TORONTO - Penny-pinching Mayor Rob Ford was fine with hundreds of frontline Toronto Police officers taking home more than $100,000 last year but lashed out at spokesman Mark Pugash.
Nearly 40% of Toronto Police officers and civilian employees who work for the force made the annual “Sunshine List” for 2013, including Pugash, who made it to the top 10 earners with a salary of $178,246 and $10,664 in taxable benefits.
“When you look at Mr. Pugash making $178,000 as a communications director — that’s pretty shocking,” Ford said Friday. “But I support our frontline officers — they work hard, they deserve the money.”
The mayor’s 2014 annual salary is $177,499 — almost equal to what Pugash makes.
According to agenda documents published by the Toronto Police Services Board that will be discussed at its board meeting next Thursday, 2,983 employees out of 8,000 — about 37.2% — of the force’s workers earned more than $100,000 last year.
Pugash didn’t fire back at Ford for the slag.
“I don’t respond to personal attacks,” Pugash told the Sun.
Pugash said in an earlier interview before Ford made his comments that while “people are entitled to their reaction” to the list, the high number of people who break the $100,000 mark is due to one thing — the service’s collective agreement with its unions.
“Salaries and benefits are determined by a collective agreement and we’re not a party to that collective agreement,” said Pugash, noting the negotiation lies between the Toronto Police Services Board and the Toronto Police Association.
“What I can tell you is 90% of our budget is salaries and benefits — the 10% where we have direct control, we’ve kept increases (to premium pay) to less than 1% for the last 10 years.”
However, Councillor Mike Del Grande, speaking as an elected politician and not as a member of the Toronto Police Services Board, called the list of lucrative salaries “unsustainable.”
“Toronto has the highest pay-duty amount anywhere in Canada,” he said. “It’s part of the inbred culture that it seems anytime you do anything, you have to have police for it and you really don’t. We have to instill a culture with citizens and with the city that you don’t need police for everything.”
Among the Sunshine earners, Chief Bill Blair topped the list of the highest-paid at roughly $334,000 with an extra $3,360 in taxable benefits.
Chief administrative officer Tony Veneziano came in second place with $240,879 and more than $14,000 in benefits with Deputy Chief Peter Sloly following him at about $240,873 and $3,400 in benefits.
The base salary for a Toronto constable ranges from $89,000 to $97,000 a year.
Plainclothes officers make between $95,000 and $103,000.
There were 253 detective-staff sergeants and 912 detective-sergeants who all have base salaries that are above $100,000.
Eight parking enforcement officers also made it on to this year’s list, including Jagmohan Singh Notay, $131,096 with taxable benefits of $647; Lalmann Lall, $119,832 with $647 in taxable benefits; and Vijey Akumar Alaguras, $110,753 with $647 in taxable benefits.
“The city pays for overtime for parking enforcement officers,” Pugash said. “For every $1 in overtime the city pays to a parking enforcement that officer generates $7 in revenue. We don’t get any of that revenue. But the city clearly has an interest in revenue, so they pay for the overtime.”
This is roughly 200 fewer names on this list than in 2012, which the board attributes to retiring officers.
“I think we’ve done very well,” said the police services board’s Dhun Noria, who is acting chairman while Alok Mukherjee is at a conference in Vancouver. “You keep seeing the numbers go down and that in itself is very good.”
Toronto Police Association President Mike McCormack defended his union members, calling the Sunshine List, “not worth the paper it’s printed on.”
“It was created in (around) 1995, creating a benchmark of $100,000 that has never been indexed,” he said. “If it were indexed, it would be $140,000 and change and I’d have 169 people on the list. Police officers get a fair compensation package that is in line with other ‘blue collars,’ like carpenters and plumbers. We do a difficult job.”
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A Toronto associate professor in economics said the “Sunshine List” is misleading in that it implies those who make $100,000 are rich.
Peter Dungan, who teaches at the University of Toronto, said with a 2% compounded inflation rate, $100,000 in 1996 – when the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act came in place – would be equivalent to around $141,705 in 2014.
The threshold is certainly above the median income of $40,000 or $50,000, Dungan said Friday.
“But it’s not riches,” he said. “There are a lot of people in a lot of sectors that make roughly $100,000 or a bit more. It doesn’t put you in the 1%, let’s put it that way.”
The professor said the government should take into account and update the Sunshine List number annually to better accurately reflect variables, such as cost of living, especially in expensive cities such as Toronto, and how strong the dollar performs.
“It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” he said. “There’s no good reason from an economist’s viewpoint to publish (the list), especially to do it for one sector and not another — government vs. non-government. One of the dangers of this list is governments will be inhibited from paying higher salaries to people they’d like to hire because of their talent that you may be starving the public sector of talent.”
The province, however, has no plans to adjust the $100,000 figure.
“Disclosure of public sector salaries for those earning over $100,000 is part of the government’s commitment to being accountable, open, and transparent,” said Ministry of Finance spokesman Scott Blodgett. “The government has no plan to change the threshold.”
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Friday, March 7, 2014
Toronto Councillor Adam Vaughan eyes cricket stadium possibility
Councillor Adam Vaughan said he wants a national cricket stadium in Toronto's downtown.
Vaughan's idea comes as City Hall prepares to debate the expansion of BMO Field to add 10,000 seats and possibly accommodate football.
"While everyone is focused on football and soccer and the synergies that might arrive at BMO Field courtesy of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, what I hear and what I've been working towards, what I'm focused on is cricket," Vaughan said Friday. "No one is talking about that but we're looking to promote a national cricket stadium."
Vaughan said cricket is an "emerging market" in this part of the world.
"There some real opportunities here to expand our sports capacity," he said.
The Trinity-Spadina (Ward 20) councillor said he's not opposed to the BMO Field expansion but it is "only one of several opportunities to expand sports capacity in the city."
"We're looking at several different opportunities (for location)," Vaughan said about the cricket stadium. "One of the challenges we have is the limited amount of green space and the limited amount of flat space in the downtown core. The Port Lands is an opportunity, we've been looking at Coronation Park as a possibility and we've been looking at sites at Ontario Place as well. We think there is a real opportunity here."
