New Land Transfer Tax

[Prometheus The Supremo]

Really cutting off community centers save 700k out of what 500 million! Just as useless

like homeopathy, a molecule of medicine diluted in all the matter in our solar system or more doesn't have any real effect on the disease.

 

[rbt]

to save 500 million or even 100 million, wage and employment freezes are necessary.

Actually, to save 500 million they need to fire about 30% of the staff for anything discretionary; not provincially mandated. That includes services like the police force.

Hoy implemented cuts that were easily reversible under the assumption that the 2009 budget would be able to bring back all of these services.

 

[unimaginative2]

Does the province mandate staffing levels? If not, I'm sure the city could find ways to deliver social services with fewer staff.

 

[rbt]

Does the province mandate staffing levels? If not, I'm sure the city could find ways to deliver social services with fewer staff.

Not staffing levels exactly but they the province does set service levels which in turn translates directly into staffing levels. Toronto has about the same staffing and service levels as other municipalities, so unless everyone is really inefficient there isn't much to be had.

 

[unimaginative2]

Report blasts city's water department
JEFF GRAY
The Globe and Mail

September 19, 2007

In a report certain to provide ammunition to opponents of Mayor David Miller, the city's auditor-general has criticized the water department for a lack of financial controls over its payroll and over a contract for emergency repairs.

As the city bristles at budget cuts that have, among other things, forced community centres to cancel city programming on Mondays, a report from Auditor-General Jeffrey Griffiths says overtime at two water treatment plants was not being properly monitored, even as it spiked 60 per cent.

A separate report by Mr. Griffiths, also going before the city's audit committee next week, criticizes Toronto Water for awarding citywide emergency repair contracts to a single supplier with "inadequate controls."

City officials say they have already made many of the changes the auditor recommends, but Councillor Doug Holyday (Ward 3, Etobicoke Centre), who chairs the audit committee, argued that the reports poke a hole in assertions from the mayor - who is pushing for two controversial new taxes - that the city is well managed.

"It flies right in the face of what he says," Mr. Holyday said in an interview.

Mr. Miller, who has dismissed assertions that the city bureaucracy is wasteful as "utter nonsense," said yesterday that the audits of Toronto Water in fact prove his case.

"These reports show the exact opposite," the mayor said in an interview. "They show that we have the systems in place through our independent auditor-general to catch where there are problems and remedy them."

He said that of the more than 30 audits Mr. Griffiths has done since Mr. Miller took office, more than 80 per cent of the auditor-general's recommendations have been implemented.

Still, Mr. Miller added, the audit of Toronto Water's external contracts shows the city needs to do a better job monitoring any outsourcing. "I think it's fair to say that the city needs to do some work on when services have been privatized and outsourced, in having the proper controls."

Mr. Griffiths said the problems the audits identified were fairly basic management issues. "It's not rocket science."

But he said it didn't necessarily mean there were other bigger problems in the water department, where he found similar holes as in previous audits of other city construction contracts.

Among the problems the audits found were:

Supervisors, who no longer work weekends or night shifts, "do not monitor employee attendance during all shifts."

Some workers were overpaid, with one making an extra $12,000 from 2001 to 2004.

"Key documents" were missing in the decision to award a $2-million emergency repair contract to a private firm, or featured "handwritten changes."

Lou Di Gironimo, the general manager of Toronto Water, said many of the auditor-general's recommendations have already been implemented, or are in the process of being brought in. For example, he said, new overtime forms are being drawn up, and a new unit has been set up to better scrutinize contracts.

"They're issues that we were aware of already. ... They were corroborating what we found, which is good," Mr. Di Gironimo said.

In the case of the cost overruns, he acknowledged managers misjudged how much emergency work the company would be required to do each year. But he pointed out that the overall cost to the city for emergency water repairs actually decreased from $10-million in 2005 to $7.2-million in 2006.

However, according to the response provided by Toronto Water management, the department disagrees with recommendations to go after the private contractor for any possible overpayments in 2004 and 2005, although it agrees with reviews for 2006 and 2007.

Mr. Di Gironimo also said that for 2007, the department broke up the emergency repair contract into four parts, one for each quadrant of the city. However, the same contractor was the lowest bidder for three of the four contracts, Mr. Di Gironimo said.

