Rob Ford's Toronto

[brockm]

No I'm not, i deal with it on a daily basis.
Engineers, horticultural workers, librarians, urban planning, cultural services, police, fire, paramedics, managers, etc.
Not everyone who works for the city picks up garbage.

Sure. But note I used the term "bureaucracy". The number of support staff for all these aforementioned positions is very large. And I for one am extremely in favor of cutting police funding -- which is the city's second large budget item after the TTC. Toronto Police are also the highest paid municipal police force in North America as far as I know. The latest labour deal has raised a Toronto constable's starting salary to like $90,000/year.

I used to live in Charlotte, NC and I had a friend who was just hired as a cop for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police, and had starting salary of like $29,000/year. And Charlotte is considered a "rich" city by most standards. =)

 

[brockm]

Even ignoring the legal issues (and I'm almost certain such a move would be illegal)

Yes, the City is bound to deliver these services under the Ontario Municipal Act.

 

[Thanos]

However, Alberta also has no provincial sales tax. And while I don't have time to figure out the numbers, I'm thinking the 8% less sales tax in Wild Rose Country is going to equate to fairly large benefit at the median income.

Yes, the sales tax helps. However, Alberta can only last so long on their oil royalties. IMO there will be a 5% sales tax by 2020.
And yet people choose to live in Toronto and not Wild Rose Country, but if Ford gets another 4 years i don't think they will.

 

[DanTheMan]

The number of support staff for all these aforementioned positions is very large.

Just an FYI...most of the fire and paramedic support staff is comprised of people who are in one way or another injured and are unable to perform regular duties. The rest of them are mechanics or people who would otherwise need specific training. Cleaning staff is very, very small...All of the vehicle cleaning is done by us and general station cleanup is also done by us. The station is given a deep clean maybe once a week by actual cleaning staff.

I would also just like to point out, that the asked 10% budget cut to EMS is a disaster waiting to happen...we're already at our lowest staffing level since 2002, but call volumes have sky rocketed. Paramedics are regularly going an entire 12hr shift without a lunch break just trying to keep up...figure that one out

 

[kEiThZ]

This is going to sound crazy, but sometimes I think, things have to get worse before they get better.

Here's the thing. Most residents don't really care about flowers in the parks. Seriously. Ask a friend if they want to pay higher taxes so that there will be flowers in the parks and so that the zoo will remain in city hands.

I hate to say it, because I love Toronto, but the truth is that most residents don't share visions of city building. They care about having a roof on their heads, food in their stomachs and getting to and from work. Taking bike lanes off Jarvis and making it faster to get to work? Exactly what they want.

Perhaps the biggest favour Rob Ford will do for this city, is that he will truly spark a debate on what kind of city Torontonians want and what they are willing to pay for. That debate is long overdue.

 

[kEiThZ]

And I for one am extremely in favor of cutting police funding -- which is the city's second large budget item after the TTC. Toronto Police are also the highest paid municipal police force in North America as far as I know. The latest labour deal has raised a Toronto constable's starting salary to like $90,000/year.

I may not agree with all your suggestions. But this I agree with. Police officers in Toronto are ridiculously overpaid. They make more than an infantry officer getting danger pay in Kandahar. And I am being serious. Some how I doubt policing even the worst parts of Toronto are more dangerous than patrolling the Arghandab Riverbeds.

 

[Armbruster]

Depending on which way you slice it, when you factor in all benefits, city workers make 20-30% more than they would doing the exact same thing in the private sector. If you were simply to pay them, say, 8% more than they would make in the private sector, you could close Toronto's fiscal gab with no tax increases and no service reductions.

If you want to stick to an ideological position that the government should pay more than private sector equivalents, then fine. And if you want to demand that people pay more taxes, then fine. But it's probably not worth us arguing those points since we likely have a disagreement on first principles. I'll only say I think it's unfair for a bureaucrat working at a car insurance company who does the same job as a bureaucrat working at municipal licensing to make less than his public sector counterpart and pay more tax dollars to subsidize his unionized, municipally employed doppleganger.

