If Services Need To Be Cut Then Cut Them....

...and this might be the impetus that will get those effected to get off their fat asses and get active in municipal and provincial elections, get them off their fat asses and storm Queens Park demanding more funding, get off their fat asses and get on the backs of city councilors, especially Giambonor, and demand more effective use of city funds, etc.

Transit's folly

Adam Giambrone wastes cash while TTC flounders

By JOE WARMINGTON

"I am not prepared to cut service."

-- TTC Chairman Adam Giambrone

Since we can't touch the $100,000-a-year token-taker, perhaps we can start with cutting Councillor Adam Giambrone's new live TV show!

Or do you count that new show on an actual moving, albeit chartered, streetcar on CP24 Thursday nights as part of the TTC's wonderful service?

At a time when there is a financial crisis on the TTC, we have a wannabe mayor playing around with our equipment for his personal gain and political ambition.

Perhaps Councillor Howard Moscoe can do a show from a taxi next? Or Councillor Pam McConnell from a homeless shelter!

This is nothing but another popcorn machine or bunny suit expense from council.

It's embarrassing to constantly nail the public but take care of your own massive egos and entitlement.

It's amazing what this cash-strapped city does have money for! I put in a request to TTC communications director Brad Ross on the cost of Giambrone's promotion tour.

"I don't have a precise cost," the always professional Ross e-mails back. "It's staff time only -- operator, supervisor, special constables. So, really, not that much ... the value, however, is the ability our customers will have in communicating with the chair and the TTC."

Yeah, that's a priority for using our money. I wrote him back "at a time when the TTC is talking increased fares I see it as a disgraceful waste of money and resources to help promote one person who has ambition to be mayor."

That streetcar belongs to us. Those rails it rolls along also belong to us -- as does the title chairman of the TTC. Why we keep people who are no good at their positions in these jobs amazes me. If you were a CEO and brought a $60-to-$100-million operating shortfall to your board would you get to keep your job?

It also amazes me how it's the people who created the mess who are telling us how we are going to have to pay to clean it up? For example, on the agenda for an upcoming government management committee meeting, the treasurer recommends "new administrative fees," to "generate an estimated $1.95 million." It then says "effective Jan. 1, 2010, an administrative fee be charged for every new property tax account created that is added to the tax roll for taxation purposes, with the fee to be set at $50 per property tax account created."

So it's a tax to set up a tax account! Somebody call Chief Blair!

But wait, there is more. If you need your prior year's tax receipt, it will go from $5 to $16. There are a bunch of other nasty charges including raising the cost of paying a parking ticket online or on the phone by "$1.50 to $2 per transaction."

"It's crazy," says Councillor Case Ootes, who says he is looking for support to slow down these below-the-belt tax grabs. "We have to wait and see after the budget process what the whole story is before we start increasing fares or cutting. By doing that now, they are jumping the queue."

Certainly before they start ahitting the riders who can't rent their own streetcar to help become more successful perhaps there should be some trimming inside the TTC first.

If the riders have to take a hit, so should Giambrone. And not just the phony TV show.

You want to ding the average person with 25 cents a ride, you have to cut your next planned, swanky transit convention junket! Last year, it was in San Francisco. Next February's APTA meeting is in much warmer San Antonio, Texas.

At a time when the organization you chair is drowning, you can't very well justify that trip, Adam. And we will check your $50,000 office expense account for a suntan lotion receipt!

Increasing the costs of ridership before we even know the actual shortfall are decisions coming from the same bright minds who brought you the $9-million bike racks on TTC buses. "I have only seen one bus with a bike on it," says Ootes.

It's one more than I have seen.

"If they wasted $9-million on that, I wonder what else they wasted?" says Ootes.

Perhaps somebody can ask Giambrone while on one of his taxpayer-subsidized televised streetcar rides!

JOE.WARMINGTON@SUNMEDIA.CA