The company that won the contracts looked at in the audit, OJCR Construction Ltd., was at the centre of a battle at a council committee over whether it had violated the city's fair-wage policy - which demands non-union contractors pay union wages - and should be disqualified from bidding on future city contracts.

***

AUDIT: THINGS THAT DIDN'T ADD UP

Two reports on Toronto Water from the city's auditor-general revealed 'inadequate controls' on contracts and employee payrolls. The problems cited:

On emergency

repair contracts

At least $55,000 was overpaid to the contractor due to "mathematical calculation errors" while another $195,000 "require further management review due to lack of documentation" and $100,000 related to previous contracts was paid out in 2004 with "a lack of supporting documentation."

Copies of "key sections of bid documents" on $2-million emergency repair contracts with a private firm were not kept, and copies that do exist feature "several handwritten changes."

"Certain terms and conditions were either not clear, lacked adequate detail, were contradictory" in the contract.

"Several staff members involved in the day-to-day administration and execution of contracts appear to require additional training."

Toronto Water cost estimates going into the contracts were "inadequate" as expenditures exceeded contact amounts each year, including by $3.2-million or 158 per cent in 2006.

"Approvals for over-expenditures were obtained after expenditures had significantly exceeded the original contract amount," the report reads, pointing out that even though the 2006 contract had reached $5.2-million in November, 2006, it was not approved until April, 2007.

In one district, "no one validates invoice details. Errors, if any, remain undetected."

No procedures to evaluate quality of contractors' work.

At time of audit, a backlog of 42 emergency repair jobs existed in the Toronto East area that were more than four months old.

On its payroll at waste-

water treatment plants

Supervisors, who no longer work weekends or night shifts, "do not monitor employee attendance during all shifts," and there were no spot checks. At least one employee was paid for a shift not worked.

"Overtime information currently available to management is not adequate to effectively monitor overtime hours and costs." Systems are "prone to error."

Due to incorrect payroll codes, management staff paid at time-and-a-half instead of straight time, totalling $7,500 in overpayments. One employee was overpaid $12,000 from 2001 to 2004. Other city departments may have had the same problem, which has now been fixed.

38 out of 284 employees earned overtime in excess of 400 hours and approximately $20,000 annually.

"Some work areas and positions have unusual levels of overtime on a consistent basis."

Shift changes to save $200,000 in overtime require consent of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 416 and are "currently under review" by city staff.

Managers not reviewing employee absenteeism when it rises above average of nine days, as required by city policy.

In 2006, 24 per cent of wastewater workers exceeded 10 sick days in one year, costing the city $360,000 in overtime for their replacements.

Jeff Gray

 

[Junglab]

I was going to post a whack of articles from The Toronto Star on how our glorious Mayor is placing his already well-chewed foot into his mouth - yet again. However, I think we've been there, done that on this file. Frankly, I fervently hope His Blondeness is playing a very intricate joke on us all, or we'll all be forced to alter reams of blonde-jokes. This guy takes the whole consensus thing way too far - the buck not only doesn't stop with him - it flies right out the open window helped along by a strategically placed fan. What a crock.

Here's Barber's take of a few days ago - I really like his cynical style... and no, I won't be sueing him any time soon. That, and he pegs certain councillors brilliantly.

When it comes to taxes, Mr. Miller, you're killing me. Just do it
JOHN BARBER
15 September 2007
The Globe and Mail
2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

I promise not to get too cynical about our fair mayor's new hearts-and-minds campaign to sell what he calls “a fair tax plan for Toronto.†I really believe in the cause. It's progressive, in the classic sense, and necessary. But its implementation has been excruciating. David Miller's new campaign, noble as it may be, only makes it more so.

When was the last time any English-speaking political leader appealed earnestly to his constituents to do the right thing by accepting new taxes? The trail leads back to the Dark Ages, when the weakling Anglo-Saxons volunteered to pay the Vikings not to pillage and rape on a regular basis. To buy protection, they established the first property tax, the Danegeld. It is still with us, though the Vikings are long gone, and every hike since the beginning has been baldly coercive.

Only a loser would ever try to gain popular consent for new taxes before imposing them with no questions asked, following an ancient tradition. Mayor Miller knows that, but he failed in his attempt to low-bridge his tax plan through council. Now, he's improvising awkwardly with a hastily conceived publicity campaign leading to no certain success at another council meeting later this month.

