FOCUS ON WARD 18

MEDIA FINALLY NOTICES WARD 18 COUNCIL RACE :

Isn't it sad that the media has only noticed what's happening in our ward 18 Davenport based on the singular, negative personality scandals of our present and soon to be former councillor *, Adam Giambrone and now is just getting attention because Adam's executive assistant and chosen successor to his crown, Kevin Beaulieu, has only announced an intention to run?

* http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/toronto/archive/2010/04/13/full-text-of-adam-giambrone-s-letter-announcing-he-will-not-seek-re-election.aspx

For far too many years, our ward has been something of an ignored backwater in city politics - NOT because of the excellent quality of residents and their strong desire to be involved in and consulted about local issues - but because there has existed a kind of arrogance of the typical politician who makes sweet sounding promises during an election campaign, wraps themselves in a party colour, gets elected and then proceeds to ignore constituents.

There has been a culture of entitlement about being elected to represent us simply because of political party ties. Strong party machines use the battleground of Davenport to gain political power to advance narrow ideologies, all the while ignoring local voters and their neighbourhood concerns once elected. Where is the democratic concept of representing constituents' concerns?

In an interview with the online news/blog, torontoist, we are introduced to Kevin Beaulieu *, Adam Giambrone's executive assistant, who has acknowledged that there is a history of assistants taking over the reins of power when their boss moves on. Kevin has been quoted as saying his running was "a logical sequence of events" - which to me smacks of "more of the same" entitlement.
*http://torontoist.com/2010/04/kevin_beaulieu_to_run_for_council_in_ward_18.php

There are still only 5 registered candidates running for the ward 18 council seat: Ana Baliao, Le Nha, Jack Triolo, Hema Vyas and Ken Wood - yet Kevin gets all the initial press attention because of his relationship to Adam.

Ana Baliao, for her part, was executive assistant to now Liberal MP Mario Silva and tried unsuccessfully to gain the crown in previous city elections.

In mainstream media we will once again see outsiders trying to decide for the voters of ward 18 who are the frontrunners. in this case LIBERAL Ana Baliao and NDP Kevin Beaulieu.

If the voters in our ward want to avoid 'more of the same', we will all need to learn from our past voting mistakes and make our choices based on the candidates' values, substance and behaviours and not on their spin-charm, name recognition or promises.

We need to make the right choice, because ...

DAVENPORT DESERVES BETTER

PUBLIC SPACE VERSUS DEVELOPMENT

MIDTOWN YONGE-EGLINTON SQUARE: PEOPLE OR DEVELOPMENT ?

I support the choice of making the corner square at Yonge-Eglinton a ground level public space for people, but it needs a smart renovation plan to make it friendlier and more attractive to use. We certainly don't need more enclosed and restrictive shopping malls, even if they do promise a rooftop green space. As soon as it is deemed private space at ground level, it can be restricted by private security and thereby such rare and valuable public space is lost forever. (Story: http://www.torontosun.com/news/torontoandgta/2010/03/28/13387896.html )

Its always nice to see a local grassroots group forming to protect city assets (YES = Yonge Eglinton Square) and remind councillors just who owns this city. This is the way democracy should work, everywhere.

CHANGING POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

PROVINCIAL BUDGET BLOCKER and ROB FORD and MAYORAL RACE CHANGES :

Well, despite Mayor Miller and the Transit City advocates best hopes, the provincial McGuinty government have put the brakes on expansion plans for our city. http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/785573--miller-outraged-as-budget-sideswipes-gta-transit The only "projects likely to proceed include the Union/Pearson/Georgetown GO Transit link, the Sheppard light rail transit line and the York University line government officials said."