Vaughan argued that putting the cricket stadium downtown made sense because of the existing transit infrastructure.
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Thursday, March 6, 2014
Toronto turns 180
Kelly was joined by a handful of councillors to blow out the candles on the cake in the City Hall rotunda as part of a brief ceremony marking the milestone — York was incorporated as a town on March 6, 1834.
“This is a magnificent city and the people who founded it, I’m sure, wouldn’t have expected to see the magnificent metropolis that now sits beside Lake Ontario,” Kelly said.
“I’m glad that they planted the seeds here in Toronto. I think the virtues of hard work and fair play have guided us all throughout our various manifestations and I’m delighted that we’ve maintained that spirit while we’ve changed the physical look of the city.”
The deputy mayor’s office organized the event quickly when they realized nothing had been planned to mark the milestone. An e-mailed invitation went out from the deputy mayor’s office to the mayor, councillors and staff around 45 minutes before the event.
Kelly confirmed he’ll be paying for the cake out of his own pocket and won’t be billing his office budget.
“It didn’t cost the taxpayers any money at all,” he said.
Asked why Mayor Rob Ford wasn’t at the event, Kelly shrugged.
“I understand he is in Etobicoke,” Kelly said.
“We invited everyone that was present at City Hall.”
Ford spent most of Thursday touring two private apartment buildings in Etobicoke.
Council voted last month to designate March 6 as City of Toronto Day.
The City of Toronto Day proclamation posted Thursday had to be revised because it described the city as a country.
A city spokesman admitted the blunder and promised to have it fixed.
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Wednesday, March 5, 2014
TDSB trustees want city to enforce nudity laws at Pride parade
Sam Sotiropoulos, trustee for Ward 20, has drafted a motion asking for TDSB chair Chris Bolton to “immediately write a letter” to Mayor Rob Ford and Toronto city council “asking them to clarify whether or not the public nudity law of Canada will be upheld and enforced at future Pride events in which the TDSB participates.”
Seconded by trustees Irene Atkinson and John Hastings, the motion is expected at a school board meeting Wednesday evening.
Atkinson said the intent of the motion is “to hopefully stop full nudity at the Pride parade.”
“It happens,” she said. “I've got a photograph of a man, full-frontal nudity.”
While she's attended Pride in the past, she has not seen "full nudity” she said.
“I guess people who are concerned about full nudity running around in the streets will vote in favour of it,” Atkinson said. “Those who don't care will vote against it. As simple as that.”
Considering the TDSB has a float in this year's parade, Pride Toronto board co-chair Sean Hillier said he's a “tad disappointed” with the motion.
“I don't know what the intents behind this motion are,” Hillier said. “I would hope it's coming from a place that isn't homophobic, subtle or otherwise.”
In the past the parade has seen nude attendees, he said, but they are a “very small minority of the 1.22 million that attend our festival.”
“We do not police our events in terms of nudity but we do work very closely with the Toronto Police Service to ensure that everybody feels safe and welcome at the event itself,” Hillier said.
The festival – scheduled for June 20-29 - has spaces for families “where we do makeup and costumes and we have performers and entertainers for children,” he said.
As far as he knows, the trustees never contacted the organization directly.
“To my knowledge, TDSB hasn't reached out to us to express concern,” Hillier said.
The school board meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. tonight.
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Toronto City Hall abuzz at OPP role in Project Brazen
TORONTO - Friends and foes of Mayor Rob Ford were buzzing Wednesday with news the OPP was now overseeing Project Brazen 2.
Councillor Adam Vaughan — a former member of the Toronto Police Services Board — said the change announced by Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair on Wednesday was a sign that the investigation is advancing.
“I guess the work is getting closer and closer to the mayor’s office,” Vaughan said. “It just underscores how serious these allegations are and having the OPP come in, I guess, just helps us make sure we have confidence that the police work is police work.
“Hopefully we’ll get some answers.”
Vaughan said it is clear “the situation is getting more and more serious.”
“The investigation is going deeper and deeper into the relationship between the Fords and people who may or may not have committed illegal acts,” Vaughan said.
Councillor Doug Ford — who has been repeatedly critical of Blair — said he was “happy” with the news that the OPP will be overseeing Brazen 2.
“It won’t be so political, maybe,” Ford said.
Councillor Karen Stintz — who is running for mayor — said she trusts Blair’s “judgment on the matter.”
“I don’t know anything more than what I read in the newspaper,” Stintz said on the investigation.
“I trust the process will unfold as it should.”
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Councillor Adam Vaughan — a former member of the Toronto Police Services Board — said the change announced by Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair on Wednesday was a sign that the investigation is advancing.
“I guess the work is getting closer and closer to the mayor’s office,” Vaughan said. “It just underscores how serious these allegations are and having the OPP come in, I guess, just helps us make sure we have confidence that the police work is police work.
“Hopefully we’ll get some answers.”
Vaughan said it is clear “the situation is getting more and more serious.”
“The investigation is going deeper and deeper into the relationship between the Fords and people who may or may not have committed illegal acts,” Vaughan said.
Councillor Doug Ford — who has been repeatedly critical of Blair — said he was “happy” with the news that the OPP will be overseeing Brazen 2.
“It won’t be so political, maybe,” Ford said.
Councillor Karen Stintz — who is running for mayor — said she trusts Blair’s “judgment on the matter.”
“I don’t know anything more than what I read in the newspaper,” Stintz said on the investigation.
“I trust the process will unfold as it should.”
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Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Toronto's Gardiner Expressway fate will wait for 2015
TORONTO - The fate of the east end of the Gardiner Expressway will remain up in the air until after the 2014 election.
Councillors on the public works committee voted 4-1 to send the city report — which recommends tearing down of the elevated highway east of Jarvis St. — back to bureaucrats until February 2015.
Voters will select members of the next city council on Oct. 27.
Councillor John Parker pushed for the referral so staff could study an additional option that would maintain a link between the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway while still opening up land for development.
“It’s in staff’s hands now,” Parker said after the vote.
He denied he was trying to push back the debate due to the looming election.