Could we all please remember that when the city hires a private contractor, we are not just paying the workers? We also pay shareholder profits and other costs associated with private businesses (higher borrowing rates, risk premiums, contract oversight costs, etc.)

The only apples-to-apples comparison is total cost to the taxpayer, not just the labour cost.

 

[brockm]

Just an FYI...most of the fire and paramedic support staff is comprised of people who are in one way or another injured and are unable to perform regular duties. The rest of them are mechanics or people who would otherwise need specific training. Cleaning staff is very, very small...All of the vehicle cleaning is done by us and general station cleanup is also done by us. The station is given a deep clean maybe once a week by actual cleaning staff.

I would also just like to point out, that the asked 10% budget cut to EMS is a disaster waiting to happen...we're already at our lowest staffing level since 2002, but call volumes have sky rocketed. Paramedics are regularly going an entire 12hr shift without a lunch break just trying to keep up...figure that one out

Well, in my particular case -- and at the risk of having said persons find this post -- I have one friend who works for the City and two family members. I can tell you that all of them are simply office bureaucrats, whose skill-sets are entirely replaceable at much lower salaries.

I'm even willing to wager a guess that most of the people working in the bureaucracy such as in Policy Research, Zoning, and Bylaw Enforcement departments are all dime-a-dozen pencil pushers. Sure, there's plenty of specialized knowledge in those departments. And yes, there's weeks worth of training that go into making said workers productive. But you've got a bunch of necessary skills, surrounded by a greater number of overpaid support bureaucrats.

Anecdotally, my experiences with City Hall -- which have been many -- have involved making my way through a net of people whose only really contribution is process stratification. The people who actually say, know something useful, like how to judge the soundness of an architectural plan, are surrounded by 20 support staff who wouldn't know the first thing about it. Other than making sure everything is in order for the guy who eventually reviews it.

 

[brockm]

Could we all please remember that when the city hires a private contractor, we are not just paying the workers? We also pay shareholder profits and other costs associated with private businesses (higher borrowing rates, risk premiums, contract oversight costs, etc.)

The only apples-to-apples comparison is total cost to the taxpayer, not just the labour cost.

Well, of course. I don't support outsourcing merely as a matter of principle. But only as a matter of cost savings. I wouldn't support outsourcing a job that did not meet a set quality standard at an appreciable cost savings.
However, if a contractor can provide a service the same service and reduce outlays by 10%, while meeting service standards, then I see absolutely no reason to worry about who profits. If you can make a profit by doing something cheaper than the competition -- in this case, public sector municipal workers -- then all the power to you.

I for one, have absolutely no moral or ethical qualms with the concept of a private enterprise making a profit from activities it performs for a government customer, as long as the manner in which that enterprise obtained its tender for services was done in a open, transparent and fair manner.

Moreover, I do not want to treat your argument uncharitably per se, but I often feel when someone uses this argument, it is in itself an uncharitable statement at best, and a straw man at worst. Uncharitably interpreted, the position seems to imply that the proponents of private outsourcing of taxpayer-funded services have an ideological desire to merely line the pockets of rich people, by fleecing taxpayers. If this is the correct interpretation of your statements -- and I'm not assuming it is -- then it reeks of sensationalist class warfare language.

The interesting thing is, I would agree that private corporations do, in fact, try to do just this. But so do labour unions. It's called economic rent-seeking. It's rampant. It's all around you. And the best way to defeat it, is through open tendering and competition. Meaning, the elimination of sole-source tendering as well as the removal of collective bargaining and binding arbitration laws for public sector workers.

As a free market economist in the truest sense, I don't tend to view corporations or unions as anything other than self-interested economic actors. I am opposed, in principle, to corporatism (which includes public sector unions).

 

[syn]

This is going to sound crazy, but sometimes I think, things have to get worse before they get better.

