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Rob Ford's Toronto

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Asterix said:
Similarly Doug claiming recently that even after only two months, he'd found more 'gravy than Thanksgiving'. However instead of identifying said gravy and doing something to drain the gravy boat, he wants to spend money on outside consultants to tell him where the gravy is buried. What is it? Has he found the gravy or hasn't he?
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If that sort of election-honeymoon rhetoric ends up being a 'Colin Powell at the UN' moment, it may not matter as long as there's no "Mission Accomplished" moment later on...the brothers Ford must never tire in their search for gravy, and when some gravy is found, they must press on and search for more gravy.
 
I find the Fords' rhetoric around the so-far phantom gravy to be just a little ridiculous. As near as I can tell, their working argument is that they haven't been able to find ''efficiencies'' yet because the speeded-up budget process didn't allow time for thorough review. But who speeded up the budget process for no good reason, over objections from Council? Oh right, the Fords. It reminds me of the old saw about killing your parents and then complaining about being an orphan.

To me, the far more important takeaway is that even the 'easy' 2011 budget has shattered what I call the central myth of Fordism--that you can cut taxes with no impact on services. The reaction of various stakeholders to even the mild proposed cuts in the 2011 budget makes me wonder whether Ford & Co.--let alone Council--have anything like the stomach that will be required for real reductions in services.

There's a reason the right fights expansions of the welfare state tooth and nail that goes beyond simple ideology: once voters get used to a service it's very, very hard to ever take it away. One of the interesting things about Toronto is that stuff like transit and community centres and libraries have a pretty darn broad constituency, much broader than in many US cities, for example, and people will really scream if there are serious cuts.
 
looking back at the garbage strike of two years ago I was very much against the union at the time. However, one must raise the question of what exactly contracting out will save the average taxpayer... $100 a year, if that? And so the trade off which potentially makes hundreds of people unemployed and replaced by lower wage employees does not really look all that good from the big picture view. It basically ends up being an undercutting of the middle class and a lowering of average income and standard of living for real people, while profits travel to large corporations and shareholders instead. I'd rather have individuals continue to receive good incomes rather than see it go to corporations and shareholders just to save a $100 on municipal taxes. I think this is a strategy of the wealthy and powerful to create a competetive race to the bottom in wage and benefit concessions amongst competing groups of workers.
 
Redroom Studios said:
looking back at the garbage strike of two years ago I was very much against the union at the time. However, one must raise the question of what exactly contracting out will save the average taxpayer... $100 a year, if that?
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If it was $100 a year, that would be HUGE. I'd expect it to be much less than that.


And so the trade off which potentially makes hundreds of people unemployed and replaced by lower wage employees does not really look all that good from the big picture view. It basically ends up being an undercutting of the middle class and a lowering of average income and standard of living for real people, while profits travel to large corporations and shareholders instead. I'd rather have individuals continue to receive good incomes rather than see it go to corporations and shareholders just to save a $100 on municipal taxes. I think this is a strategy of the wealthy and powerful to create a competetive race to the bottom in wage and benefit concessions amongst competing groups of workers.
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That seems to be a common sentiment here. Overpay workers out of the goodness of your heart/or as part of some social engineering theory or whatever. However, many Torontonians don't subscribe to this view. Hell, even the lefties at city hall don't subscribe with this view, as they voted to freeze wages on non-unionized workers.
 
ssiguy2 said:
Fine, you guys tell me what Miller accomplished in his first 3 months in office?....................and I really do want an answer to that question.
Like I said I don't like the guy but give him some slack for god's sake.
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Hey ssiguy, love you posts. But my problem is ford has reneged on most of his promises!
 
You know, as much as I despise Ford as a politician, he was right on one thing: city Councillors either never reply or take weeks or months to get back to you. That's not acceptable. They're the constituents liaison to City Hall. If they or their staff don't bother to do their most basic task of responding to constituents' questions and concerns, and we have to get our answers ourselves somewhere else then we don't need them there.

I've sent Mike Layton several e-mails regarding projects in my ward and I've yet to receive even a simple acknowledgement months later.

EDIT:
Wow... so I decided to go right to the source and wrote Ford an email CC'd to my councillor:

Mr. Ford, I recall that one of the pillars of your campaign was about councillors responding to their constituents in a timely manner. "Customer Service" you call it.