“It’s a reflection of the magnitude of the decision that we are facing and the issues that emerged in the course of that process,” Parker said. “There are some issues that bear closer examination.”
City officials said the delay until next year was manageable but warned that it is costing millions of dollars each year to maintain part of an expressway that council may eventually decide to remove.
Public works chairman Denzil Minnan-Wong was the lone vote against referring the issue back to staff. Minnan-Wong argued removing the Gardiner would make traffic gridlock worse.
He wanted to send the issue on to council for a decision.
“Since when do we force people out of cars? How about giving them choices?” he said. “Let them stay in their car and let them drive to work. Let them take their families downtown and let them go shopping. How about that?”
Councillor Karen Stintz floated the idea of having staff study the hybrid option when she launched her mayoral campaign last week.
“We still have time to look for the right solution and I believe this is the right solution,” Stintz said Tuesday.
Before the vote, Councillor Gord Perks predicted the only conclusion to come to will be that keeping the Gardiner up doesn’t make sense for the future.
“It should be blindingly obvious that building elevated expressways or maintaining elevated expressways is a fool’s errand,” Perks said. “There is no way any sane person would support continuing to have an elevated expressway in the eastern end of the city.”
Mayor Rob Ford repeated Tuesday he wants to keep the highway up no matter what.
“We’ve got to keep the Gardiner ... it is essential we keep that Gardiner,” Ford said.
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Councillors on the public works committee voted 4-1 to send the city report — which recommends tearing down of the elevated highway east of Jarvis St. — back to bureaucrats until February 2015.
Voters will select members of the next city council on Oct. 27.
Councillor John Parker pushed for the referral so staff could study an additional option that would maintain a link between the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway while still opening up land for development.
“It’s in staff’s hands now,” Parker said after the vote.
He denied he was trying to push back the debate due to the looming election.
“It’s a reflection of the magnitude of the decision that we are facing and the issues that emerged in the course of that process,” Parker said. “There are some issues that bear closer examination.”
City officials said the delay until next year was manageable but warned that it is costing millions of dollars each year to maintain part of an expressway that council may eventually decide to remove.
Public works chairman Denzil Minnan-Wong was the lone vote against referring the issue back to staff. Minnan-Wong argued removing the Gardiner would make traffic gridlock worse.
He wanted to send the issue on to council for a decision.
“Since when do we force people out of cars? How about giving them choices?” he said. “Let them stay in their car and let them drive to work. Let them take their families downtown and let them go shopping. How about that?”
Councillor Karen Stintz floated the idea of having staff study the hybrid option when she launched her mayoral campaign last week.
“We still have time to look for the right solution and I believe this is the right solution,” Stintz said Tuesday.
Before the vote, Councillor Gord Perks predicted the only conclusion to come to will be that keeping the Gardiner up doesn’t make sense for the future.
“It should be blindingly obvious that building elevated expressways or maintaining elevated expressways is a fool’s errand,” Perks said. “There is no way any sane person would support continuing to have an elevated expressway in the eastern end of the city.”
Mayor Rob Ford repeated Tuesday he wants to keep the highway up no matter what.
“We’ve got to keep the Gardiner ... it is essential we keep that Gardiner,” Ford said.
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Monday, March 3, 2014
Rob Ford a bad mayor? Oh there are worse
TORONTO - Been away in N’Awlins, where the ex-mayor faces 20 years for bribery, fraud, money laundering and conspiracy.
What a joy to be home, where the mayor has done nothing wrong.
In fact, I’m so relieved, I brought back John Tory and Karen Stintz voodoo dolls for Robbie to play with, complete with pins.
Remember Ray Nagin? The heroic mayor of New Orleans? In the chaos after Hurricane Katrina, he pleaded for George W. Bush and the feds to “get off your asses and let’s do something.”
Ol’ Ray got off his ass, alright. He took $200,000 in cash from companies eager for reconstruction contracts, plus free holidays and even granite — four truckloads — for his family countertop firm, Stone Age.
Nagin also billed taxpayers for birthday dinners and such and generally sucked every teat he could find in a city where teats are a tradition, where the former congressman “Dollar” Bill Jefferson is serving 13 years for bribery.
On Feb. 12, a federal jury found Nagin guilty, and he now awaits sentencing. Nagin, 57, a Democrat, could get two decades in prison.
Who’d you rather have as mayor? Ray Nagin or Rob Ford?
Odd that Jimmy Kimmel hasn’t invited Nagin on his show.
But a float in one of the Mardi Gras parades featured a giant, crack-puffing Ford, plus Justin Bieber and Pamela Anderson.
“An absolute masterpiece,” Times-Picayune writer Doug MacCash called the all-Canadian float, part of the Krewe d’Etate parade on Friday. Sadly, I was already homeward bound to the real thing, though I watched the earlier Krewe Barkus parade in the French Quarter, which featured a chihuahua with uncanny resemblance to Councillor Adam Vaughan.
You know you have made it as a country when Mardi Gras gives your national stars their very own float.
Funniest thing I heard down there was not about any float or the pile of beads I collected without once flashing my bosoms. No, it was word from the mayors’ meeting in Ottawa that Montreal’s boss refused even to shake Ford’s hand.
To borrow from the New Orleans phrasebook: What you say!!??
That’s the pot in the glass house throwing stones at the kettle. Corruption wise, Montreal is New Orleans North.
I’ve taken shots at Ford for months — especially for blowing a chance to prick City Hall’s overinflated balloon.
But visiting Ray Nagin’s town puts it in perspective: Ford has done nothing wrong. Seriously. He has been charged with no crime. Corruption is a crime. There is no such thing as first-degree conniption. No one ever gets busted for saying they tried crack during a drunken stupor or have plenty of home-cooking.
Ford has fudged facts — though never under oath, like Bill Clinton, for instance — but who the hell hasn’t? Most of the folks braying at him are the usual suspects on the left who love spending other people’s money — the very folks Ford vowed to curb when we made him mayor.
Equally hilarious is the indignation online and at our City Hall over Ford’s pilgrimage to Hollywood. Embarrassing, they say.
Oh, pull the stake out of your hiney. He’s on his own dime. So Kimmel is poking fun at him. Big whoop. You and our city aren’t big enough to take a little razzing?