Nothing dramatizes the pathos of Mayor Miller in agony better than Premier Dalton McGuinty in triumph. I personally resent Premier McGuinty's “health premium†much more than Mayor Miller's new “revenue tools.†I support the Miller taxes and see health care as the true tyrant of public finance, most responsible for oppressing needy cities. But for a student of politics, the Machiavellian brilliance of the health premium's imposition is almost thrilling.

Every politician knows that violence against the body politic is sometimes necessary. The smart ones, following the first principle adumbrated in The Prince, use it early and decisively.

They do the necessary dirty work thoroughly enough to forestall the need for constant mop-up operations, which keep resentment alive, and early enough to allow for the longest possible peace to dull memory of the pain.

Mr. Miller tried, but only Mr. McGuinty succeeded. Campaigning for re-election today, the Premier outright admits that he broke his promise and defends the now-ancient fait accompli of his health tax with serene confidence. A classic strategy is working brilliantly. The “promise-breaker†hysteria currently filling the airwaves is a dog, to quote another adept in the black arts of liberalism, that don't hunt.

But poor Mr. Miller is being nipped to pieces by the chihuahuas of city council. In response, he has appealed for public help in his renewed effort to make the little beasties jump through hoops.

The conventional thinking about Toronto's tax impasse is that the mayor's current effort is belated, that he should have made a greater effort to “sell†his package before putting it to the fateful vote in July. So better late than never, the thinking goes.

But that's crazy. Nobody will ever volunteer to pay more taxes. The mayor's ram-it-through strategy was sound – virtually essential. His mistake, as one Queen's Park insider privately observed, was to think that the low-bridge route would prove easier to navigate than the all-inclusive, socialistic high road. His velvet glove hid a jellied fist.

After the sad fact of his loss, the mayor said defiantly that making deals to secure votes wasn't his style. What a putz. He got bushwhacked by Etobicoke Councillor Suzan Hall, the mushiest matron ever to have emerged from a suburban school board. One stern threat and a wilted bouquet could have won her over. Likewise for bobblehead Councillor Maria Augimeri, who tipped the vote against the package, then immediately changed her mind.

After the fact, Millerista Councillor Gord Perks complained that some in his party weren't aware “what a weasel†Councillor Brian Ashton was – a comment for which Mr. Perks promptly apologized. But the question remains: If the mayor and his party didn't know what a weasel Mr. Ashton is, after seeing him in action all these years, how can they presume to run Toronto City Hall?

Now, they're coming to us for help. We're back on the high road with banners flying. We demand new taxes! Please.

Pretty please?

There you go – I broke my promise not to be cynical. So sue me.

jbarber@globeandmail.com

 

[lordmandeep]

why doesn't he raise residential property taxes...

In Brampton they go up 6% and there is hardly a sound (well because most out here have no idea what is going on).

IN Toronto, they increase by 3% and the world goes nuts....Cry me a river.


1% brings 80 million dollars....


Just Increase by 5% thats 400 million and cut the rest in services...


Sure it will hurt people and may make some people want to leave Toronto, but you will be paying more if you to the burbs...

 

[allabootmatt]

I believe the property tax hike required to meet the shortfall was calculated at just under 20%.

Keep in mind that we're talking about percentages, not dollars; while the rates may be lower in the city home values are much, much higher but incomes are the same as 905. Property tax is incredibly regressive.

 

[Junglab]

Another of John Barber's columns...



THE PRICE OF AMALGAMATION
Cost cuts, tax freezes and other fairy tales
Headshot of John Barber

JOHN BARBER

September 20, 2007

Not since the days of folly prior to amalgamation have so many special pleaders and professional misleaders spouted such excrement about saving money at city hall.

Remember the politicians and the newspapers and the consultants who told you that amalgamation would save $300-million a year? Well they're back, in full spout - just as opportunistic, just as brazen, just as wrong as ever.

The good fellows from the waste industry made a big splash yesterday, carefully selecting convenient facts, making up others and omitting the obvious in constructing their fairy-tale analysis of city garbage costs. But they still couldn't come up with the money to save the community centres they claimed to be saving on behalf of "the most vulnerable citizens."

