If there’s a safe place for a mayoralty in our post–City of Toronto Act era, it’s the executive committee. This is essentially a handpicked committee whose job is to help mould and massage a mayor’s agenda into fighting shape. Differences are ironed out, a unified front formed.

There should be no unpleasant surprises sprung on a mayor at executive committee meetings. Whipping a vote is unheard of. Unanimity on items isn’t an absolute necessity, but split decisions are a red flag. To paraphrase ol’ blue eyes, if a mayor can’t make it there, a mayor’s not going to make it anywhere (“anywhere,” in this case, being city council).

So, no. It should’ve come as no surprise that the executive committee pushed forward a “yes to casinos” motion on Tuesday. The surprise would have been if it hadn’t. It might be hyperbolic to suggest that Mayor Ford’s political future depended on a yes vote, but currently in Toronto we’re living in the age of hyperbole. Even Councillor David Shiner’s (Ward 24, Willowdale) motion to defer the casino item might be considered to have been a serious setback for the mayor.

A mayor doesn’t lose control of a key item at Executive Committee. Once that happens, all that’s left is the pomp and circumstance that comes with the chain of office. He’s no longer actually running anything around City Hall.

Which is why Mayor Ford’s staff was so in evidence in the committee room on Tuesday. It was a show of force, a display of firepower. The casino vote had to break in the mayor’s favour. Any sort of rebellion by the crew needed to be nipped in the bud.

The real surprise at Tuesday’s meeting wasn’t that Mayor Ford won the vote, meaning the casino debate will move on to city council next month; it was that he had to struggle at all to ensure that he won. This wasn’t just some regular monthly executive committee meeting where there were disagreements between members over a parks-and-environment item. It was a special meeting called by the mayor to deal with one item and one item only. Casinos.

Executive Committee Recommends Aggressive Casino Expansion

That only nine of the 13 members voted in the affirmative almost guarantees the item’s defeat at council. The mayor doesn’t even have the support of one of his staunchest allies, Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34, Don Valley East), who delivered perhaps the most heartfelt, genuine speech I’ve ever seen him give—one that, frankly, I didn’t think he was capable of.

“I don’t think casinos represent the values of the City of Toronto,” the councillor said. “I don’t believe gambling and all the things associated with it represent the values that I have, and I don’t think it represents the values of the constituents in my ward.”

Councillor Jaye Robinson (Ward 25, Don Valley West) spoke out against a downtown casino as forcefully as she did about Councillor Doug Ford’s ferris-wheel plans for the Port Lands. And, furthering his recent drift away from the Ford administration, Councillor Paul Ainslie (Ward 43, Scarborough East) said he didn’t like the numbers he was seeing—neither the hosting fees nor the job figures. The chair of the planning and growth management committee, Peter Milczyn (Ward 5, Etobicoke-Lakeshore), was the fourth vote against the mayor’s casino plans.

One of the main advantages of being the mayor and having an executive committee is that on important items there are 13 votes pretty much locked up going into a city council meeting. That means only ten more will be needed to push that item through. That’s 10 of the remaining 31 councillors, or less than one-third.

On the casino, Mayor Ford hasn’t given himself that head start. Even granting him the nine votes from the Executive Committee—and some of those are very, very, very conditional—plus brother Doug (Ward 2, Etobicoke North), Speaker Frances Nunziata (Ward 11, York South-Weston), and Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West), he’s still looking for 10 votes. Throw in Councillor Mike Del Grande (Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt) because he sees only dollar signs and, let’s say, Councillor Michelle Berardinetti (Ward 35, Scarborough Southwest), who might go along to get along with the mayor. Plus Councillor Mark Grimes (Ward 6, Etobicoke-Lakeshore), well, just because.

This leaves seven votes to pull in, and we scraped the bottom of the Team-Ford-loyalty barrel to arrive at that number. If the mayor doesn’t pull something out of a hat to entice councillors over to his side, if he can’t build momentum in favour of a casino, his votes will evaporate. No councillor will want to be on the losing side of such a divisive issue.

Every way you look at this, the council casino vote seems DOA. To most politicians, near-certain defeat on a cherished item would be cause for concern. But as we all know by now, Mayor Ford is not most politicians.

None of this is about good governance or even rational political maneuvering. Losing council votes is a viable strategy if you’re looking to embrace a certain us-versus-them martyrdom. The mayor simply needs a wedge issue to take into next year’s campaign. He’s currently trotting some out to see how they fit. Transit. Island airport jet expansion. They have nice left-right, downtown-suburban dynamics.

The problem with casinos is that the votes won’t fall that way. There’s no ideological or geographic split on the issue. Tuesday’s vote at Executive Committee showed that. The outcome suggests this will just be another millstone for Mayor Ford to wear, further proof that he is unwilling or unable to lead this city.

Photo by Michael Mitchener, from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

It struck me, sitting in the audience for the first panel discussion related to the City’s Feeling Congested public-transit campaign on Monday night, that any similar event in the future needs to leave an empty spot on the panel—sort of like when people leave an empty seat for Elijah at a Passover seder, except this empty seat would be for Mayor Rob Ford. The door is always open to him, an invitation extended. But if the short tradition of this transit discussion holds, he will never make an appearance.

Or rather, he will be there in spirit.

The mayor’s presence hung heavily and awkwardly over every question asked and every answer given on Monday. Metrolinx’s Big Move needs leadership, someone to champion it as a vital step towards dealing with the congestion that’s disrupting the entire GTA’s economic and social well-being. To have the mayor of the biggest municipality in the region fundamentally disagreeing with the idea of new revenue tools and obstinately absenting himself from the debate establishes a significant obstacle—a major road block, if you will. It’s the exact opposite of leadership. It’s a hindrance.

However, judging from the tone of the discussion, the mayor’s transit intransigence can be overcome.

The panelists on stage were not people Mayor Ford can easily dismiss as the usual left-wing, downtown-elite suspects. There was Carol Wilding, president and CEO of the Toronto Region Board of Trade. Also speaking was John Howe, vice president of investment strategy and project evaluation at Metrolinx. Two of the mayor’s council allies and executive committee members were also present: Councillor Michael Thompson (Ward 37, Scarborough Centre), chair of the Economic Development Committee, and Councillor Peter Milczyn (Ward 5, Etobicoke-Lakeshore), chair of the Planning and Growth Committee and a TTC commissioner.

Along with the City’s chief planner, Jennifer Keesmaat, and the evening’s keynote speaker, former Vancouver chief planner Larry Beasley, all acknowledged the pressing need for the kind of large-scale transit investment the Big Move proposes. Everyone also agreed that funding for the plan has to come from every stakeholder involved. There is no magic solution. As Beasley pointed out in his speech, you either pay for a transit system or you don’t have a transit system.