On the plus side, this gives us as a city time to debate the merits of where to invest increasingly scarce monies while the negative is that we will continue to see traffic gridlock and lose time in city building a proper transit system. Truth is, the city should have been building a few kilometers of subway for decades now and we can only blame the lack of vision by former political regimes. Now we are in a near-crisis situation. Influencing this no doubt is this story of poor planning and implementation: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/ttc/article/785438--lawsuit-targets-st-clair-streetcar-route

* A note of the provincial budget: Plans to cut or somehow modify (how isn't clear) the "special diet" for those of social assistance is yet another attack on the poor and margianalized that is being ignored by media and candidates. Where is the fulfillment of the promise to reduce poverty in the province? The rich-poor gap grows yet again.

Rob Ford finally announced his candidacy for Mayor with some predictably wacko ideas, such as cutting in half the number of city councillors. Given that there is already a palpable and evident lack of consultation with constituents when one person represents 50,000 people, this is a further erosion of democracy. Mr. Ford may be able to represent his ward on the cheap since he has deep pockets of his own, but the value of democracy is that any councillor should be able to function in a way that he or she can be of service to constituents.

MAYOR RACE : As of today, there are 26 candidates for Mayor http://app.toronto.ca/vote2010/findByOffice.do?officeType=1&officeName=Mayor and 5 candidates for City Councillor for our ward 18. Dave Meslin, an innovative, experienced and creative political activist ponder how we can have a legitimate debate with so many candidates and is looking for ideas to be inclusive without being ridiculous (See http://meslin.wordpress.com/ ). I find it rather astonishing that of the so-called top 6 mayoral candidates, only Mammoliti and Thompson have any kind of platform or list of top issues on their websites. Don't we expect vision to be top of the list for a Mayor? So far this mayoral race is a sad one.

WILL HE OR WON'T HE ?

IS ADAM GIAMBRONE RUNNING IN WARD 18 AGAIN ?

NOW Magazine article for this week by Enzo Di Matteo questions "Giambrone's Big Exit? Kicked Around, Councillor Contemplates Dropping Out" http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=174244

Reading the article, the only thing that seems clear is that nothing is clear.

He says "I haven't made a decision yet", while at the same time he muses about leaving politics altogether, noting that there are "lots of opportunities internationally" to do something else. "It's not at all a given he will seek re-election in Davenport, although one close colleague on council thinks he will run" says the article.

"Giambrone suggests that his fall from grace didn't make him any new enemies but just galvanized those already opposed to him". He still claims to have great support.

Given that our current councillor has had his judgement called into question numerous times now on a whole range of issues (lies to the media and public, expensing taxi rides when as TTC Chair he should be promoting public transit, getting caught expensing a personal taxi ride as council business, utilizing city resources to put on his own "On The Rocket" show (is it a campaign on the city dime?*), failure to focus on addressing enormous customer dissatisfaction about TTC service... what am I missing? ... why should his abandoned constituents support any bid for his re-election?

* http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/giambrone-back-aboard-his-streetcar-but-show-could-be-derailed/article1510085/ "Toronto's election rules forbid candidates from using city resources for self-promotion during campaign season"

Just some of the media references calling on Mr. Giambrone to quit are:
http://stevemunro.ca/?p=3295
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/toronto/story.html?id=2704589
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/ttc/article/782671--dimanno-time-for-adam-giambrone-to-get-off-bus
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/sueann_levy/2010/02/10/12829346.html
http://www.lfpress.com/comment/2010/03/19/13294266.html
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/adam-giambrone-has-a-jittery-date-with-destiny/article1491951/

Let me be clear. Adam is an intelligent man of great energy, but a man who has exhibited chronic poor judgement and arrogance. Contrary to how he may try to dismiss ward opposition as a few disgruntled residents, the fact is Mr. Giambrone has alienated more than a few segments of the ward. Remember -
No parking on Dundas? - the Lansdowne narrowing fiasco?

All I can say to Adam is:

"Stand not upon the order of your going, But go at once"

- Shakespeare's MacBeth

because...

DAVENPORT DESERVES BETTER

WEST TORONTO C. I. FOR SALE ?

