Without any clear idea of how $181 million was spent during the past four years on the strategy’s 17 recommendations — and whether it was money well spent — Tory and his committee of lemmings unanimously approved another four-year plan.
Led by the late councillor Pam McConnell, the poverty reduction initiative was approved in 2015 to make Toronto a city “with opportunity for all” by 2035.
To make matters worse, the new four-year plan presented had no dollar figures attached — leading Councillor Paul Ainslie to meekly and almost apologetically ask whether the bureaucrats could spell out what is being spent in each area and what they’re preparing to spend on the next phase of the plan.
That led city manager Chris Murray to respond rather curtly: “We can certainly provide you with that.”
Well, uh yes, that would be nice. Perhaps that should have been done before the new plan was even put forward.
The only thing we heard was that 67% of the initial actions have been completed, a number are ongoing and new ones are being proposed.
What has been completed is a mystery, along with the cost of each.
Not that any councillor bothered to ask.
For example in the city report, the strategy’s “flagship initiative” is touted as the Transit Fare Equity program which provides 21%-33% TTC discounts to low-income residents. The report says up to 84,000 residents are eligible for this discount–so far.
But there is no mention whatsoever of revenue foregone by this initiative.
Yet why should city officials be concerned when the TTC appears happy to allow fare evasion to continue throughout the system with the faulty Presto card.
The virtue signallers on the executive committee seemed to be more enthralled with the idea that the new plan will include Indigenous-led Poverty Reduction proposals and that gender expression and gender equity will be recognized.
Still, the plan was so amateurish, so open-ended, and so devoid of financial details (let alone breakdowns), the bureaucrats who prepared it and the city manager who enabled it would never last in the private sector if they tried to slip something like this through.
For example, one proposal is to “expand the availability of free or low-cost, high-quality programs for low-income children and youth.” Another is to apply “equity standards to TTC fare structure and policies.”
Could these proposals possibly be vaguer or less open to interpretation?
I suspect this will end up being a boondoggle and taxpayers will never ever know whether value for money was received for the $181-million already doled out or countless other millions of dollars that are to be spent in the next four years.
But this, I suppose, is what substitutes for management at City Hall these days.
Management by Humanity instead of Management by Objectives as Tory lectured me when I brought up the $10-million price tag of the Runnymede shelter the other day.
”It (the shelter) is an investment in the humanity of this city … to help people build themselves back up,” he told me last Thursday.
And at that executive committee meeting not only did Tory seem satisfied to hear that 67% of the actions were completed but he reminded everyone that the $181 million will repeat itself over the next four years.
“These are not time-limited programs,” he proudly declared.
I guess the message is that one is inhumane to dare question what the heck they’re actually doing or to expect accountability from virtue-signalling city programs.
What a lousy way to run City Hall.
Please share this
No comments:
Post a Comment