Perhaps the most telling moment of the evening came when Councillor Thompson, under very pointed questioning from the event’s moderator, Metro Morning’s Matt Galloway, suggested that his own presence on the stage for the debate signaled that he wasn’t aligned with the mayor on the transit file. Even further, the councillor admitted outright that the mayor’s push to rescind the vehicle-registration tax had been a mistake. For his part, Councillor Milczyn insisted that city council would approve a transit plan with the requisite funding tools. Even without the mayor, Galloway inquired? Milczyn said he thinks so.

While everyone agreed that the public could get on board with the idea of paying more taxes, fees, and tolls for transit expansion (an assertion backed up by a recent Forum Research poll published in the Toronto Star over the weekend), any revenue, they decided, would have to be dedicated directly to transit. Councillor Milczyn suggested the reason the city’s vehicle-registration and land-transfer taxes are both so reviled is that the proceeds have always ended up in general revenue—the “black hole of City Hall,” he called it. (I would argue that the City does have other needs, aside from transit, that have to be paid for.)

The problem right now is that a large number of people in the GTA haven’t the slightest idea what the Big Move is and what it’s proposing to do. So, a dedicated tax to what? That could be seen as a PR failure on the part of the province and Metrolinx. On the other hand, as Hilary Holden, a transportation consultant, pointed out on Twitter: “Is public awareness of the Big Move really a measure of success for Metrolinx? Is it not really written for practitioners?” In other words: hey Metrolinx, get your ducks in a row first and then go to the public with a fully realized plan and funding options.

There’s also the concern that while the Big Move is, well, big, it may not be ambitious enough. Oakville mayor Rob Burton wondered about this in an interview with the Toronto Star last week. “Good news, everybody,” he said. “If you’ll spend $50 billion over the next 25 years I promise traffic congestion and transit won’t get any worse…I’m not saying [the Big Move] is not the best we can do. I’m asking: Is this all there is? Can we really not make it better?” And that’s before we even get to the discussion of operating costs to run all this new, wonderful transit.

After decades of talking about it but rarely following up, maybe we’re still low-balling ourselves, spending just enough money to keep the region running at a standstill. Is the public really willing to fork over more money simply to make sure things don’t get any worse?

For all the justifiable concern expressed by both participants and audience members during Monday’s panel, Keesmaat did point out something hopeful: this was a conversation we weren’t even having three years ago. Which is very true. What’s more, much of Monday’s discussion had to do with multi-modal travel. It sounded like attendees weren’t interested in a war on the car so much as they were interested in a levelling of the transportation playing field, with driving simply another, less important way for people to get around.

Heady stuff, indeed: an adult conversation about positive, healthy city building—and one that Mayor Ford seems absolutely determined not to contribute a thing to. Maybe it’s best he continues to ignore it. He doesn’t really have anything constructive to say.

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It’s hard to know how to refer to the document that is the 2013 budget. It is some sort of altered beast: neither total slash-and-burn, nor a recipe for healthy growth. Something no one is entirely happy with, or completely disappointed in.

Quite possibly, this budget is the perfect campaign vehicle for Rob Ford, with its mish-mash of added funding for the arts, the fire department, and children’s nutrition programs, combined with spending cuts in other areas and another unhelpfully constrained tax increase. Keeping the lefty tax-and-spend “piranhas” at bay, as the mayor claimed at a post-vote press conference. Compromise! Consensus!

The fact is, this year’s budget further internalizes the mayor and other conservatives’ baleful view of taxes, spending, and debt. Even with today’s addition of some $12 million of funding (some of which is provincial money), it is still a numbers-before-people budget. It is the soulless calculation of a chartered accountant obsessed with achieving an ever-higher credit rating at the expense of everything else. For what, exactly? Bragging rights?

And so, in order to keep to our fiscally conservative talking points, the Toronto Botanical Garden will need to scramble for $60,000. Public Health won’t get $104,000 in AIDS and drug prevention programs, and an attempt to eliminate drop-in fees for children at indoor pools went nowhere. We haven’t begun to address a worsening shortage in daycare spaces (today’s addition of 264 spots notwithstanding), and we’ll have fewer shelter bed nights this year than last.

Many of those proposals are similar to ones that were adopted last year, when a coalition of centrist councillors worked with those on council’s left to overturn many of Ford’s proposed budget changes. This year, though some initiatives did pass, they were notably smaller in scope. In the vacuum of leadership created by Mayor Ford’s legal problems, a coherent opposition failed to materialize even when he made conciliatory but ultimately puny gestures of fiscal magnanimity over the past week. Most councillors were content to settle for a grab-bag of haphazard add-ons, all high profile and politically popular, instead of coalescing into a force to fully counter the mayor’s worst small government instincts.

I heap most of my scorn on the TTC chair Karen Stintz. The goodwill she generated earlier this term, for wrestling the transit file from the mayor’s destructive clutches, should be entirely gone now. She stood silently by during this budget cycle as funding was flat-lined and fares went up five cents. Oh sure, capital spending continues apace with subway and LRT lines under construction, new subway cars making their appearance, and with articulated buses on the horizon. But existing streetcars, buses, and subways remain packed to the rafters during peak hours and beyond. Ridership numbers continue to break records but the services groans under the additional strain.

Stintz and a majority of her colleagues even swatted away a motion to add $5 million to the TTC budget to enhance service. Insignificant, I guess. Should we be expecting some sort of windfall in 2014? Where will it come from? Sudden senior levels of government interest in transit? A splurge of campaign year generosity from city council? A rejection based on little more than hopes and prayers, to use the budget chief’s phrase.

This is a council that wouldn’t budge from a 2 per cent property tax increase this year—well below the rate of inflation—following a below-inflation increase last year and an outright freeze the year before that. But 2014 is going to be like Christmas! Next year we’ll totally deal with congestion, OK?

Rather than step up and assume control of the City’s governance, a solid majority on council decided instead to mirror the uncertainty surrounding the mayor right now. It was a game of leadership hot potato. No, I don’t want to take charge. You take charge. No, you take charge. No, you. Battling to a standstill, any forward progress bogged down in entrenched indecision.

Not to worry, folks. Next year will be better. Next year’s always better.