I bet it’s even great for the tourist trade. “Stella! Hey, Stella! Hell with N’Awlins, let’s party up in Toronto this summer!”
Ford is running for re-election and he’s going to turn down a shot at Jimmy Kimmel Live? Foes like Tory, Stintz and Denzil Minnan-Wong can only drool over five minutes on Kimmel.
Which brings me back to those voodoo dolls. I got them at a shop founded by the late, great Voodoo Charlie, with instructions to attach a bit of hair or clothing belonging to whomever it is you wish to stick with a pin.
I will lend them to Ford when he gets back from Kimmel. I’ll suggest he skip trying to collect hair or clothing. I don’t know about Tory, but I hear Stintz has a hard right hook. Luckily, Voodoo Charlie’s people say a small photo stuck on the doll will suffice.
About time Ford tried to pin something on somebody else for a change.
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What a joy to be home, where the mayor has done nothing wrong.
In fact, I’m so relieved, I brought back John Tory and Karen Stintz voodoo dolls for Robbie to play with, complete with pins.
Remember Ray Nagin? The heroic mayor of New Orleans? In the chaos after Hurricane Katrina, he pleaded for George W. Bush and the feds to “get off your asses and let’s do something.”
Ol’ Ray got off his ass, alright. He took $200,000 in cash from companies eager for reconstruction contracts, plus free holidays and even granite — four truckloads — for his family countertop firm, Stone Age.
Nagin also billed taxpayers for birthday dinners and such and generally sucked every teat he could find in a city where teats are a tradition, where the former congressman “Dollar” Bill Jefferson is serving 13 years for bribery.
On Feb. 12, a federal jury found Nagin guilty, and he now awaits sentencing. Nagin, 57, a Democrat, could get two decades in prison.
Who’d you rather have as mayor? Ray Nagin or Rob Ford?
Odd that Jimmy Kimmel hasn’t invited Nagin on his show.
But a float in one of the Mardi Gras parades featured a giant, crack-puffing Ford, plus Justin Bieber and Pamela Anderson.
“An absolute masterpiece,” Times-Picayune writer Doug MacCash called the all-Canadian float, part of the Krewe d’Etate parade on Friday. Sadly, I was already homeward bound to the real thing, though I watched the earlier Krewe Barkus parade in the French Quarter, which featured a chihuahua with uncanny resemblance to Councillor Adam Vaughan.
You know you have made it as a country when Mardi Gras gives your national stars their very own float.
Funniest thing I heard down there was not about any float or the pile of beads I collected without once flashing my bosoms. No, it was word from the mayors’ meeting in Ottawa that Montreal’s boss refused even to shake Ford’s hand.
To borrow from the New Orleans phrasebook: What you say!!??
That’s the pot in the glass house throwing stones at the kettle. Corruption wise, Montreal is New Orleans North.
I’ve taken shots at Ford for months — especially for blowing a chance to prick City Hall’s overinflated balloon.
But visiting Ray Nagin’s town puts it in perspective: Ford has done nothing wrong. Seriously. He has been charged with no crime. Corruption is a crime. There is no such thing as first-degree conniption. No one ever gets busted for saying they tried crack during a drunken stupor or have plenty of home-cooking.
Ford has fudged facts — though never under oath, like Bill Clinton, for instance — but who the hell hasn’t? Most of the folks braying at him are the usual suspects on the left who love spending other people’s money — the very folks Ford vowed to curb when we made him mayor.
Equally hilarious is the indignation online and at our City Hall over Ford’s pilgrimage to Hollywood. Embarrassing, they say.
Oh, pull the stake out of your hiney. He’s on his own dime. So Kimmel is poking fun at him. Big whoop. You and our city aren’t big enough to take a little razzing?
I bet it’s even great for the tourist trade. “Stella! Hey, Stella! Hell with N’Awlins, let’s party up in Toronto this summer!”
Ford is running for re-election and he’s going to turn down a shot at Jimmy Kimmel Live? Foes like Tory, Stintz and Denzil Minnan-Wong can only drool over five minutes on Kimmel.
Which brings me back to those voodoo dolls. I got them at a shop founded by the late, great Voodoo Charlie, with instructions to attach a bit of hair or clothing belonging to whomever it is you wish to stick with a pin.
I will lend them to Ford when he gets back from Kimmel. I’ll suggest he skip trying to collect hair or clothing. I don’t know about Tory, but I hear Stintz has a hard right hook. Luckily, Voodoo Charlie’s people say a small photo stuck on the doll will suffice.
About time Ford tried to pin something on somebody else for a change.
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'Positive elements' to Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's infamy
TORONTO - Is Mayor Rob Ford’s crack-smoking infamy hurting the city on the world stage?
Councillor Michael Thompson — head of the city’s economic development committee — said Monday that he’s trying to keep selling the city globally despite the Ford scandal and trying to focus on any positives that may come out of the controversy.
“We want to turn this dime on its head in order to take from this the positive elements and attributes,” Thompson said. “They are hard to find, I know.
“There is nothing we can actually do about where we are ... how do we then transform this process in a way that helps us to tell our story?”
Ford gained international fame late last year after admitting to smoking crack cocaine while in a “drunken stupor.” The aftermath of the mayor’s admission has put the spotlight on Toronto for better or for worse and that global frenzy has been renewed given Ford’s trip to Hollywood this past weekend and his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Monday night.
But Thompson said despite the negative aspect of the attention, there are “positive elements.
“People are looking and paying attention to Toronto — that’s a positive thing although it has come from the negative aspects as it relates to the mayor,” he said.
He admitted he was “aghast” when he read news on the weekend that a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans on Friday night included a Rob Ford float complete with a statue of the mayor blowing smoke from a crack pipe.
“That’s not what you want to have promoting as Toronto’s essence or as the key attributes for our city but it is what it is,” Thompson said. “I have to work beyond that ... I’m not going to put my head in the sand and cry myself to sleep, I’m going to basically dust off all that I need to dust off and find a way to promote our city, talk positively about our city.”
Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly described Ford as having “a celebrity-ness that has transcended his office” and worried it could hurt investment in the city.
“You know what I’m picking up for the first time in the last few weeks is a feeling in the business community that this may begin to impact on the decisions that people make about where they place their money,” Kelly said. “I hope that that is not the case.”
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Councillor Michael Thompson — head of the city’s economic development committee — said Monday that he’s trying to keep selling the city globally despite the Ford scandal and trying to focus on any positives that may come out of the controversy.
“We want to turn this dime on its head in order to take from this the positive elements and attributes,” Thompson said. “They are hard to find, I know.
“There is nothing we can actually do about where we are ... how do we then transform this process in a way that helps us to tell our story?”
Ford gained international fame late last year after admitting to smoking crack cocaine while in a “drunken stupor.” The aftermath of the mayor’s admission has put the spotlight on Toronto for better or for worse and that global frenzy has been renewed given Ford’s trip to Hollywood this past weekend and his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Monday night.
But Thompson said despite the negative aspect of the attention, there are “positive elements.
“People are looking and paying attention to Toronto — that’s a positive thing although it has come from the negative aspects as it relates to the mayor,” he said.
He admitted he was “aghast” when he read news on the weekend that a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans on Friday night included a Rob Ford float complete with a statue of the mayor blowing smoke from a crack pipe.
“That’s not what you want to have promoting as Toronto’s essence or as the key attributes for our city but it is what it is,” Thompson said. “I have to work beyond that ... I’m not going to put my head in the sand and cry myself to sleep, I’m going to basically dust off all that I need to dust off and find a way to promote our city, talk positively about our city.”
Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly described Ford as having “a celebrity-ness that has transcended his office” and worried it could hurt investment in the city.
“You know what I’m picking up for the first time in the last few weeks is a feeling in the business community that this may begin to impact on the decisions that people make about where they place their money,” Kelly said. “I hope that that is not the case.”
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Sunday, March 2, 2014
Eastern Gardiner Expressway tear down a mistake
On Tuesday, the city’s public works committee will review yet another plan, this one initiated by the city’s bureaucrats, to tear down the 2.4-kilometre eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway, from Jarvis St. to Logan Ave, and replace it with an eight-lane stretch of Lake Shore Blvd.
“It should look a little like University Ave. and a little like Lake Shore Blvd. and it would make use of contemporary urban design,” says David Stonehouse, director with the city’s Waterfront Secretariat. “It would have street trees, sidewalks, bicycle trails and there will be new mixed use commercial residential development ... (which) would face the new Lake Shore Blvd.”
The cost of the removal is calculated at $417-million compared to the $230-million set aside in the city’s current 10-year capital plan to rehabilitate that stretch of the Gardiner, starting in 2020.
The report notes a removal of the eastern portion will increase the Gardiner’s capital repair program over the next 13 years to a “preliminary estimate” of $850-million compared to the previous calculation of $663-million.
But the report also claims that the removal of that stretch will allow the city to sell $80-million to $90-million worth of land ripe for 260,000 square metres of development.
And so here we go again — pie-in-the-sky predictions premised on assumptions that are at best, a stretch.
It’s certainly far from the first time this recipe for traffic chaos has been on the radar. It first gathered steam in 2008 when Waterfront Toronto officials realized it was far too expensive to take down the entire elevated portion of the Gardiner east of Spadina Ave. as they’d hoped in a $1-million report Miller kept under wraps until after the 2006 election.
With Miller’s blessing, a $7.7-million Environmental Assessment (EA) was commenced in 2009 to look at options for the eastern stretch of the expressway.
In late 2010, after $3-million had been spent on the terms of reference, the environmental assessment was quietly put on hold by Waterfront Toronto officials, who likely recognized that they’d get nowhere with Mayor Rob Ford.
In January 2013, then-budget chief Mike Del Grande agreed to revive the study when the subject of the more than $500-million in long overdue capital repairs needed to rehabilitate the Gardiner over 10 years became a lightning rod at budget time.
The problem was the Gardiner had been starved of capital repairs during Miller’s entire term.
In 2007, when chunks of concrete were tumbling from the Gardiner, only $1.3-million was spent to repair the entire expressway. During Miller’s seven years in office, a paltry $36.5-million was spent on repairs compared to $44-million during Rob Ford’s first three years in office.
“It was almost wilful neglect (during the David Miller years) to put it (the Gardiner) in a position of saying you need to take it down,” says Del Grande, noting the lefties went “nuts” when he tried to put enough money back in the budget to fix it.
The grand vision that a variety of transit initiatives would be put in place to compensate for the reduced road capacity remained just that — a grand vision.
Former TTC chairman Adam Giambrone waxed poetic in 2008 about all the Transit City light-rail routes that would be up and running by the time the eastern stretch of the Gardiner was dismantled.
No lines were ever built, or even started.
Yet, the city report that goes before public works committee on Tuesday includes calculations of traffic congestion and travel time increases — resulting from the removal of the Gardiner’s eastern leg — which are predicated on several transit improvements being in place. Those projects are a downtown relief subway line, the Waterfront East LRT, the Cherry St. LRT south of King St. East and Go Transit improvements.
“If unsupported by transit service, all four environmental assessment options (including removal) would place additional pressure ... on the road network, especially for automobile trips on the Don Valley Parkway to the Port Lands,” the report says.
Even if such transit were in place — and there’s no hope of that happening in the near future — the report says travel times will increase more with the removal of the eastern leg of the Gardiner than any other option for that stretch of highway.
In fact, travel times for a trip from Victoria Park and Finch Aves. to Union Station or from Don Mills Rd. and Eglinton to Union Station are projected to increase by as much as 15 minutes per trip in 2031 over the time it took to drive those distances in 2012.
The report really tries to gloss over the fact that if the eastern Gardiner was removed, 12 lanes of traffic (six on Lake Shore Blvd. E. and six on the Gardiner) would be squeezed into a mere eight lanes.
According to the figures presented in the environmental assessment and replicated in the city report, each Gardiner lane has a capacity of 1,800 vehicles per hour compared to a capacity of 800 for each Lake Shore Blvd lane.
