one day a week. I would bet that their collective agreement requires them to still be paid, perhaps for sitting at home. Seriously, though, if we're talking about minuscule cuts, aren't there better places than shutting down community centres and seniors programs? What about the drivers on the fully automated Scarborough RT who I've seen eating their lunch while "driving"? I was just in Vancouver and their identical system operated just fine without a driver. I guarantee eliminating that position would save more than any community centre and library shutdowns.

I do think, however, that there are other places for cuts that would give serious savings. In 1995, the federal government eliminated 45,000 positions. It was painful, but the impact on government services was quite minimal. There's no question that a very large number of middle management and clerical positions exist in the city that could likely be eliminated with minimal impact to the general population and the services that the city provides. I'm not talking about the front line workers that Miller is targeting. These aren't the people who pick up the garbage or drive the buses. They're the thousands upon thousands of workers who work in City Hall, Metro Hall, Etobicoke Civic Centre, East York Civic Centre, York Civic Centre, Scarborough Civic Centre, North York City Centre, and other city office space around the city. While they are likely great people who work hard at their jobs, I really question whether a significant number of positions couldn't be eliminated and the remaining work re-distributed.

I'm not even a remotely conservative person, I believe that city workers should be paid a fair wage with reasonable benefits, and I support the right to collective bargaining. I just feel that the city has a lot of places to look for savings. The city is the only level of government that never engaged in downsizing throughout the 90s, despite the fact that amalgamation surely created a lot of redundant positions. Even though those layoffs were painful, they produced much more efficient organizations that made their substantial surpluses today possible.
 
If the mayor believes that the city is running as efficiently as possible, then he should be open to having that assertion examined.
 
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