Let us all uplift the most vulnerable citizens and keep kids playing hockey while magically saving millions. But first, Mayor David Miller must stop playing "political games" and surrender the garbage contracts!

It's sickening stuff, but only when it works - and Mike Harris proved that it does. Facts didn't matter when he said amalgamation would save billions. He paid consultants handsomely to cook up numbers and relied on a gullible media to trumpet what the Toronto Star called "supercity savings."

People didn't want to know the truth, which warned that the merger was much more likely to drive costs up than to produce savings. The most likely trigger, according to easily available research, would be labour costs. It showed that municipal labour costs grow in lock-step with the population of the municipality.

With amalgamation, Toronto went from being a classically fractured metropolis with dozens of bargaining units jostling for influence into one of the very largest municipalities in North America - with two giant unions representing all its many, many workers. Guess what happened?

And remember, cost-cutters, you were warned. Actual experts predicted the result of merging a helpfully balkanized work force into two giant unions.

In order to understand how quickly Toronto managed to nurture unbeatable municipal labour unions with bombproof job protection, one must appreciate the role of Mel Lastman and his band at city hall, many of whom are today's most ardent cost-cutters.

Mr. Lastman ducked out of the first, crucial confrontation with the newly empowered unions by giving them everything they asked for in the first contract they negotiated, including the job protection that rankles so many people today - the same concession he idiotically tried to grab back three years later, provoking a strike he deservedly lost.

And this is the same guy who said he was freezing taxes and saving money - always saving money! Torontonians lapped it up. They had no idea what was really happening and little interest in finding out.

Now they're back to lapping, believing the same cost-cutting fairy tales from the same people most responsible for driving up labour costs - and in the process making it impossible to achieve savings by contracting out work.

Listen, guys. The only way to drive down wages appreciably in Toronto today is to bust the unions. And even if there was a single credible politician with the stomach to try that, which there isn't, the effort would create years of bitter strife and cost billions before it produced a nickel's savings.

Until that happens, please cut the cost-cutting cant. We really can't afford any more of these savings.

 

[scottycameron]

Miller flip-flops on cuts
Stung by public backlash, mayor will ask council to restore full service at community centres
September 20, 2007
Jim Byers
City hall bureau chief

http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/258584

In the end, David Miller backed down.

Faced with an enormous public backlash over the city's plan to save money by closing community centres one day a week, Toronto's mayor yesterday said he'll introduce a motion at city council next week that will ask city staff to reinstate full service at all 130 centres.

Part-time staff affected by the recent closures will have to be notified of the change. Since centres will be closed on Thanksgiving Monday anyway, Miller said centres probably won't be fully open until Oct. 15.

City council was already slated to consider the community centres issue at next week's session, although Miller has repeatedly suggested the matter wasn't properly before council. With the mayor putting forward the motion, the way will be clear for council to restore full service at centres, many of which provide crucial programs for children, teens and seniors in some of the city's neediest neighbourhoods.

"What I've heard from people is really clear," Miller told reporters. "Things like closing community centres are a last resort."

Miller said his motion to council won't call for staff to back away from other suggested cuts, including reduced snow clearing and a delay in opening artificial ice rinks. But he said the rink delays and other, far more serious budget cuts can be avoided if council on Oct. 22 votes for new taxes; taxes he said he needs to avoid a potential $575 million shortfall in next year's budget.

Closing community centres would have saved about $500,000. Miller said he isn't suggesting other cuts right now, but that the city will simply have to absorb the loss and find other savings at a later date.

Miller took a public beating on the community centre issue; perhaps his worst since assuming the job of mayor of Canada's biggest city four years ago. Asked if the cuts weren't a mistake, Miller replied, "Well, from my perspective, we're in an impossible financial situation. It's been building for 10 years ... but now I think it's time. People have spoken really clearly about the community centre issue. It's the element of the cost-containment that affects people most directly, and I think we need to listen to that voice and put it back."

Could he have handled the situation differently, Miller was asked.

"I take responsibility for all of this," he said. "I told council I was directing the city manager to find cuts. That was the direction I gave and it was the only direction that was appropriate. This cut people want reversed, and I'm confident council will reverse it."