In the environmental assessment study area, the Gardiner’s six lanes have a traffic volume of about 110,000 vehicles per day compared to the Lake Shore’s six lanes, which carry about 13,000 cars per day.
But evidently the city’s bureaucrats don’t seem to be concerned about where those cars will go due to that reduced capacity.
In their 37-page report, city officials cite consultant’s research that claims travellers “adapt” to any reduction in road capacity and a significant share of vehicles simply “evaporate” from the road network, leading to “no observable negative impacts.”
Del Grande says he told the city bureaucrats years ago when the idea of removing the Gardiner first came up that they should shut down the entire expressway for a weekend to get a better measurement of the “chaos it would cause” and the “reaction of the public.”
Council’s left-wing, predictably, didn’t like that idea.
Del Grande says he has no doubt condos will be built on the lands available if the eastern Gardiner is removed, adding that the excuses about the major arterial being a “barrier” to the Waterfront don’t wash with him.
In fact, the report notes First Gulf is already considering building up to 10-million square feet of office and retail space on the old Unilever site at the corner of Lake Shore Blvd. and the DVP.
Public works committee chairman Denzil Minnan-Wong, who is vociferously against the eastern Gardiner take down, says there are a lot of developers who are just waiting for it to come down “for their own financial gain.”
In response to questioning, Kyle Knoeck, manager of community planning the city’s Toronto and East York District, said the plan for that area does not specify development density but that new development will be subject to “limits in height, density and built form.”
Yes, just like the limits imposed on the flurry of condos built on the western end of Queen’s Quay!
Other than perhaps the developers who stand to gain from the eastern Gardiner’s demise and the leftists, there is plenty of opposition to the city’s proposal.
Grant Humes, Executive director of the Toronto Financial District BIA, said given the congestion that already exists getting into downtown, the only viable option at this point is to maintain the Gardiner.
“It’s all about access ... to take down this piece of infrastructure when you don’t have anything to replace it defies logic,” he said, noting 200,000 people a day come into the financial district’s 15 square blocks.
Minnan-Wong has no faith in the promises of what’s to come should the eastern stretch of the Gardiner be removed.
“They say it is going to be a beautiful street where everyone is going to want to sit out at cafes and sip their lattes,” he said.
“When was the last time you saw an eight-lane street where someone wants to sit out on a bench and have a picnic?
“It’s going to fail on all counts ... There will be increased congestion and it’s not going to be a beautiful street because beautiful streets are narrow.”
THE GARDINER EXPY TIMELINE
1992: The Crombie Commission proposed the removal of entire elevated portion of Gardiner — from Exhibition Place to the highway’s eastern extremity — and to replace it with a network of tunnels and roads.
1999-2001: The 1.3-kilometre section of elevated Gardiner from Don River to Leslie St. was dismantled, leaving Lake Shore Blvd. E. to accommodate traffic.
2000: Toronto Revitalization Task Force, headed by Robert Fung, proposed taking down the remainder of elevated Gardiner.
2004: In a secret $1-million report, Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corp. (now Waterfront Toronto) recommended the creation of a 10-lane Great Street — similar to University Ave. — to replace the elevated expressway east of Spadina Ave.
2008: After cost estimates of Great Street escalated, Waterfront Toronto decided to focus on a 2.4-kilometre stretch at the eastern end of the Gardiner.
2009: City council approved a $7.8-million environmental assessment of the eastern Gardiner.
2010: The environmental assessment was put on hold after Waterfront Toronto spent $3 million to develop terms of reference for the project.
Early 2013: The dormant environmental assessment was revived.
Early 2014: City officials recommended removing the 2.4-kilometre eastern portion of Gardiner at a cost of $417 million.
MAYORAL CANDIDATES WEIGH IN:
ROB FORD: “If this plan isn’t a war on the car, I don’t know what is. The last time I checked I didn’t see people delivering a whole tonne of furniture on their shoulders riding a bike. This is going to hurt buinesses. Congestion will be 10 times worse. The Gardiner will be a complete nightmare. For them to remove this is absolutely asinine. I’m going to fight like a dog to keep it.”
DAVID SOKNACKI; “The Gardiner is an important part of city infrastructure. It is absolutely essential that the city does not choke off its prosperity in the core. I don’t support taking it down until there is replacement transit. We already have one of the slowest commute times in North American and this is going to add five to 10 minutes to the commute if it comes down.”
KAREN STINTZ: “To really reduce congestion we should consider the hybrid approach, which constructs a new elevated Expressway link to the DVP while the old one is still in use, and only tears down the old East Gardiner portion after the new link is operational. The link between the Gardiner Expressway and the DVP is never broken and we never cause that kind of traffic chaos. I think we need to look more closely at the costs and details surrounding all these proposals and choose an option that minimizes the congestion impact, while at the same time respects taxpayers.”
JOHN TORY: “I can’t support any proposal that increases traffic commute times given the importance I’ve placed on transit and traffic as part of my platform. Those concerned should go back to the drawing board and find a proposal that actually does not increase commute times. That’s the last thing we need right now.”
OLIVIA CHOW: No comment obtained. She’s still trying to decide whether to run.
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Saturday, March 1, 2014
TDSB ranks lowest among GTA school boards in annual Fraser report card
TORONTO - “Not pleased.”
That’s how Toronto District School Board chairman Chris Bolton feels about his board ranking yet again at the bottom of the heap of GTA schools, according to this year’s Fraser Institute Secondary School Report Card.
Out of a dozen school boards in the GTA, the Toronto District School Board scored 5.5 out of 10 — the only board besides a French immersion one that fell below the average of 6.0.
“I don’t think we’re pleased with the results,” said Bolton. “Will we learn from them? Yes. I don’t think we’re standing still. I think we’re trying to move ahead in a comprehensive fashion. Not just doing well on test-taking, but getting kids ready for their dreams in the future.”
Halton Catholic District School Board was the top performer with 7.8, followed by York Region’s public board at 7.5. Toronto’s Catholic board squeaked in just above the average with a score of 6.2.
For the past five years, TDSB has remained roughly the same.
This year, the Ministry of Education is spending $24.1 billion on 72 school boards across the province, while the province faces an $11.7-billion deficit for 2013-2014.