LAST (?) OF PUBLIC MEETINGS ON THE FUTURE OF WEST TORONTO : was held tonight, Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Just got back from an extremely well attended public meeting about the Toronto District School Board's plans for the future of West Toronto Collegiate (330 Lansdowne Avenue, just north of College Street). I estimated well over 200 people in attendance and the meeting was covered by Global TV, Now Magazine and Inside Toronto community news.

It seems that many people were made aware of the meeting just this morning, yet cared enough to show up on short notice. (Prior meetings were held in the fall of 2009 but were not as well attended)

Even though the predictable announcement was made that recommendations called for the school to be closed this August, the community gathered together to give a resounding "NO" to that intention. Candidates running for city council, the sitting councillor and the school trustee for the area (Maria Rodrigues) were unanimous in calling for the school to not be closed.

An impressive display by about 30 ESL students carrying signs protesting the closure opened the meeting. Many people talked about the importance of recognizing the need for adult education and continuing education and questioned why that did not seem to be a priority in the analysis and recommendations done by the board.

In a city as diverse as Toronto (180 languages) and a ward where under 40% of the people say their mother tongue is not English and about 24% have no high school education, using the facility for that purpose seems a no-brainer.

There were many questions asked by concerned parents about the immediate plans for their children's education. Most were unsatisfied with the answers given.

The school is a relatively new building (opened in 1972) and is recognized as having full access for the disabled, excellent pool, track and gym facilities, and well utilized 8.5 acre greenspace. The programs in place for special education are recognized as superlative.

There has been declining enrollment, as this is city-wide in many schools.

I have to wonder if this is a natural or engineered phenomenon. As housing stock is gentrified (turned into expensive housing and condos), the population ages and former families are forced to move out to the suburbs, we do see a blip of childless people. Yet, immigration is increasing and there will be new development in former industrial lands nearby. Does it not make sense that we could see a boom in demand for regular education classes in the area? Should educational facilities planning not be looking 20-30 years ahead, rather than responding to a short term budget crunch?

The question in my mind is what kind of community do we want here? Singles in big, dense condominiums or mixed housing that meets the needs of the broad, diverse community?

The kicker is that the school funding formula from the Mike Harris years has a peculiar way of looking at square foot usage: if you have music, arts or special programs, their use is deemed to be 'empty' - so no provincial funding. The Dalton McGuinty ("Education Premier ?") provincial government is acting slowly to revise the formula.

Yet the Toronto District School Board under Chris Spence appears to be acting with unseemly haste to force the process to close schools down and sell off assets to recoup funding gaps. This is hasty, short term thinking in my view. Once an asset is gone - it is gone, and the community will be worse off for it.

There was one recommedation (that was admitted to be outside the scope of the review process) which called for the property to be kept by the TDSB for use by the local community. What this means exactly is unclear as such a recommendation can be easily ignored by the terms of the review process in place. Smoke and mirrors?

How this will all play out is uncertain. Many in the community believe this a 'done deal', even though I was able to get the meeting leaders on record to say it is not.

Next step?

Fuzzy, but appears there will be a final-final chance for formal deputations to the TDSB:

Monday, April 12, 2010 at 5:00 pm at 5050 Yonge Street.

Here are some groups trying to mobilize the community for this important meeting:

SAVE OUR SCHOOLS http://saveschools.wordpress.com/

CUPE local 4400 http://www.cupe4400.org/static/staticview.cfm?topic=25

Trustee Maria Rodrigues http://www.tdsb.on.ca/_site/viewitem.asp?siteid=176&pageid=176&menuid=176

POVERTY

DO THE MATH :

Revealing opinion piece by Joe Mihevc, city councillor in St. Paul's (ward 21) - http://www.citytv.com/toronto/citynews/news/local/article/72774--opinion-doing-the-math-on-poverty tells us how our once compassionate social safety net has become "threadbare".

