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Rob Ford's Toronto

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Very good ideas, Peepers - I'd back both changes.

What about parking enforcement? Are those officers part of the same union as duty cops? Is there a more efficient way to handle that file?
 
I started a thread on this a while back, asking why police must stand by manholes, etc. There were a number of responses saying that police are very necessary for this and probably best suited as it's a requirement of the city etc. To me, that's just circular logic. Despite the fact that the same requirement doesn't exist in other Canadian cities, those other cities don't melt down due to the lack of police guarding manholes.

If that $48 million number is accurate, eliminating the requirement for "paid duty" officers wouldn't save $48 million, because other arrangments may still need to be made in some instances, but a lot of money could be saved nonetheless.
 
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I can see the argument (and maybe I made it in that thread) that the presence of a police officer at a construction site might have community safety benefit (eyes on the street and all that) but there are better ways to manage things no doubt.
 
Paid-duty could also be considered detrimental to the image of police, because they are most often seen at these standing around with a coffee cup in their hand or fiddling with their Blackberrys, mostly oblivious to whatever is passing on the streets. They become people we see having less work to do than the people beside highway construction sites seen twirling the sign between Stop and Slow. If we need a greater presence of cops on the streets, put the on-duty ones out there. Now we're going to go after the custodians in the police department, will replace secure jobs with contract workers to realize efficiencies, but rather than using equivalent contracted security guards - if necessary - on city works projects we'll keep providing beer and vacation money to well-compensated police officers to stand watch over them. I see an inconsistency there.
 
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Eug said:
I started a thread on this a while back, asking why police must stand by manholes, etc. There were a number of responses saying that police are very necessary for this and probably best suited as it's a requirement of the city etc. To me, that's just circular logic. Despite the fact that the same requirement doesn't exist in other Canadian cities, those other cities don't melt down due to the lack of police guarding manholes.

If that $48 million number is accurate, eliminating the requirement for "paid duty" officers wouldn't save $48 million, because other arrangments may still need to be made in some instances, but a lot of money could be saved nonetheless.
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Actually the $48 million figure I quoted is not for "paid duty", i.e. non-policing duties such as movie shoots - guarding manholes etc. The $48 million is overtime spent on actual official police work - mostly traffic court appearances (this is why we have so many traffic cops on the sunshine list).

I don't know how much the city is paying police officers to stand around city construction sites but if you replace an officer making $65 / hr with a civilian making $25 / hr (or better yet a traffic barrier) we obviously could drastically reduce these costs.
 
typezed said:
. Now we're going to go after the custodians in the police department, will replace secure jobs with contract workers to realize efficiencies, but rather than using equivalent contracted security guards - if necessary - on city works projects we'll keep providing beer and vacation money to well-compensated police officers to stand watch over them. I see an inconsistency there.
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Well said! There is a HUGE inconsistency here! The police services board is targeting the lowest paid jobs - the janitors - for outsourcing in order to create "efficiencies" while at the same time protecting the $65/ hour moonlighting jobs that have made so many police officers rich and have cost the city untold $Millions.:mad:
 
Do these police officers pay income tax on their part time earnings? If the contractors pay them directly would they not be their employees to whom they issue pay cheques and T4s? If the contractors pay the Police Service who in turn pays the officers doesn't that put the Police Service in the position of being an employment agency?

Who decides which officer goes where and when, sounds like all kinds of opportunity for improprieties that we don't want to think about in the same sentence as Police Service.
 
Inflation is going around 2%. Rob Ford wants to cut expenses by 5%, based on the 2010 budget. That adds up to 7%. However, not everything will go up at the same inflation rate (IE. electricity, petroleum, water). I think that the actual city accounting books at the end of 2011 will show the opposite and 2012 will see big increases in property taxes to compensate.
 
Torontovibe said:
Hey, where is this huge gravy train of cash that Ford was gonna find in the budget? If he knew about large sums of money being wasted, hidden, stolen or whatever, why has it not materialized in the budget? What gravy train was he talking about? Shouldn't Ford be accountable for all the crap he was claiming for so long? I'm waiting.
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The mysteriously elusive "Gravy Train" will be to the Ford regime what the missing Iraq WMDs were to Bush and Co.
 
adma said:
Even better would be 416-328-3825 (416-FAT-FUCK)
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I have a problem with that.

My Blackberry doesn't have the letters showing on the buttons, so I find this alpha-things annoying. (even more annoying is when you get the voice-mail system that asks you to dial in the last name ...).

Perhaps a more memorable digit would be better.
 
Your Blackberry knows what you want to do. You don't need an alpha numeric keypad, just type the three letters of the name on the regular QWERTY keypad and the BB will convert them to alpha-numeric dialing.
 
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