Miller's sanitized City HallDebate over the hot button issues is all but gone as the mayor twists rules to silence critics |
At yesterday's monthly public works committee meeting councillors spent much of their time addressing such terribly vital issues as winter snow removal on bike lanes and the latest plan to wreak fresh bike lane havoc on Wellesley St.
The only item that could have been considered the slightest bit controversial was a push by council trougher Howard Moscoe to step up policing (and the fines given) to those who contravene the city's idling bylaw (even though, it was pointed out, city employees are regularly guilty of idling while on the job).
There was no status update on the ambitious and costly brontosaurus blue bin program -- which, judging from the recent delivery of my own bin, is more than a month behind -- or the pending plans to introduce garbage fees in condos and apartments months before they get their green bins.
In fact, during the bulk of the morning I was in the committee room -- while councillors were spoon fed the Pablum disguised as a committee agenda -- I did not spot any bureaucrat from Solid Waste Management. Guess everything is just hunky-dory on the garbage front. (Not!)
But I really began to wonder if all reason had ceased to exist when the committee spent time addressing complaints by two members of the cycling contingent about how few of the bike lanes were plowed out in a timely manner during the past very snowy winter. As if staff had done such a timely and thorough job of plowing the city's roads and side streets -- and the few hundred cyclists (if that) who ride throughout the winter were being unfairly targeted.
DAVID'S WORLD
But folks, this has become the way of the world under King David Miller -- the mayor and would-be emperor of his fiefdom known as Socialist Silly Hall.
Mark my words -- and judging from the equally sanitized agendas sitting on my desk -- there won't be much more meat covered in the rest of the standing committee meetings scheduled for this week and next.
Items in the slightest bit controversial -- take the wacky panhandling plan or the request to declare the TTC an essential service -- now regularly go directly to Miller's handpicked executive committee where the mayor can orchestrate the message and the outcome. I'm told that committee chairmen (who march to Miller's tune) regularly remove items placed on their agendas by city officials if they're deemed too hot to handle.
"You will never see anything remotely controversial on agendas anymore," more than one City Hall insider told me yesterday.
"Chairs of committees make sure things never get on the agenda ... it's purposeful," adds Coun. Michael Thompson. "The entire environment is being managed ... only their (that of the mayor and his minions) particular agendas get to the head of the agenda list."
Coun. Mike Del Grande has been told by staff that "literally everything" now goes through the mayor's office -- even agendas from the city's agencies and boards -- where things are "sanitized.
"We have nothing to meet on anymore," he says.
TWISTING RULES
That, combined with Miller's (and his speaker Sandra Bussin's) regular habit of twisting council's procedural rules to ensure critics are quickly silenced -- and their motions ruled out of order -- makes me wonder what powers of a strong mayor King David the Autocrat feels he doesn't already possess.
The only fresh advantage he could possibly obtain from his pal Premier Dalton McGuinty is the ability to provide extra pay to his trained seals on the executive committee (making them more out-of-touch and arrogant than they are now) and the power to meet with them in secret (making councillors not on the A team even more impotent than they are now).
Thompson has no idea how further "entrenching" such powers will benefit anybody in this city.
Del Grande goes one step further. He feels if the mayor gets any more power, he should simply dismiss council and run the entire show with his few trained seals. He says it seems very foolish to spend so much money on councillors, their staff and a whole council services unit when councillors are reduced to "taking calls about garbage bins.
"Why give something the label of democracy when it is an autocracy?" he asks.
Thompson hopes the public really starts to understand what's going on at City Hall.
"It's absolute madness here," he says. "Some days I have a really sick stomach about it."
4 comments:
Bike lanes are not being plowed at all right now, in fact the snow is being left in them, or piled at the side of the road where we ride. I'm sure we winter cyclists are more than a few hundred, and there would be a lot more of us if our transportation choice was accomodated with a tiny percentage of what is spent on drivers.
That is slowly happening in Toronto, as it is in many American and European cities. Cycling is up %83 percent in London since 2000. In an age of global warming and traffic congestion, this is to be celebrated. Personally, I'm proud of Miller showing an open mind on this.
I am glad to hear that your concerns are being met but I would like to know much is being spent on drivers and where is it being spent. Drivers are licenced and for this privilege we pay a two licencing fees, one to the province and one to the city, we pay massive taxes when we purchase gas, when we "break" the law when driving and are caught we pay hefty fines, when was the last time a cyclist was fined for riding on the sidewalk, going the wrong way on a one way street, making illegal turns, etc. and I could go on and on but there is little point......cyclists are entitled to share the roads and sidewalks.
I share your concern- cyclists who ignore the rules of the road, they are being jerks. Only kids are legally allowed to ride bikes on the sidewalk, adults must share the road with cars.
There are lots of bad cyclists, and plenty of bad drivers.
As regards cost of driving, so-called "private transportation" is hugely subsidized, it's a hangover from the 50's-60's when we were "paving the way to a new tomorrow."
One of the most competent analytical discussions of this issue from an American perspective is provided by Dr. Vukan R. Vuchic in his book Transportation for Livable Cities (Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers, New Brunswick, NJ, 1999, pp. 67ff). Vuchic notes that the claim that highway users "pay their way" stems from the concept of the Highway Trust Fund, whose revenues are derived from taxes on motor fuels and other motor vehicle products. However, noted Vuchic, this fund fails to cover many important motor vehicle system costs, "such as highway maintenance, ambulence services, traffic regulation, and parking."
The US Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), provides estimates of "pure" subsidies to automobile and truck users in the USA ranging from as low as $300 billion to as high as $935 billion annually – nearly a trillion dollars a year (and that was in 1994)!
"Thus," writes Vuchic, "the claim that car users pay their costs is inaccurate. Actually, highway user taxes defray only part of the country's total highway transportation costs. Most car trips are subsidized." Vuchic further notes that a vast amount of heavy, hidden private subsidies actually exceed the total combined government and private subsidies "to all other modes ... combined."
Vuchic summarizes the situation by observing that the 1994 OTA analysis (noted above)
... estimates that car drivers pay about 60 percent of the total cost of their travel. The remaining 40 percent consists of costs of highway construction, maintenance and control (traditionally subsidized by all three levels of government), "free" parking (subsidized by employers, store owners, schools, federal tax laws, and so on), and various social and environmental costs absorbed by society.
Very impressive response and even though the study if 15 years old the author brings up some valid points and they probably have some validity in this country but like always there is only one taxpayer........
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