On Tuesday, the Budget Committee met to finalize its draft of the 2013 operating and capital budgets. (They go on to the Executive Committee today and to council next week, where they may be revised further.) During that discussion, councillor John Parker (Ward 26, Don Valley West) fired off four tweets that nicely encapsulated the rigid economic orthodoxy of the Ford administration, if that’s what we’re still calling this thing that’s going on now at City Hall. Our Mayoral Interregnum?

“Comments at this afternoon’s budget committee meeting note high level of capital spending paid from current revenue. As if it’s a bad thing,” went the first tweet.

Moments later came:

Higher debt increases carrying costs in operating budget, cuts into other operating budget priorities, and endangers our future.

— John Parker (@johnparker26) January 8, 2013

Followed by:

Lower debt means lower carrying costs in operating budget which means more resources for other operating needs and a more secure future.

— John Parker (@johnparker26) January 8, 2013

And finishing off with a populist rhetorical flourish:

Forgot to mention: Toronto taxpayers are not a community of human cash registers.

— John Parker (@johnparker26) January 8, 2013

All very reasonable-sounding, from a reasonable-seeming councillor sitting in the reasonable zone on the right side of the political spectrum.

Except they actually aren’t.

Note, if you will, the theme running through Councillor Parker’s tweeted thoughts. For the City to build things, big things, things that are necessary for it to function properly (roads, public transit, everyday infrastructure needs)—the capital spending—we must sacrifice a certain level of daily niceties like firefighters, recreational programs, and late night bus routes in under-serviced areas. All the stuff paid for from current revenue and casually referred to by the councillor as “other operating budget priorities.”

It’s an entirely fabricated zero-sum equation beloved by conservatives of all stripes who, in their heart of hearts, resent paying taxes and fundamentally believe governments should have a very limited role in the running of society. To them, the notion of public debt represents profligacy and overreach. A government without debt is the ideal state for conservative thinkers. Politicians like John Parker dream of a time when we are debt-free and we can then spend “more resources for other operating needs” in order to have “a more secure future.”

Superficially, this argument makes a lot of sense. Money spent on debt interest payments is less money spent on everything else. That’s just basic math in a world where those are the only two options available.

But look behind the curtain of this secure, debt-free future. There are only a couple of ways to minimize debt payments: with lower interest rates, which are largely beyond a City government’s control, or by minimizing debt. You minimize debt, you minimize the number of big ticket items you can afford beyond what you can pay for immediately.

Again, that all sounds very sensible and fiscally prudent until you realize that very few people or businesses actually operate like that. Everyone has access to debt, whether it’s credit cards, mortgages, car payments, or small business loans. The key is having the right kind of debt, and managing that debt properly.

Only in the fevered minds of politicians like the Ford brothers, budget chief Mike Del Grande, and Councillor John Parker has the City of Toronto not properly managed its debt. They point to rising expenditures on both the operating and budget sides of the ledger as proof of out-of-control spending during the Miller years, ignoring other possible causes like a growing population, continued intransigence on the part of Queen’s Park and Ottawa to equally share the burden of local governance, and aging infrastructure in need of good repair work. But debt, to them, is always and only the result of bad management, not a legitimate financial tool to be utilized for the good of the city.

Responding to Parker, one Twitter commenter wrote this:

@johnparker26 I think the running concern seems to be #budgetcomm doesn’t understand the value of debt.

— Rowan Caister (@rowancaister) January 8, 2013

That may be true of some on the budget committee (I’m looking at you, Councillor Di Giorgio), but I think Councillor Parker is smarter than that. He does understand the value of debt and its power to enable governments to build and maintain the foundations of a liveable society. It just grates his conservative ideology—and possibly his perception of his re-election chances. This is the same ideology, and same political considerations, that rule out serious talk of robust ways to increase revenues rather than cutting costs and services.

When it comes to City budgeting, there’s little perceptible difference between Parker and his more rabid conservative colleagues. It’s all about costs. Costs, costs, costs. Benefits rarely enter into the conversation. And revenue? That’s just another word for taxes, and for conservatives, well, “Toronto taxpayers are not a community of human cash registers.”

As we head into next week’s final budget lap, don’t let Parker’s pleasant, low-key demeanour and mildly amusing and innocuous-sounding tweets fool you. He’s a conservative through and through, and while they all may be preaching fiscal prudence, they’re not articulating principles that make fiscal sense.

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Let’s talk about transparency and openness in government, shall we?

Assuming for a moment the narrative of Team Ford, let’s float the notion that the previous administration at City Hall under Mayor David Miller was horribly, terribly anti-car, determined to roll back the clock to a time of corduroy roads and horses and buggies. To that point, it voted in July 2008 to authorize an Environmental Assessment to examine tearing down the eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway to Jarvis Street.

This was such a declaration of war against the car that the Millerites sneakily included in the terms of reference of the assessment three options for study to keep the Gardiner pretty much as is. Do nothing (maintain the elevated expressway); improve (the existing expressway); replace (with a new expressway). Brilliant—in its backdoor strategy of trying to tear down the eastern portion of the Gardiner, the report actually looked at three different ways to keep it in place!

Not content to fight cars on just one front, these devious bastards tricked council into killing the Gardiner by neglect. Since the environmental assessment process would take three to four years to complete, David Miller and his antediluvian thugs donned the mask of fiscal probity and convinced a majority of council not to throw good money after bad. It only seemed sensible not to lavish money on a piece of infrastructure that you might end up tearing down in the near future. So why not, as council voted to, “defer the total rehabilitation of the Gardiner Expressway east from Jarvis Street, except for essential works required to provide safe operating conditions“?

Nice try. But everyone knows that such sound financial thinking was anathema to the profligate Miller gang. They wanted to starve the beast. That’s the only possible explanation why some $40 million of the budget money they approved went unspent on the Gardiner upkeep under their watch. Why wasn’t all that money put into upkeep if not to allow the Gardiner to crumble?

Actually, that’s a very good question. City staff haven’t explained why the money approved by council went unspent. Especially given that we are talking about public safety, we need clear answers. We need to find out, moreover, why City staff under both administrations seemingly failed to keep council properly informed about the real state of the expressway.

What we need to learn as well: why the other part of that council decision—undertaking that pesky environmental assessment—was never completed. For left unmentioned in the Team Ford narrative: sometime in the murky but more recent past—say somewhere between November 2010 and the 2011 budget deliberations—the already-authorized, already-underway environmental assessment gets put on a shelf to collect dust. Why? Who knows. By whom? That’s anybody’s guess.

“At this moment the [Gardiner EA] is what we call unfunded; while it exists on our books, there is no funding to complete it just yet,” David Kusturin, Waterfront Toronto’s COO told the Toronto Sun’s Don Peat back in May of this year. Placed “on the far back burner” according to the Public Works and Infrastructure chair, councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34, Don Valley East).