Since the Mike Harris conservatives slashed welfare rates by 22% in 1995 and downloaded all the costs to cash-strapped cities, we have seen life become much bleaker for those on low income. Successive governments have been very slow off the mark to do much that is meaningful to reduce poverty in our society, despite repeated promises.

And it's not just those on social assistance that are suffering more. In fact, we have a new term - the "working poor" - to describe those in insecure employment (no benefits, seasonal, part-time) who work at minimum wage, even at multiple jobs, just to make ends meet.

One-third of the households in our ward (over 6,000) have an income under $30,000. Source: City of Toronto Ward Profiles http://www.toronto.ca/wards2000/pdf/2006/ward18_income_page.pdf
(This information is old (2006), and I suspect it is much worse now as we collectively try to claw our way out of the recession.)

The innovative Stop Community/Food Centre (1884 Davenport Road) has kicked off a new campaign (DO THE MATH) that vividly shows what it's like to live as a single person on low income in today's Toronto. I urge people to check out their website for more information: http://www.dothemath.thestop.org/

Some highlights:

• $ 572/month or under $ 7,000 a year for single person on Ontario Works
• $1,020/month or about $12,000 a year for single on Ontario Disability
• $1,429/month or about $17,000 a year for single on minimum wage (35 hrs/week)

Incumbents Have an Unfair Edge

NOT A Level Playing Field :

"Incumbents have all the advantages" says Sue-Anne Levy in the Toronto Sun: http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/sueann_levy/2010/03/17/13268761.html

Sitting councillors in office can:

• Book and use public facilities to promote their campaigns, even using taxpayer money out of their office budgets, while challengers are prohibited from using the same facilities for their campaigns, even if they want to pay for it themselves
• Use their $53,100 office budgets "to send out glossy newsletters or calendars chock full of their pictures, hold barbeques and other parties this summer" (as Levy says)
• Donate taxpayer money to the charities * of their choice and get 'photo ops' and their names prominently attached to the good deeds (see another story in the Globe and Mail, 'Councillors Spend Thousands in Public Cash On Donations That Boost Their Profile' http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/councillors-spend-thousands-in-public-cash-on-donations-that-boost-their-profile/article1505395/
• Use office budgets to finance taxi rides while not on city business by calling it a "ward survey" Read Toronto Star 'TTC Chair Takes Taxi Home After Taping Show On Streetcar' http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/781032--ttc-chair-takes-taxi-home-after-taping-show-on-streetcar
• Plan events, meetings and announcements in a controlled fashion so as to enhance their profile and candidacy

Aside from the fact that our previous councillor, TTC Chair and failed mayoral candidate, Adam Giambrone, expensed more than $3,000 on cabs last year - something that angers me when we expect such a position to show leadership and promotion of public transit, I find it blatantly unfair that in a hopefully open election, challengers are such 'second class' candidates.

If we want an open, fair and equitable city we must start by ensuring open, fair and equitable elections. We need to sharply reduce the advantages of incumbency.

* Here's an idea to make sure charities in our ward don't suffer. Let's transfer the money from councillor office budgets to a city run local grants program that everyone can apply to. It could be a simple lottery or a well-thought out procedure where points are used to award grants where local neighbourhoods would see the most 'bang for the buck' and would be fair to everyone.

On another related note, we need TERM LIMITS. 30% of city councillors have been on council for more than 20 years (See Eye Weekly, 'Bring On The Toronto Democratic Revolution' http://www.eyeweekly.com/blog/post/82646--bring-on-the-toronto-democratic-revolution ).

When I was a director on non-profit boards, they had a forward-thinking policy of limiting board membership to a few terms, The reason was to ensure fresh ideas and community participation in their deliberations. A board member could always sit out a term and come back if they wished. Why don't we do this with Toronto City Council?

I am strongly in favour of term limits because we are a large city, complex in its diversity and full of talent. Let's share the wealth of that with each other. We need to do this because...

DAVENPORT DESERVES BETTER