TDSB’s share of the pie this year is $2.64 billion — about 11% of the province’s annual funding and the highest amount doled out to any school board.
Why is Toronto’s public board not performing better?
Bolton blames the challenges of having a heavy influx of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students. He said York Region has a different demographic than Toronto, with fewer inner-city challenges, which could explain why York is higher in the standings.
“It’s most likely the multicultural nature of the city that’s probably causing the situation with the literacy test,” he said, noting in his Trinity-Spadina ward, there are over 200 visa students.
“I’m not surprised with the discrepancy between math and literacy because often students who come to us from outside the board have a different understanding of math and are much more able to do a test that is strictly content and calculations,” he said.
There are 740 schools across the province featured in the report card (put out by the Vancouver think-tank each spring), based on test results from the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO).
TDSB trustee Sheila Cary-Meagher said while she’d be happy to see the Fraser report sink to the bottom of Lake Ontario, she acknowledges the TDSB has a number of obstacles, starting with $500 million in funding to the board being yanked from the province after amalgamation in 1998.
“Cut out this, cut out that, it sounds like excuses, but it’s not,” said Cary-Meagher. “We have more poverty, more inner-city issues. Poor kids do poorly — which doesn’t necessarily apply to all groups. We are also dealing with rising populations. There is nothing about the care and growth and education of children that is simple.”
Cary-Meagher said TDSB is heavily weighted in special education students and deems the Fraser report too narrow a scope in its rankings.
“The increase of autistic kids in the system is staggering,” she said. “We’ve got one kid that requires so much attention, he requires two education assistants all the time, every day. That’s really complicated. And I’ll bet in Temiskaming, you can’t get two education assistants to do that. You can’t compare northern Ontario with Toronto and lump them in the same report.”
Peter Cowley, co-author of the Fraser report, said TDSB tends to do “much worse” in rankings at the secondary level than elementary.
“It’s tantalizing in the questions it poses and frustrating because very few people within the education sector are taking this data and saying, ‘This is interesting. We’re going to find out why,’” said Cowley.
TDSB executive superintendent of student success, Christopher Usih, said the board is making gains, but doesn’t use the Fraser report as a measure because it’s based on one test. Instead, it looks at credit accumulation.
There was a 9% increase in Grade 9s who were getting their eight required credits from 2012 to 2013. For the Grade 10s, that number is 4.5%. The graduation rate has increased by 10% from a decade ago, Usih noted, to 79%.
“We recognize that, in some of the schools, we don’t have sufficient numbers of students who are meeting provincial standards in the EQAO,” he said. “But, we look at the report card marks, even though some of them may be high needs, and you’ll find that over time, those marks have improved.”
Usih called out three special-needs schools in the report card, which have all received 0 out of 10, as “misleading.
“It doesn’t tell the public and parents really what the story is — which is those students are making gains, many of them are graduating school, even if it may take them an extra year or semester,” he said. “That story is not captured in the paper and pencil test. We would like to see a lot of students in the 70% to 80% range — the way to do that is more differentiated learning for students.”
Doretta Wilson, executive director of the Society for Quality Education, said trustees are using ESL and special needs as “excuses” for failure and the board needs to acknowledge kids in elementary school aren’t being taught basic building blocks of literacy and numeracy.
“I don’t think the school board has done anything drastically different,” said Wilson. “They should stop making excuses and acknowledge these are challenges and start looking at the earlier grades. I think it’s systemic problem. It’s the way we teach math and children how to read and by the time they get to high school, any deficiencies are almost impossible to overcome.”
Ontario PC education critic Rob Leone said parents should be demanding more for their children.
“I’m concerned about anything that doesn’t expect we don’t do better,” said Leone. “Over the last 10 years, we’ve seen governments invest $8.5 billion annually in education, we have 250,000 fewer students and our test scores are going down. This is just the tip of the iceberg in some of the things we’re going to be seeing in our education system.”
Leone said in the next few weeks, the Ontario PC caucus will be unveiling a plan on how to deal with failing math and literacy scores.
“We have the responsibility of coming up with some bold ideas that will ultimately improve student success,” he said.
Looking at the rankings of the GTA school boards, TDSB has 73 schools compared to the second-place York public board, which has 31.
TDSB director of education Donna Quan has previously said having the highest number of schools under the TDSB umbrella is not an excuse for poor performance.
“It may be that no-excuses attitude is why so many of the schools of the fastest-improving variety are from Toronto,” Cowley said, adding 18 of 45 improving schools in the GTA are from Toronto and 11 of those are from the TDSB.
And that is the silver lining — that 45 schools in the GTA have been on the road to improvement over the past five years.
Among them is C.W. Jeffereys — which scored 3.7 out of 10 this year, rising from the 2.5 average it has scored the past five years — which has its fair share of challenges, including a stigma of past violence, poverty and mental health issues.
Monday Gala, who’s been principal at the North York school for one year, said he’s used a tactic to separate older students from younger ones to ensure they aren’t a bad influence on them.
“For me, it was a big issue,” said Gala. “We intentionally put a block between older kids and kids that are coming in (to high school) to make sure we don’t end up with a situation where some of the younger kids start acting out with the older ones. We monitor that in the hallways.”
C.W. Jeffereys has an after-school program for those struggling with literacy and numeracy. Drop-out rates are also decreasing, said Gala.
Only 13 schools in the GTA showed significant decline and all but three are above the average parental income of $74,700. Five of them are in Toronto.
“The most interesting thing is — nine of the top 10 have below-average income,” Cowley said. “That is amazing. That is the answer to how the reason we don’t do well is because the families are poor. Any school can improve.”
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That’s how Toronto District School Board chairman Chris Bolton feels about his board ranking yet again at the bottom of the heap of GTA schools, according to this year’s Fraser Institute Secondary School Report Card.
Out of a dozen school boards in the GTA, the Toronto District School Board scored 5.5 out of 10 — the only board besides a French immersion one that fell below the average of 6.0.