Like that. No public consultation. No vote at council. Just a decision made out-of-sight during the budget process. Three million dollars of the $7.7 million already spent; the rest “reallocated to other Waterfront Toronto priority projects.”

And before you can say, “Hey, whatever happened to that Gardiner EA?” we find ourselves, during the 2013 budget season, with a capital plan costing more than half a billion dollars to restore the Gardiner Expressway starting with the eastern portion from the Don Roadway to Cherry Street. A section which was supposedly still under assessment. Apparently. Except that it wasn’t. Because the EA was on the far back burner. Everybody knew that. What’s the big deal? We’re just paving a road here.

And when this done deal gets called into question, there’s only one way to respond. Go on the offensive. Point fingers in the other direction. Proclaim the exact opposite of the truth. The Gardiner EA was just a plan to tear down a vital arterial roadway that would lead to massive congestion and force hardworking taxpayers out of their cars. The half a billion dollars brought forward for the Gardiner was just the price we have to pay in order to make up for the deliberate neglect wrought by the anti-car administration of David Miller. (Note to talking points generator: if we can include some reference to unelected judges that would be awesome.) Nobody mothballed the EA. It just mothballed itself.

For an administration that spares no opportunity to proclaim a sweeping mandate from the 2010 election—some of that based on the promise of ending all the backroom shenanigans it claimed took place at City Hall—Team Ford certainly seems comfortable operating behind a wall of opacity when it suits their needs.

Mayor Rob Ford with fellow councillors at a public-transit press conference near Eglinton and Victoria Park avenues, earlier this year. Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/photopia/6806540073/"}HiMY SYeD{/a}, from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist/"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

Let’s look at yesterday’s Executive Committee meeting not as a glass-half-empty scenario—as a group of councillors unable or unwilling to deal with some seemingly intractable problems faced by the city that elected them. Instead, let’s think of the glass as being half full.

With two of the biggest files on the table yesterday—those being transit and the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC)—Mayor Ford and his closest allies reached a compromise with his council opponents. Yes: compromise, Mayor Ford. Mayor Ford, compromise.

Apparently those three words can exist together in one paragraph.

So when the City CFO’s report on long-term strategies for funding transit and Ana Bailão’s special-housing working group’s report on selling public housing passed through the Executive Committee with much debate, but without substantive meddling, we may well have witnessed the Ford administration turning a corner.

Consider where both items started.

Soon after he assumed office, with the TCHC awash in a chocolately mess, Mayor Ford and his council approved a one-man replacement board, Case Ootes, who near the end of his tenure came out in favour of selling 900 or so TCHC houses. The proceeds were to go toward alleviating TCHC’s massive backlog of much-needed apartment repairs, or maybe into the city’s general revenue as part of the annual operating budget. Either way, the city was looking to divest itself of a chunk of social housing.

The mere appointment of middle-of-the-road Councillor Bailão (Ward 18, Davenport) as chair of an affordable-housing working group earlier this year represented a major step back from the fire-sale plans the mayor originally had in mind. Her report, published last month, recommends a much more modest approach. It advocates for selling far fewer homes and seeking a more collaborative direction with tenants and other levels of government—more collaborative, at any rate, than one normally associates with Mayor Ford. That this essentially sailed through the Executive Committee suggests Mayor Ford is starting to figure out how to pick his battles.

Gone are the days of issuing mayoral decrees: “I have a mandate.” “Transit City is dead.” “Make it so.”

That lasted for a little more than a year or so, gummed up the works, delayed the inevitable, and only really served to sideline Mayor Ford. Now, his influence has waned so much that yesterday his Executive Committee was actually talking about revenue sources (i.e., taxes) for building public transit. The mayor has made no bones about his outright disagreement with the notion of creating new taxes for this purpose. But, in the end, he voted with the majority of the committee’s members to consult the public on the possibility.

It’s fascinating to watch the mayor’s evolutions on the issues that are important to him. He starts off with an extreme position—a massive sell-off of homes, say, or a major rejigging of a transit plan—falters on the follow-through, meets resistance, and, ultimately, finds himself having ignited a debate that runs absolutely opposite to his intended direction.

Hardly what you would call the delicate art of compromise. Although, to be fair to the mayor, Councillor Bailão’s report isn’t a complete refutation of his position. Properties will be sold off. Some of the remaining stock will be tended to. Mayor Ford can be seen as making something of a positive contribution to that process.

It’s a start. He should be applauded for that. (And genuinely, not the slow-clap kind.)

But there’s a long way to go, not just for the mayor but for all of council. What yesterday’s Executive Committee meeting revealed, most of all, was that on these big files, like transit and social housing, Toronto cannot go it alone. Higher levels of government have to come back to the table with both money and ideas. Like they used to do.

Otherwise, mild compromising at the municipal level won’t suffice. We’re talking radical solutions for entrenched problems that both Queen’s Park and Ottawa have ignored for the better part of two decades. They’ve had a friend of sorts in Mayor Ford, with his assertion that all the City’s problems are caused by overspending. But even he’s starting to wake up to the fact that cutting spending isn’t going to get the job done.

Maybe these conciliatory baby steps should be seen as something bigger. Maybe Ford’s administration is starting to come around to the point of view that the City’s difficulties— especially in paying for big-ticket items, like public transit—are not self-inflicted, not the exclusive result of our own maladministration.

At least, that’s the way it seems, looking through the half-full glass.

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Toronto and the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) have become bogged down in gridlock and congestion. The only way to alleviate what has now become a drag on economic output and quality of life is an immediate and ongoing investment in public transit. This is hardly news.

At least not to those attending last Friday’s Going to School: A Transit Summit at York University. A symposium spearheaded by Councillor Adam Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina) and organized by his staff and the school’s City Institute, it brought together presidents of the region’s post-secondary institutions, urban and transit planners, academics, and a whole host of politicians and government officials—along with a few “public intellectuals.” Hello, Steve Munro!

Ostensibly focusing “on the needs and issues of providing smooth region-wide transportation for the 300,000 students, instructors, and staff at Southern Ontario’s institutions of post-secondary education,” #trafficschool wound up concluding that without more and better transit, this region will lose whatever competitive edge it now possesses in raising, developing, and attracting the best and brightest. It is simply that important. Full stop.