But if new taxes aren't set up, Miller said "all bets are off" with regard to all city services, including policing and the TTC.

 

[Hydrogen]

If anything, it sounds like a well-spent $500,000 - considering the disatisfaction expressed at the Monday closings.

A provincial election is on, and I don't see Miller actively pursuing the provincial party leaders to take up the provincial responsibilities concerning downloading. All of them have acknowledged the problem to some degree.

There are good reasons for expressing the qualities of financially healthy cities in this province. This would be an opportunity.

 

[TrickyRicky]

I think the decision to reverse the monday community centre closings is horrendous news. Basically it shows that, excuse the language but the term is appropriate, Miller and councillors are a bunch of pussies. Closing the community centres is bad policy just as the land transfer tax as proposed is bad policy (not the tax but it's astounding rate). But either is better than indecision and leadership paralysis. We clearly need to reign in spending at the same time as tapping new revenue streams. I don't understand why we can't do both in a reasonable manner.

 

[Junglab]

From today's G&M...

Cost cutting fine and dandy – until it hits your own backyard
JOHN BARBER
25 September 2007
The Globe and Mail

2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Yesterday, Councillor Mike Del Grande interrupted the audit committee's investigation of overspending at the water department to complain about the lack of weekend garbage pickup in his ward. He had found a pile of garbage, he said, but couldn't find anybody at the city to come pick it up.

Mr. Del Grande (Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt) is one of city hall's leading cost cutters, quickest to complain about unnecessary and wasteful spending. But he hasn't come close to finding and eliminating enough waste to finance the luxury service he wants in Scarborough.

One week they castigate the scourge of unionism among garbage collectors, the next week they want new, double-overtime garbage collecting flying squads at their beck and call 24/7.

Consider Councillor Rob Ford, who has built his entire career on ostentatious penny-pinching and outrageous attacks on what he considers to be overspending.

Earlier this month, Mr. Ford (Ward 2, Etobicoke North) asked the works committee to spend $750,000 to build curbs and gutters on two small streets with about 40 addresses in his ward. But Mr. Ford's two are far from the only suburban streets in Toronto that depend on natural drainage. Upgrading them all would be a billion-dollar capital project with enormous environmental consequences and knock-on costs – not the least of which would be the cost of treating all that extra storm water.

Is that what Mr. Ford wants? Of course not! He wants it both ways. He wants everybody else to pay for his treats while banning them from enjoying their own.

Nobody is innocent in this game. Consider Scarborough Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker, from the opposite side of the city and the political spectrum, who gleefully scolded Mr. Ford for his fiscally irresponsible sewer scheme, saying “we have to be very firm with our residents.â€

Last spring, Mr. De Baeremaeker (Ward 38, Scarborough Centre) urged his colleagues to pay a developer $17-million for a scrap of parkland straddling a hydro corridor in his ward, draining Scarborough's entire parkland reserve account with a single purchase.

The thing that matters in such transactions is not what's right or wrong, but what you can get away with. Every councillor competes ruthlessly for unnecessary spending in their own ward, but only some of them are good at getting it – leaving a large disappointed cohort to complain about waste.

That helps explain why none of the councillors and commentators who complain most about waste at city hall today have proposed realistic economies that would have anything more than a marginal effect on the city's budget. The books are wide open but they can't find the waste. It's a mantra, a rhetorical device.

Right-wingers especially perpetuate faith in waste because, without it, they would never be able to propose any new spending. Former mayoral candidates John Tory and Jane Pitfield both promised major spending initiatives at no cost, promising to find hundreds of millions of dollars by eliminating unspecified waste. Mr. Tory is doing it again in the current provincial election, promising to finance his schools plan with unspecified waste.

One good reason why people respond to such appeals is that government is inefficient. Everybody knows that, even though nobody seems to know what to do about it. But the big reason citizens respond is that they want it both ways too.

Believing in waste allows them to continue to do what they always do, which is to demand more and more government services for themselves at the expense of others – without admitting the ugly truth.

jbarber@globeandmail.com

 

[poppajojo]

^^^Thanks for posting the columns. Can you post the Sept. 22 John Barber one between this column and the last you posted titled "A bit of patronage would go a long way at City Hall", as I'm not a subscriber so don't have the access to read it.

quick response below, thanks

 

[ShonTron]

A bit of patronage would go a long way at City Hall
John Barber. The Globe and Mail. Toronto, Ont.: Sep 22, 2007. pg. M2

Abstract (Summary)
Those are the rules, regardless of who's supposedly in charge. Error piled on folly, blended with compromise and convenience, have produced a perfect recipe for political paralysis.