“I don’t think we’re pleased with the results,” said Bolton. “Will we learn from them? Yes. I don’t think we’re standing still. I think we’re trying to move ahead in a comprehensive fashion. Not just doing well on test-taking, but getting kids ready for their dreams in the future.”
Halton Catholic District School Board was the top performer with 7.8, followed by York Region’s public board at 7.5. Toronto’s Catholic board squeaked in just above the average with a score of 6.2.
For the past five years, TDSB has remained roughly the same.
This year, the Ministry of Education is spending $24.1 billion on 72 school boards across the province, while the province faces an $11.7-billion deficit for 2013-2014.
TDSB’s share of the pie this year is $2.64 billion — about 11% of the province’s annual funding and the highest amount doled out to any school board.
Why is Toronto’s public board not performing better?
Bolton blames the challenges of having a heavy influx of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students. He said York Region has a different demographic than Toronto, with fewer inner-city challenges, which could explain why York is higher in the standings.
“It’s most likely the multicultural nature of the city that’s probably causing the situation with the literacy test,” he said, noting in his Trinity-Spadina ward, there are over 200 visa students.
“I’m not surprised with the discrepancy between math and literacy because often students who come to us from outside the board have a different understanding of math and are much more able to do a test that is strictly content and calculations,” he said.
There are 740 schools across the province featured in the report card (put out by the Vancouver think-tank each spring), based on test results from the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO).
TDSB trustee Sheila Cary-Meagher said while she’d be happy to see the Fraser report sink to the bottom of Lake Ontario, she acknowledges the TDSB has a number of obstacles, starting with $500 million in funding to the board being yanked from the province after amalgamation in 1998.
“Cut out this, cut out that, it sounds like excuses, but it’s not,” said Cary-Meagher. “We have more poverty, more inner-city issues. Poor kids do poorly — which doesn’t necessarily apply to all groups. We are also dealing with rising populations. There is nothing about the care and growth and education of children that is simple.”
Cary-Meagher said TDSB is heavily weighted in special education students and deems the Fraser report too narrow a scope in its rankings.
“The increase of autistic kids in the system is staggering,” she said. “We’ve got one kid that requires so much attention, he requires two education assistants all the time, every day. That’s really complicated. And I’ll bet in Temiskaming, you can’t get two education assistants to do that. You can’t compare northern Ontario with Toronto and lump them in the same report.”
Peter Cowley, co-author of the Fraser report, said TDSB tends to do “much worse” in rankings at the secondary level than elementary.
“It’s tantalizing in the questions it poses and frustrating because very few people within the education sector are taking this data and saying, ‘This is interesting. We’re going to find out why,’” said Cowley.
TDSB executive superintendent of student success, Christopher Usih, said the board is making gains, but doesn’t use the Fraser report as a measure because it’s based on one test. Instead, it looks at credit accumulation.
There was a 9% increase in Grade 9s who were getting their eight required credits from 2012 to 2013. For the Grade 10s, that number is 4.5%. The graduation rate has increased by 10% from a decade ago, Usih noted, to 79%.
“We recognize that, in some of the schools, we don’t have sufficient numbers of students who are meeting provincial standards in the EQAO,” he said. “But, we look at the report card marks, even though some of them may be high needs, and you’ll find that over time, those marks have improved.”
Usih called out three special-needs schools in the report card, which have all received 0 out of 10, as “misleading.
“It doesn’t tell the public and parents really what the story is — which is those students are making gains, many of them are graduating school, even if it may take them an extra year or semester,” he said. “That story is not captured in the paper and pencil test. We would like to see a lot of students in the 70% to 80% range — the way to do that is more differentiated learning for students.”
Doretta Wilson, executive director of the Society for Quality Education, said trustees are using ESL and special needs as “excuses” for failure and the board needs to acknowledge kids in elementary school aren’t being taught basic building blocks of literacy and numeracy.
“I don’t think the school board has done anything drastically different,” said Wilson. “They should stop making excuses and acknowledge these are challenges and start looking at the earlier grades. I think it’s systemic problem. It’s the way we teach math and children how to read and by the time they get to high school, any deficiencies are almost impossible to overcome.”
Ontario PC education critic Rob Leone said parents should be demanding more for their children.
“I’m concerned about anything that doesn’t expect we don’t do better,” said Leone. “Over the last 10 years, we’ve seen governments invest $8.5 billion annually in education, we have 250,000 fewer students and our test scores are going down. This is just the tip of the iceberg in some of the things we’re going to be seeing in our education system.”
Leone said in the next few weeks, the Ontario PC caucus will be unveiling a plan on how to deal with failing math and literacy scores.
“We have the responsibility of coming up with some bold ideas that will ultimately improve student success,” he said.
Looking at the rankings of the GTA school boards, TDSB has 73 schools compared to the second-place York public board, which has 31.
TDSB director of education Donna Quan has previously said having the highest number of schools under the TDSB umbrella is not an excuse for poor performance.
“It may be that no-excuses attitude is why so many of the schools of the fastest-improving variety are from Toronto,” Cowley said, adding 18 of 45 improving schools in the GTA are from Toronto and 11 of those are from the TDSB.
And that is the silver lining — that 45 schools in the GTA have been on the road to improvement over the past five years.
Among them is C.W. Jeffereys — which scored 3.7 out of 10 this year, rising from the 2.5 average it has scored the past five years — which has its fair share of challenges, including a stigma of past violence, poverty and mental health issues.
Monday Gala, who’s been principal at the North York school for one year, said he’s used a tactic to separate older students from younger ones to ensure they aren’t a bad influence on them.
“For me, it was a big issue,” said Gala. “We intentionally put a block between older kids and kids that are coming in (to high school) to make sure we don’t end up with a situation where some of the younger kids start acting out with the older ones. We monitor that in the hallways.”
C.W. Jeffereys has an after-school program for those struggling with literacy and numeracy. Drop-out rates are also decreasing, said Gala.
Only 13 schools in the GTA showed significant decline and all but three are above the average parental income of $74,700. Five of them are in Toronto.
“The most interesting thing is — nine of the top 10 have below-average income,” Cowley said. “That is amazing. That is the answer to how the reason we don’t do well is because the families are poor. Any school can improve.”
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