According to Bryan Tuckey, president and CEO of the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD), the Golden Horseshoe is the third-fastest-growing metropolitan area in North America. Our transit planning and building has simply failed to keep pace. The province’s Big Move is ambitious. It’s a stab at dealing with our transit deficit—but, as Jennifer Keesmaat, Toronto’s new chief planner (who moderated the morning session’s second panel), said, it’s a case of “what you ought to do versus what you end up with.” Good intentions, devil’s in the details, and all that.

What’s the holdup? Well, that’s the $50 billion (and growing) question.

For starters, there isn’t (and never really has been) any solid regional coordination in transit planning. We have a mishmash of local transportation agencies that cross but never really meet. People needing to traverse political boundaries using public transit find themselves having to pay more than one fare, and they can never depend on seamless (and time-saving) transfers.

Now, Metrolinx, an organization the province set up to oversee and orchestrate a more seamless, region-wide transit system, has, well, taken its sweet time in doing so. As York environmental studies professor Laura Taylor suggested, the Big Move is a provincial plan that leaves the struggles of implementation up to municipal politicians and planners while providing little assistance and (in my humble opinion) more than a few roadblocks. The recent unilateral announcement of Metrolinx’s plan to public-private partnership the design, construction, and operation of Toronto’s four new LRT lines is just the latest example.

Similar frustration was expressed by Councillor Shelley Carroll (Ward 33, Don Valley East), who was in the audience. She pointed out that she was left alone to defend the increase of density that would need to accompany the construction of new rapid transit in her ward, even when residents objected. Provincial officials or their representatives from Metrolinx are absent when she is forced to argue what is ultimately their case. It’s a situation of Here’s What We’re Going To Do, Now You Convince Everybody—and, presumably, take the fall if there’s enough pushback.

This also underscores the issue of money.

As Tuckey, the BILD president, said, the planning for regional transit is done, and now’s the time to talk about investing. (Yes, “investing,” not “funding.” Transit, like most infrastructure, isn’t simply about spending money. It’s about investing in something that will provide a solid, quantifiable economic return.) Since the Big Move was announced in 2008, there’s never been a complete economic plan for financing it. Bits and pieces have been promised, reduced, re-promised. The whole thing remains little more than a wish list at this point, leaving the entire proposal vulnerable to political whims and changing of the guard.

Metrolinx’s full financial action plan is due to be released next June, five years or so after this whole process began. Meanwhile, municipalities like Toronto have to wait and wonder. Everybody knows what the next step has to be: a discussion about revenue generation. Taxes. What type and how much. It’s hardly a surprise that governments are hesitant to open that can of worms.

But open it they must.

Even conservative radio show host John Tory knows it. Moderating the first panel on Friday, it was the theme he constantly returned to. At one point, he asked the presidents of seven local colleges and universities how they thought we should go about selling the public on the need to raise new taxes for funding transit. His Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance is set to roll out a taxes and transit-funding strategy in October. It won’t be easy to convince a public long inundated with anti-tax rhetoric that this tax is both beneficial and necessary.

This is the uphill battle all transit advocates must fight. There was certainly no dearth of advice at the transit summit. Urban planner Sean Hertel suggested emphasizing the notion of the cost of doing nothing—that is, not investing in public transit. That’s a song even Toronto’s Board of Trade can sing. Back in 2006, they estimated that congestion cost the GTHA six billion dollars a year. TTC Chair Karen Stintz said that we need to stop thinking road use is free. It’s time to put a price on it. Or, as Professor Roger Keil, director of the City Institute, said in his closing remarks, transit must be affordable, while costs must be acknowledged

And until we fully come to terms with that—that we need more transit and that transit costs money—the gridlock will remain. Polls have indicated the public is at least willing to entertain the idea of paying more to build transit in order to decrease congestion. They get it. Everyone attending the transit summit gets it. A growing number of our local elected representatives get it.

The next step is to convince the rest of our politicians that their reticence on the issue is the only thing now holding us back. Unfortunately, that’s the biggest obstacle standing in our way. It’s the one we need to overcome if we’re to move forward.

Riverdale Farm has been saved—or is much closer to that, at least.

This morning at City Hall, the Executive Committee voted to accept a staff recommendation to implement the Riverdale Farm Coalition’s business plan to keep the Cabbagetown farm up and running [PDF]. That plan includes a fundraising strategy that Farm supporters think will raise $345,000 a year once they have ramped up; they anticipate raising $100,000 this year. It also calls for the City of Toronto to maintain its current funding to the farm; that funding is to be offset with the money the Farm fundraises as those revenues become available.

The item runs contrary to Mayor Ford’s push to get the City out of all “non-core” businesses. If it isn’t about keeping the streets clean, safe, and car friendly, the mayor doesn’t think the municipal government should be involved. Given that the committee that made this decision is populated with his staunchest allies, their rejection of that approach today is certainly worth noting.

Budget chief Mike Del Grande (Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt) sits on Executive, and is very much with the mayor on this issue. Arguing that the Farm’s proposal failed because it didn’t meet the desired goal of not costing the City a penny, he launched in to what has become his standard speech on this. (“Nice to haves” featured prominently.) The City was facing a preliminary shortfall of $200 million for 2013, he warned. (Note: if true, that’s actually a much smaller number than in previous years.) Discipline, he demanded. Learning to say no. Don’t go getting all wobbly on me in the face of some windy pushback from engaged citizens. Grow a spine, he urged his colleagues.

When councillor Norm Kelly (Ward 40, Scarborough-Agincourt) began speaking about the merits of keeping Riverdale Farm alive at what seemed to him a reasonable cost, the budget chief left the room in protest, not to return until after the vote. Kelly’s speech began what turned out to be a tide in favour of the staff report and business plan; when it came time to decide, members of the Executive Committee decided by a vote of 5–4 that the gem that is Riverdale Farm, as councillor Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West) referred to it, was in fact a core item, a vital part of the city. A nice to have became a need to have.

Ultimately, why wouldn’t they think so?

The business plan presented by the Farm represented what seems to be a template for the much vaunted public-private partnerships right wing councillors always champion. For a little outlay of cash—and yes, the $493,900 the City will spend in 2012 is a little outlay in the scheme of things—City Hall would help foster increased private engagement with Riverdale Farm. That’s how these things are supposed to work, aren’t they?

More importantly, the vote revealed a growing split at Executive Committee between the hardcore adherents of Ford’s political stance that the best government is the smallest government possible, and those with less libertarian leanings. Yes, there is a role for government to play in the life of the city that goes beyond simply plowing our roads and taking our garbage. There’s always been that divide on city council. But to have it bubbling up at Executive Committee has profound implications for the mayor’s ability to push forward with any sort of agenda of his own.

Photos by Giordano Ciampini.