Recently, I've written on different occasions to my new councillor for Ward 19, looking to get involved and informed on issues pertinent to my neighbourhood. I have yet to receive even an acknowledgement of the reception of my e-mails.

Who are councillors but representatives of the constituents who elected them? If one is unable to perform the basic task of being our liaison in City Hall, then something is not working.

What measures are being taken to ensure timely responses and when can we expect to see improvements on this?

Further, I find it important to point out that if 44 councillors are so overwhelmed by the number of constituents that they have, how is it that your proposal to cut them in half will improve customer service? 22 councillors with double the workload would no doubt result in poorer response times, not better. I hope you reconsider.

Thank you.
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... Within 30 seconds, I got his (no doubt automated) reply:

Thank you for your email.

As I promised during the mayoralty election, I am dedicated to delivering customer service excellence, creating a transparent and accountable government, reducing the size and cost of government and building a transportation city.

This note is to confirm that we have received your email and that we are looking into your matter.

Please feel free to follow up to check the status of your email.

Thanks again and have a great day.

Yours truly,

Mayor Rob Ford
City of Toronto

We're all in this together...
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An automated reply is infinitely better than no reply. Maybe he's on to something.
 
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Redroom Studios said:
l And so the trade off which potentially makes hundreds of people unemployed and replaced by lower wage employees does not really look all that good from the big picture view. It basically ends up being an undercutting of the middle class and a lowering of average income and standard of living for real people, while profits travel to large corporations and shareholders instead. I'd rather have individuals continue to receive good incomes rather than see it go to corporations and shareholders just to save a $100 on municipal taxes.
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First of all, under the CUPE contract, all permanent garbage collectors must be offered other jobs at equal or greater pay within the Toronto gov't workforce, so there will not not be hundreds of people unemployed. In fact, to many of the garbage collectors I imagine they see this as a career opportunity, get out of the garbage business and instead do other work, for the same or better pay and benefits. It's a win for the workers, and the taxpayers.
 
MetroMan said:
You know, as much as I despise Ford as a politician, he was right on one thing: city Councillors either never reply or take weeks or months to get back to you. That's not acceptable. They're the constituents liaison to City Hall. If they or their staff don't bother to do their most basic task of responding to constituents' questions and concerns, and we have to get our answers ourselves somewhere else then we don't need them there.

I've sent Mike Layton several e-mails regarding projects in my ward and I've yet to receive even a simple acknowledgement months later.

EDIT:
Wow... so I decided to go right to the source and wrote Ford an email CC'd to my councillor:

... Within 30 seconds, I got his (no doubt automated) reply:

An automated reply is infinitely better than no reply. Maybe he's on to something.
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I emailed Brian Ashton about some stuff a while back. I got personal replies by email.

He didn't run again in my ward, and was replaced by Gary Crawford. I emailed the new guy about some stuff too, and he gave me personal replies by email, and then called me a couple of days later.

I'm impressed with both of these guys.
 
I emailed Pam McConnell, Adam Vaughan and Mike Layton on several occasions and received replies from none of them. I eventually got a reply from Vaughan when I called his office to point out the e-mail. Mike Layton actually never replied to my emails even when he was on the campaign trail. I guess I should have expected him to ignore me just the same when he got elected.

David Miller would reply relatively promptly when he was councillor and then as Mayor. I had no complaints. But councillors... it's hit or miss... mostly miss.
 
I emailed Pam McConnell, Adam Vaughan, Shelley Carroll and Kristyn Wong-Tam a week or so ago with some budget questions and they all got back to me. Carroll and McConnell were very fast. Vaughan emailed me back within a couple of days. Wong-Tam took a week.

Overall, though, I'm not sure how good a metric this kind of thing is.
 
Funny, but you'd think that some people would have figured out that some councillors are just going to be far busier than others given the populations, location, activities and numbers of businesses in their wards. Those councillors are provided with exactly the same resources as the ones way out in the quiet suburbs.
 
MetroMan said:
David Miller would reply relatively promptly when he was councillor and then as Mayor.
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David Milller was a great communicator. Quick to return e-mails and tweets. Since the change-over, I find most e-mails to the mayor's office go unanswered, and I don't think Ford has replied to a tweet yet. I got a couple of direct messages from Miller on Twitter (and I think I only tweeted him a half-dozen times or so in a couple of years).

It's a shame that Rob Ford is so uncommunicative with the people he promised he would do better than his predecessor.
 
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