2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

What a depressing sight to see a supposedly strong mayor of a proud city stumbling so clumsily in his first big test since a resounding re-election triumph, like Gulliver in Lilliput, tied up by pipsqueaks. Or imagine if Perdita Felicien had not only booted the first hurdle in her Olympic debut but was then forced by some perverse rule to crawl the rest of the course on her elbows while the flashes popped and vulgarians jeered. It's ugly, it's stupid and so unnecessary.

But those are the rules, regardless of who's supposedly in charge. Error piled on folly, blended with compromise and convenience, have produced a perfect recipe for political paralysis. Miller Agonistes is a cruel reminder of the monumental failure that began with amalgamation and knocks on remorselessly through the years, despite the promise of the golden-haired hero and all those mealy-mouthed boasts about "Canada's sixth-largest government." The former "city that works" has become ungovernable.

To understand the dilemma, imagine if Mayor Miller enjoyed power and influence equivalent to that of either a provincial premier or the mayor of a major American city.

If he were premier of Toronto, he wouldn't have to cajole reluctant supporters to take a risk on an unpopular tax bill. He would declare the vote a matter of confidence, meaning that councillors who voted against it would be risking their jobs. The minute the mayor fell on a confidence vote, they'd be back on the streets, re-applying to angry voters to get their old jobs back.

But in Canada's sixth-largest government, there are no consequences for such behaviour. No councillor risks anything by opposing a government measure, especially when the next scheduled election is more than three years off. So they take advantage of the opportunity by voting to keep their jobs whenever possible. No party can kick them out.

That's why the mayor, after receiving a strong endorsement from the electorate, struggles to achieve anything. In our system, an election becomes irrelevant the moment it is decided. Every question that should be settled is fought and re-fought in an incessant round of skirmishes. The system ensures that the mayor never has a majority and, at the same time, that he lacks the one tool essential to the success of a parliamentary minority: the ability to call the snipers into the open and make them face the electorate.

Now imagine if Torontonians were able to elect a true strong mayor, à la Daley or Bloomberg, rather than the "stronger mayor" that our folly and compromise have delivered. Apart from having total control of the bureaucracy, such a mayor would also enjoy ample supplies of patronage, an ingredient essential to the successful operation of any government, like oil in an engine, but almost bizarrely lacking in Canada's sixth-largest government.

Some idealists might naively suppose this scarcity to be a good thing, and New Democrats in particular are susceptible to the Boy Scout theory of public service. But staying above patronage is a lousy way to accomplish anything long-lasting and worthwhile.

Consider the revealing case of Brian Ashton, a veteran councillor who clearly yearns for a remunerative sinecure outside politics. But what did Mayor Miller have to offer when he asked the old hack to take a risk in a crucial vote? He had nothing. So Mr. Ashton, along with 22 others, voted to keep his own job.

U.S. mayors control dozens of appointments, including the top jobs in the civil service, and always delve for more. Chicago's Mayor Daley has been mired for years in an epic scandal involving rigged hiring at the lowest levels.

"There's a huge patronage element built into the American strong-mayor system," says Andrew Sancton, a local government expert at the University of Toronto. But not enough of a good thing is worse than too much. "I do think that the mayor here is short of political resources," Prof. Sancton adds.

For all his failures, former mayor Mel Lastman seemed to understand patronage and to use it skillfully. But that illusion was shattered by the Bellamy inquiry, which showed that the true spoils of the Lastman regime were delivered under the table. What the current mayor needs is an open, above-board apparatus for meting out both punishment and rewards.

Instead, Canada's sixth-largest government exists in the worst of all possible worlds, bloated and ineffective, dangerously susceptible to the most inane and irresponsible attacks. Having discarded a system that worked well for more than a century, brilliantly so in the postwar decades, we have painstakingly and expensively adopted one that doesn't work at all.

It's the Weakling Mayor system, unique to Toronto.

jbarber@globeandmail.com