Mike Del Grande (left) is Rob Ford's budget chief. Shelley Carroll (right) was David Miller's.

Since the municipal election heated up in 2010, Toronto has been existing in a fiscal alternative reality. During the campaign, City Hall was a painted as a place full of tax-and-spend, corrupt politicians, held captive by unions with rivers of debt turning our streets blood red. Businesses were fleeing. Graffiti blighted the skyline as far as the eye could see.

But fear not, good citizens. A fix would be easy. A nip here, a tuck there. A round of some good ol’ fashioned belt tightening. All done with no service cuts…guaranteed. We’d be good as new in no time.

That virtually none of that nonsense rhetoric held any water was hardly the point.

Our credit rating was just fine, thank you very much. Corporate and condo towers were rising up at a record rate. Toronto continually found itself ranked high among international cities for liveability and business friendliness. But one-time fringe councillor Rob Ford and his small band of right-wing ideologues convinced enough voters that his version of reality was true to get himself elected mayor. Stop the Gravy Train! And the assault on fact, veracity and just basic high-school economics has been ongoing ever since.

One of the first signs that we’d been had came when the Ford administration filled the holes in its inaugural budget using a more-than-$300 million surplus left behind by the previous mayor, David Miller. Wait, what? David Miller? That profligate David Miller? A surplus? But…but…?

Not so fast, folks, Team Ford told us—it wasn’t a surplus, it was a “one-time savings.” Those are two entirely different things.

Then we had another surplus—errr, one-time savings. And another. And just this past week, another surplus—errr, one-time savings was announced for the first quarter of 2012.

How many one-time savings does it take to make a surplus?

In the real world of municipal government financing here in this province, cities are prohibited from running an operating budget deficit. They tend to overestimate their projected costs and downplay possible revenue as a result. Surpluses are not at all unusual, nor are they one-time. In fact, they are a sign of sound fiscal management.

Some have argued that City staff can be a little too conservative with their estimates and present a more dire situation than is really the case. This prompts an overreaction from some politicians who demand unnecessary cuts and reductions in order to meet the bottom line. It’s a problem that has been exacerbated (in this writer’s opinion) here in Toronto by council’s decision to get a budget done as close to a calendar year as possible while the actual wheels of finance and commerce operate on an April-to-April fiscal season. This time lag creates more uncertainty, more guesswork, and more conservative estimates.

Despite these regular (annual, like clockwork) infusions of one-time savings, Mayor Ford has been forced to make some tough decisions. Like cutting services. (Oops. Yes, about that guarantee…)

Well, first of all, the mayor would appreciate it if you stopped calling them cuts, because they’re not cuts. They’re efficiencies, and he never guaranteed not to find efficiencies. In fact, he guaranteed he’d find efficiencies.

Besides, to the mayor’s way of thinking, you can’t have a surplus if you owe money, and while municipalities aren’t allowed to run operating budget deficits, they can rack up a whack of capital debt. Cities have to build and maintain things like roads and public transit systems, and it turns out that this is expensive. How else are you going to pay for it other than using any and all operating budget surplus—errr, one-time savings? The bigger this one-time savings, the more capital debt you can pay down. In order to increase a one-time savings, you need to trim here and there on the operating side of things.

So, you see the dilemma Mayor Ford’s facing. The only other alternative to using operating surpluses to offset capital costs is debt financing. And as Councillor Doug Ford (Ward 2, Etobicoke North) suggested at Tuesday’s budget committee meeting, debt is the first step toward bankruptcy—as anyone who’s ever taken out a mortgage knows.

Imagine all the things we could have if we weren’t paying interest for the things we need. Our budget chief pointed out that the city saved $20 million on interest charges last year. That’s almost a third of the amount we lost by repealing the detested vehicle registration tax a couple years ago. It’s also a drop in the bucket of cash we gave away by freezing property taxes in 2011 and not making up the difference in 2012.

The trouble with debt, in the eyes of Team Ford members, is that you need to generate revenue to pay it off. Generating revenue is just another term for taxation, and a civil society cannot function properly under the burden of taxation. Government should not be in the business of generating revenue because generating revenue is the business of business.

This is the worldview we’ve allowed to permeate throughout City Hall.

No debt. No revenue. No expenditures except for in the service of those first two rules. That this is inherently contradictory and mathematically impossible seems utterly lost on the people pursuing and advocating these policies. But lies—errr, pieces of campaign hyperbole—that this city was going to hell in a hand basket and our fiscal foundations were crumbling served as the little piece of thread that, once pulled, unravelled the entire outfit. One invention led to another two being needed to prop the first up, and so on and so on.

The truth is much more economical. If we’d had an honest and straight-forward discussion from the beginning, that the city was facing some very serious challenges but was in a strong position to deal with them, we wouldn’t be wasting our time and energy digging through the mounds of falsehoods and irrationality that now makes up the debate at City Hall; and we wouldn’t be constantly reminding the mayor and his supporters that what they said then is miles away from what they’re saying now. The target we’re shooting for wouldn’t constantly be in motion.

Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtl_shag/1032472895/"}OliverN5{/a}.

To give the mayor his due: during Monday’s debate on the prospect of building a casino in Toronto, he executed what would not be considered a typical Ford manoeuvre. Instead of just blustering through, acting impulsively on gut instinct or what he believes some mythical taxpayer wants, Ford introduced a motion calling for further study and fact-finding before asking his colleagues to make a decision about whether to give a thumbs-up to the OLG and allow a casino in Toronto.

What’s that you say? A reasoned debate? A little of the old rational discourse? Well, I do declare.

Of course, the mayor made it clear what he personally thinks about casinos. For him, they are all upside. A hundred million delicious, lilac-smelling dollars would flow into our coffers—a number that, like many of the mayor’s boasts, is of uncertain origins. (Perhaps he simply multiplies 100 by 5 cents and arrives at the amount he needs to back a claim?) It’s never the same number, but it always works in the mayor’s favour. Call it the new math.

While we’d like to think this call for careful deliberation and evidence-based decision-making heralds a new approach from our chief magistrate, that might just be wishful thinking. After all, during this very same executive committee meeting, he led the charge to try and rescind the 5 cent plastic bag fee in order to … what? Eliminate any evidence that David Miller was once mayor? Generate some sort of political issue with it?

Respecting Toronto Taxpayers One Nickel At A Time.