Here's the thing. Most residents don't really care about flowers in the parks. Seriously. Ask a friend if they want to pay higher taxes so that there will be flowers in the parks and so that the zoo will remain in city hands.

I hate to say it, because I love Toronto, but the truth is that most residents don't share visions of city building. They care about having a roof on their heads, food in their stomachs and getting to and from work. Taking bike lanes off Jarvis and making it faster to get to work? Exactly what they want.

Perhaps the biggest favour Rob Ford will do for this city, is that he will truly spark a debate on what kind of city Torontonians want and what they are willing to pay for. That debate is long overdue.

These are the same people that proceed to complain when parks, etc. start to look run down and shabby, especially compared to other cities. Let's face it, if you ask someone on the spot about taxes many of them would be willing to sacrifice almost anything to have them lowered. When reality hits, however, they sing a different tune.

If the KPMB study made anything clear, it's that most people don't mind paying higher taxes for better services in the long run. Toronto was on the right path, hopefully Ford doesn't take us too far off course.

 

[unimaginative2]

These are the same people that proceed to complain when parks, etc. start to look run down and shabby, especially compared to other cities. Let's face it, if you ask someone on the spot about taxes many of them would be willing to sacrifice almost anything to have them lowered. When reality hits, however, they sing a different tune.

It's maybe a little worse than that. A lot of people want their taxes kept low and they don't want their services cut. They're not willing to accept the trade-off and opposition parties tend to indulge them in that. Look at the health premium: in every poll, people overwhelmingly said they wanted more money given to health care and even that, in abstract, they'd be willing to pay for it. When a pretty modest tax was actually imposed to allow for increased health spending, people screamed bloody murder.

 

[kEiThZ]

It's maybe a little worse than that. A lot of people want their taxes kept low and they don't want their services cut. They're not willing to accept the trade-off and opposition parties tend to indulge them in that. Look at the health premium: in every poll, people overwhelmingly said they wanted more money given to health care and even that, in abstract, they'd be willing to pay for it. When a pretty modest tax was actually imposed to allow for increased health spending, people screamed bloody murder.

Honestly, this is why I believe in an itemized billing, like you get on your property taxes. That really shows people what they are paying for. Ditto for user fees.

Projects too should come with their own line item. Next time they build a subway line let them have a xyz subway line on the tax bill. It'll show people how much it costs to them, in a manner of speaking. This can help break down these big multi-billion dollar projects.

 

[kEiThZ]

These are the same people that proceed to complain when parks, etc. start to look run down and shabby, especially compared to other cities. Let's face it, if you ask someone on the spot about taxes many of them would be willing to sacrifice almost anything to have them lowered. When reality hits, however, they sing a different tune.

This is why I said it has to get worse before it gets better. People need to see what worse is. Remember Mike Harris? People voted him in to get lower taxes. Then there was utter revulsion towards his policies. And it helped put forward 8 years (and possibly more) of Liberal rule.

 

[Electrify]

On the topic of Jarvis, I'm going to repost much of what I wrote on Spacing's website:

"Yes, Jarvis is going, but now we will have a fully separated lane along Sherbourne, which is not a bad compromise. At the very least, let's wait till the Sherbourne lanes are maxing out on capacity before removing lanes from other nearby arterials.

Also, in York Region along roads which are not wide enough for separate bike lanes, what they've done is added curb-side markers to help show where cyclists and drivers should be in the lane to avoid a collision. Seeing as a standard traffic lane is usually wide enough to accommodate both cars and cyclists, this also seems like a fair compromise and should be considered for Jarvis, and other roads which are predicted to have high cycling volumes but are not wide enough to implement a bike lane without removing a traffic lane."

http://spacingtoronto.ca/2011/07/14/thursdays-headlines-207/#comment-491633

 

[GraphicMatt]

Sharrows were considered as part of the orig. 2009 EA for Jarvis Street that would have seen the sidewalks widened and the street reduced to four traffic lanes. An idea worth revisiting, but unfortunately this council threw out that EA (again) and is returning the roadway to its five-lane operation.