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“Raise My Taxes If You Need”
Councillors at the East York Civic Centre. Photo by Hamutal Dotan/Torontoist.
Last night, in public meetings at the East York and North York civic centres, Torontonians got their first official chance to tell the budget committee what they think about the proposed 2011 municipal budget. Amidst all the hyperbole and the rhetoric that has characterized this budget—that characterizes almost every budget, really—it was also our first chance to get a real-life sense of how residents feel Rob Ford is faring in his attempts to manage their money more wisely.
These meetings can be kind of loopy, with deputants ranging from fact-marshalling directors of arts organizations to conspiracy theorists who feel that water fluoridation is our most pressing concern. There are usually a few earnest and precocious teenagers, and always a coterie of councillors’ staff keeping an eye on the political brinkmanship.
Here’s how it all played out.
Steve Kupferman was at the North York Civic Centre and Hamutal Dotan at the East York Civic Centre; here’s a blended report of the conversation Torontonians collectively had last night about their budget.
We rush in late, along with a steady stream of others coming off the 70 O’Connor bus—the previous one was too packed to board. The East York Civic Centre council chambers is overflowing all the way to the front door of the building.
Meanwhile, over at the North York Civic Centre, Doug Ford (Ward 2, Etobicoke North) is chairing the meeting, and he’s in full-on man-of-the-people mode. Every time a deputant finishes speaking their allotted five minutes (plus an extra minute or two, if needed) and after taking questions from the subcommittee, Ford thanks them for speaking and cracks a little joke.
Carol Wilding, president of Toronto’s Board of Trade, gives a deputation in which she reemphasizes many of the Board’s earlier recommendations for fiscal responsibility at the City, stopping several times along the way to praise Mayor Ford. But she does offer a word of caution: “This process must not be about cutting spending simply for the sake of cutting spending,” she says. “Any process designed to wrestle the City’s long-term structural deficit must have at its outset an understanding of what goals the City is trying to reach.”
“I want to speak in favour of Transit City,” begins deputant Elizabeth Block. Breakout applause and whooping. Rob Ford stares at the ceiling.
John Van Burek, artistic director of Pleiades Theatre, points out that Chicago spends $60 per capita on arts funding, compared to Toronto’s $18. “There’s not much gravy on this train,” he cracks. Too late though: an hour into proceedings, Ford’s already left.
Doug Ford introduces a nice old lady as: “Margaret Watson, for Canadian Prisoners’ Concern.” The gallery laughs. Watson does not look like the shank-you-for-a-cigarette type, though one can never tell. She’s actually from Canadian Pensioners Concerned, according to the meeting agenda, and Ford quickly corrects his mistake.
“I feel like a prisoner down here,” he says, unintentionally overshooting folksy humour and hitting a little too close to the truth. “Oh, that was a real slip, wasn’t it.”
Watson asks for efficient, frequent transit service. She also speaks out against rising user fees.
“Are you in favour of the private sector getting involved in sponsoring a community centre or event?” Ford asks her, but she doesn’t get where the question is leading and starts talking about how Wal-Mart lets people park RVs in its parking lots for free.
Ford tries to steer her back on track by suggesting that perhaps Wal-Mart could sponsor an event or community centre, and how would she feel about that?
And Watson, to her eternal credit, utters the line of the night:
“We voted for you. We didn’t vote for Wal-Mart.”
There were no further questions.
Back in East York, budget chief Mike Del Grande calls a recess, apparently to caucus with fellow budget committee members Chin Lee and Michelle Berardinetti about whether to grant a two-minute speaking extension to a group of arts-loving youth. He seems flustered by speakers’ determination to speak. City Hall procedure geeks are disturbed because the behind-closed-doors conference is a violation of the provincial City of Toronto Act which governs these meetings—technically, they argue, Del Grande just broke the law. We are disturbed because Del Grande apparently feels the need to hold a meeting just to decide whether a teenager from the first meeting gets two extra minutes to speak.
Best dressed deputant so far: Miquel Avila, whose t- shirt reads “Latino Pinko.” Adam Vaughan asks where he can get one.
Mayor Rob Ford enters the North York meeting and sits down next to his brother. Maureen O’Reilly, president of the Toronto Public Library Workers Union, is in the middle of telling the subcommittee about TPL’s budget and labour woes.
Councillor Shelley Carroll (Ward 33, Don Valley East), a leader on council’s left wing, gets out of her seat and uses her Blackberry to snap a photo of O’Reilly at the podium. Carroll is tweeting the entire consultation, and has been taking photos of every deputant who speaks cogently in opposition to the proposed budget cuts. This is her way of showing affection for her favourite speakers. We wonder if those who don’t get the Blackberry treatment are secretly crushed. Something about Shelley Carroll makes one want her approval. She’s a smiley, energetic lady, and one gets the sense, true or not, that she wouldn’t unleash scorn on anyone or anything that didn’t deserve it.
Erika Gates-Gasse, from the Ontario council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, speaks up in favour of social housing, and is also very concerned about the proposed $100,000 cut to the Tenant Defence Fund.
Of the $100,000, a small amount in comparison to the City’s total operating budget, she says: “This isn’t a gravy train. This is a grain of rice.”
Shelley Carroll takes her picture.
Doug Ford gives the chair to the mayor, who is much stricter about the five-minute limit on deputations. Things start to move more quickly, and fifteen minutes later things are winding down. The final speaker is a guy named Jeff Pancer, who isn’t on the speaker’s list; he hasn’t prepared a deputation in advance. “I love sports,” he says, “but I hope that Toronto will cancel the Pan Am games.”
East York is still going strong, and councillors are getting punchy. Mary-Margaret McMahon just asked the last deputant if he volunteered for her ousted predecessor Sandra Bussin, and Paula Fletcher’s joking that people should come on down. This is predictably followed by twenty minutes of bickering about procedural minutiae.
Gord Perks: “A lot has been said about what Torontonians want; a lot has been said about the mayor’s mandate…but when you vote for mayor you just check a box by one name. That doesn’t contain a whole lot of information.” Tonight, he says, we got a lot more detail about what people want from their government, and it has more to do with preserving existing services than implementing a tax freeze the mayor never campaigned on.
Vaughan just declared this budget the beginning of a war on the poor. We take his point, but…rhetorical much?
Six hours, approximtely ninety deputants (between the two meetings), and some needless wrangling later, we’re done.
To the extent that the evening has a theme, it’s that people don’t want their services cut. That isn’t surprising—most people who come to these meetings are motivated by arguing against proposals rather than speaking in favour of them. What is striking: of the deputants who described themselves as “taxpayers,” all but one asked the City to raise their property taxes in order to maintain services.
Midway through the evening Rob Ford took questions from the press. His sense of the evening? “Obviously people want a zero-percent tax increase. I’ve heard it from all over.”
The political brinksmanship is bigger than any of us, it seems.