Far more likely: what’s giving the mayor pause on the casino issue isn’t a new-found desire for informed debate, but rather the thorny matter of its location. Jane Holmes, Woodbine Entertainment Group’s vice president of corporate affairs, told the committee that a new casino anywhere else in Toronto would jeopardize Woodbine’s existing business—and by extension, the mayor’s much ballyhooed Woodbine Live complex. For Ford, the decision of where a casino might go clearly comes with much larger implications. How could he be seen championing a waterfront casino to the detriment of a business in his own backyard? Don’t us downtowners already get everything without leaving even so much as crumbs for the suburbs? The optics of that—not only for the mayor but for every pro-casino suburban councillor—are ugly.

It’s unfortunate that’s the direction it seems the casino debate will take: not if, but where. Because there’s a much larger conversation we need to have, one that bubbled up at Monday’s meeting: What is the net benefit of building a casino in Toronto?

Note the word net. Anybody who’s pro-casino can read off the reasons having one would be good by rote. Jobs, jobs, jobs. Added revenue to plug budget holes or build much-needed infrastructure. The zazz of a shiny new edifice dedicated to the pleasure of vice and a palace to watch Howie Mandel perform. Why would anybody be against that?

Besides, if we don’t build a casino, Mississauga will. And if Mississauga builds a casino then, well… Yes. What does happen to Toronto if Mississauga has a casino and we don’t? Do we get economic spin-offs, and do they mitigate massive traffic jams? That’s where the question of net benefits—gains minus the costs in receiving those benefits—enters in. The pros minus the cons. Just because the project comes with some advantages doesn’t mean we end up in positive territory.

It’s too soon to say what realistic revenue projections look like, but they won’t be nearly the amount Ford declared. It’s pretty well established that municipalities in Ontario with casinos get the short end of the stick, the slightest slices of financial pie. And the notion of our mayor marching into the premier’s office and striking a better casino deal for Toronto is delusional even by the hyper-delusional measure of this mayor. He’s missed no opportunity to alienate our current premier, regularly threatening him with electoral pain at the hands of Ford Nation. Not to mention that little bit of debt the province is wrestling with. Yeah, they’ll want to hand over more cash to us.

Oh wait, we can parlay the highly desirable waterfront location the likes of MGM wants in order to secure a better deal for the city. This is the flip side of the Woodbine situation for Ford: he’s got reasons to keep it local, but the city stands to make a lot more if we put the casino near the waterfront. As pointed out by MGM’s representative to reporters, the biggest source of revenue for the city would occur by putting the casino on city-owned landed and raking in lease payments—and it’s a fair bet the waterfront would command a good price. (MGM has gone so far as to say it wouldn’t be interested in building at Woodbine at all.) We’ll pimp ourselves out, sure. But we won’t come cheap; it’s high-class hooking all the way.

Aside from a whiff of desperation, this interest in putting a casino by the waterfront also reveals a fundamental lack of understanding about the nature of downtown Toronto. The last thing it needs is the glitz, glamour, and showy spectacle that some sort of resort-y hotel/casino might deliver. Aside from the gambling, we already have all of that—just see our restaurants, theatres, shopping, hotels, and convention spaces. It might come as a bit of a surprise to some councillors who just come downtown to work or see the Leafs, but it already is a bit of a destination.

What downtown Toronto needs—especially along its waterfront—are more vibrant public spaces. Real, tangible, lived-in ones, not those manufactured by corporate entities catering to some projected desire we have to get away from it all. How much is it worth to us as a city to bargain away a chunk of our prime real estate in return for a whack of service jobs and an uncertain revenue stream that will invariably fall short of expectations?

The only certainty, gained from the experiences elsewhere: a casino is never the economic saviour it’s played up to be for a city of our size, with an economy as diverse as ours. At best, it’s a gap filler, a provider of some of those nice-to-haves the mayor could easily have us do without. Hardly what you would cede choice property over for, on the very likely losing end of what’s shaping up to be a “steal.”

This is unfamiliar territory for Mayor Ford with no easy division to exploit. The big boys in the private sector are calling for a prime waterfront location. If he acquiesces it might mean putting the final nail in a pet project he’s long been claiming as his own, right in his neck of the woods. Either one probably won’t be the windfall he’s proclaimed. In gambling parlance, the mayor needs to throw a hard eight and a staff report may just help him hedge his bets.

The Scarborough RT, which will need to be replaced in the coming few years. Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexresurgent/4199589588/"}Alex Resurgent{/a} from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

By any measure in the rather narrow definition of today’s common currency, I am a member of the downtown elite—by which I mean I live downtown and I’m not on board with Mayor Rob Ford’s agenda. Full stop.

This place I thought of as my home and the lifestyle that came with it, the ease of mobility and the array of opportunity, had come under fire by the antiest of anti-urban municipal governments this city has seen in some time. This was an administration that threatened the very things I viewed as vital to what makes my home so special to me. I was growing increasingly aggressive in my defence of it. And then I went to Scarborough last night. Three and a half hours later, I realized I don’t know anger. I don’t know outrage. I don’t know such fiercely loyal pride of place.

The 10 councillors representing the former east side municipality met at the Scarborough Civic Centre to present the proposed 2012 City budget and listen to feedback from their residents. Did they ever get a collective earful.

Sixty-seven residents had signed up to give deputations, although by my count only about 40 or so made it down to the microphone. Of that number, two spoke in favour of the course the mayor and his team were currently charting.

Like many, I’ve heard chatter about the alleged “usual suspects” who comes to speak at these things: CUPE-backed and -prepared speakers, special interests, et cetera—the same refrain that gets repeated whenever deputants so overwhelmingly speak out against the mayor. Your basic case of shooting the messenger.

I readily accept that those who come out to have their voices heard aren’t necessarily fully representative of the population as a whole. (Although it isn’t exactly clear how those who support Mayor Ford’s budget would even know to come out and voice their support. I could only find notification of last night’s event through, for lack of a better term, opposition websites. Neither the mayor nor any of the councillors from Scarborough seemed to have given residents a heads-up about the event, at least not online.) People don’t tend to take time out of their schedules to cheer on issues, to express a favourable opinion of them. This, I think, is especially true with the budget proposal put in front of us. (“Yeah! Cut more! Pump up the user fees! Further reduce the role of government!”) That side is more of a Tim Horton’s nod-and-stay-the-course interaction.

But even measured against other budget meetings I have witnessed throughout the city, last night’s was high-pitched, angry, outraged and very, very personal. One deputant, in summing up this year’s budget said, “Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Scarborough’s screwed again.”

Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/neuroticjose/534304867/"}neuroticjose{/a} from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

That’s not simply a where’s mine? parochial attitude. In all the divisive downtown-suburb rhetoric over whose money and how much of it goes where that has been a part of the post-amalgamation discourse, it’s become pretty clear that Scarborough has consistently gotten the short end of the stick—not just versus downtown but in comparison to other former municipalities like Etobicoke and North York. Scarborough residents’ anger at City Hall is justified.

Which was one of the reasons Scarborough went so overwhelmingly pro–Rob Ford in the 2010 election. He promised to change all that. He would cut the boatloads of gravy and the sense of downtown entitlement that was so pervasive at City Hall, and redirect all the savings back to where it was really needed, like in Scarborough. They’d get better transit. They’d get better service. And they wouldn’t have to pay more for it.

Jump two budgets later to 2012.

Scarborough is looking at reduced service on 26 of its bus routes. Their subway? Still a figment of Ford’s imagination. Eleven of their libraries are threatened with reduced hours, as are 10 of their arenas. Shelters are being closed. Recreation programs were cut and higher user fees implemented.

“Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Scarborough’s screwed again.”

More than anything, the palpable feeling at last night’s budget session was one of betrayal. Scarborough had put their faith in Ford and the residents there were being repaid by… well, actually they weren’t being repaid at all. Scarborough is being gouged, bludgeoned by an austerity bat that many who spoke out saw as unnecessary and ideological. The mayor had turned on them, and then they showed up to turn on him.

Betrayal is something a politician, no matter how savvy, has a hard time getting past, even in the two and a half years we have before our next election. Voters may have short-term memories about many things political, but betrayal lingers. Candidate Rob Ford promised he’d be looking out for the little guy. Seventy-one percent of voters in Scarborough believed him, more than anywhere else in the city.

That’s a mighty big voting bloc to have turn against you. Lose even 20 percent of that, and a 2014 re-election suddenly becomes very, very iffy. Mayor Ford and the 10 Scarborough councillors had better hope the deputations given in their backyard last night aren’t representative of the wider swath of Scarborough voters. If they are, and this budget goes through next week as is? Their collective political futures may be very much in question.

Is the Power of the Thumb waning? Photo by Christopher Drost/Torontoist.

A two-day meeting dragged into three. And as that third day ground to its inconclusive conclusion, participants voted to defer all remaining items to the next regularly scheduled meeting in February. Decisions put off. The business of municipal governance delayed.

Perhaps it was because council members were looking ahead to the big game: the 2012 budget battle. Beginning almost immediately—today, in fact—as the Budget Committee kicks off the first of seven days’ worth of meetings over the course of the next eleven days, including two for public deputations, to hash out a budget for city council to consider and implement next month. That’s the big fish to fry, where energy needs to be expended. This week’s council meeting was simply the warm-up session, getting loose, stretching the body into fighting shape.

Or it simply could be seen as the precursor to how things are going to happen over the next little while. A war of attrition.

Gone are the early, glorious days of shock and awe that saw quick and surprisingly decisive victories for the Ford administration. The Vehicle Registration Tax: gone! Councillor office budgets: slashed! Transit City: mauled in its infancy. The mayor is still pushing ahead, but it’s now become a tough slog, a slow grind. Some of his more egregious intentions are being picked off by sniper fire, some even coming from friends and allies. His opponents’ Maginot Line is still holding.

Councillor Shelley Carroll (Ward 33, Don Valley East) successfully moved an amendment to prevent large industrial water-users from getting carte blanche to ignore sewer bylaws, reserving the City’s right to monitor effluent—essentially waste-water dumping—and to keep aiming for water conservation targets. The mayor found himself on the losing side of what turned out to be a drubbing on that one, abandoned even by his brother and budget chief.

One of Toronto's community environment days. Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lu_/2656619808/"}Lú_{/a} from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

Mayor Ford also took it on the chin when it came to the Solid Waste Management budget when Councillor David Shiner (Ward 24, Willowdale), a usual Ford loyalist, found a way to retain the current 44 environment days instead of cutting them back to 11. To be sure, Shiner’s amendment scales the scale of the events back, and doesn’t threaten the mayor’s desired zero per cent increase in waste collection rates. It was, however, a definitive poke in the eye of those looking to do away with remnants of green initiatives in the city.

Councillor Shiner was, moreover, front and centre in negotiating a compromise with noted foes of the mayor, Councillors Adam Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina) and Mike Layton (Ward 19, Trinity-Spadina), on the relocation of Eva’s Phoenix. The youth shelter sits on property that Team Ford has its eyes on selling as part of the revised Fort York bridge plan—an obstacle in the march to “monetize city assets.” In finding it a new home, Shiner brokered a deal that kept both sides, if not happy, at least content.

It could also be that what we’re witnessing is the formation of a consensus-building model at city council. The hitherto unuttered word since Rob Ford took office, ‘compromise,’ is becoming part of the vernacular. Even traditional adversaries Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West) and Janet Davis (Ward 31, Beaches-East York) came to an uneasy agreement over the direction of child care services in the city. They and council agreed to work at not closing any daycare centres until they hear what the provincial government, which has been slow and unsteady holding up its part of the funding formula, will say about the matter in next year’s budget.

Compromise may be a word the mayor has to come to terms with. Winter is indeed blowing in, and with it a serious threat of bogging down his troops and heavy artillery in the muck and goo of the 2012 budget process. Talks of cuts to services at the TTC, elimination of pools and programs, and reductions in library hours all are emboldening the opposition outside the council to set up and stand their ground. Within council, allies are exerting their independence and not bending to the mayor’s bully tactics. (Witness just how far the moderate, small-c conservative councillor Chin Lee (Ward 41, Scarborough-Rouge River) has drifted from the Ford fold.)

The mayor has expended an awful lot of political capital in his first year, tilting at longstanding pet peeves of his that represent, in his view, the worst excesses of tax-and-spend governing. Non-automobile forms of transit. Community engagement and outreach. The arts. The environment. The so-called “nice to haves.” And that’s all before it truly gets ugly for him—when that bus doesn’t arrive for that little old lady going out grocery shopping in Scarborough or that library is closed on Sunday for that little girl looking for some quiet study time. When the family has to go even further afield to find affordable swimming lessons.

The battles are going to get more intense over the next six weeks, the pushback stronger, and the terrain more treacherous. Already besieged, it’s hard to see how Mayor Ford can simply bludgeon ahead in that damn-the-torpedoes fashion that has been his governing style to date—his arsenal has been severely depleted. While hardly a spent force, Mayor Ford is not the indomitable powerhouse he was earlier this year, the one that caught everybody flat-footed, surprised, and easily overwhelmed. It’s now trench warfare and any gains will come with great cost. If he fails to adapt to the new reality, the mayor may find that the 2012 budget is the hill he will die on.