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Royson James has a scary article that summarizes a bunch of our Honourable Wife-Beating, Drunk-Driving Mayor's terrible ideas that are going to "transform," and by "transform," he means "screw over," Toronto.
I just can't get over how malicious so many of these plans are. Eliminating bike lanes on Jarvis was bad; eliminating them in Scarborough is nothing but a brutal and vicious attack on the urban poor. (Of course, Jarvis has got all the attention and protests. Of course.) Now he wants to cut subsidized child care and sell off seniors' homes, lay off city workers, and—this is particularly rich in a city that recently saw a spate of arsons as developers embark on their mission to gentrify the downtown core and turn all the neat neighbourhoods into condos—lay off firefighters. I'm actually fine with cutting cops, since we have too many and they get paid too much, but you know that won't happen in the end.
Instead, Ford will continue to demonstrate his inability to do basic math, as he did when he scrapped the cheap, practical Transit City plan in favour of a pie-in-the-sky dream of a few more subway stations that will never actually happen. This is a guy who thinks he can balance the budget by buying his own paperclips in his office.
I know I'm preaching to the converted, but we pay taxes and spend money on civic infrastructure for a reason. It's a good reason. Cities don't run themselves. Even communities, no matter how strong and vibrant, don't run themselves. I'm pretty sure if you laid off city garbage workers, Yorkville and Church and Wellesley and the Danforth and Rosedale would not descend into filthy dystopias; the neighbourhood BIAs would take care of it like they did during the garbage strike. I don't think that would happen in Malvern, Jane and Finch, Regent Park, or Rexdale, though. And once public transit is unusable and bike lanes are gone, the traffic jams and longer commuting times will eventually affect Ford's base of NIMBYs in Etobicoke. I'd say that I hope Ford Nation chokes on its own smog and filth, but you know they'll just move to the 905 when things get genuinely uncomfortable here, leaving the rest of us to fester in a broken city that will take decades to rebuild.
Watching City Hall bluster and batter its way through municipal politics as it turns Toronto the Good into Toronto the Fuck You, I've Got Mine is like watching a slow-motion train wreck. Except despite everyone's commentary just after the election where the chattering class was convinced that Ford wouldn't cooperate with anyone else on council and find himself isolated and impotent, it's actually a faster-than-expected train wreck.
I just can't get over how malicious so many of these plans are. Eliminating bike lanes on Jarvis was bad; eliminating them in Scarborough is nothing but a brutal and vicious attack on the urban poor. (Of course, Jarvis has got all the attention and protests. Of course.) Now he wants to cut subsidized child care and sell off seniors' homes, lay off city workers, and—this is particularly rich in a city that recently saw a spate of arsons as developers embark on their mission to gentrify the downtown core and turn all the neat neighbourhoods into condos—lay off firefighters. I'm actually fine with cutting cops, since we have too many and they get paid too much, but you know that won't happen in the end.
Instead, Ford will continue to demonstrate his inability to do basic math, as he did when he scrapped the cheap, practical Transit City plan in favour of a pie-in-the-sky dream of a few more subway stations that will never actually happen. This is a guy who thinks he can balance the budget by buying his own paperclips in his office.
I know I'm preaching to the converted, but we pay taxes and spend money on civic infrastructure for a reason. It's a good reason. Cities don't run themselves. Even communities, no matter how strong and vibrant, don't run themselves. I'm pretty sure if you laid off city garbage workers, Yorkville and Church and Wellesley and the Danforth and Rosedale would not descend into filthy dystopias; the neighbourhood BIAs would take care of it like they did during the garbage strike. I don't think that would happen in Malvern, Jane and Finch, Regent Park, or Rexdale, though. And once public transit is unusable and bike lanes are gone, the traffic jams and longer commuting times will eventually affect Ford's base of NIMBYs in Etobicoke. I'd say that I hope Ford Nation chokes on its own smog and filth, but you know they'll just move to the 905 when things get genuinely uncomfortable here, leaving the rest of us to fester in a broken city that will take decades to rebuild.
Watching City Hall bluster and batter its way through municipal politics as it turns Toronto the Good into Toronto the Fuck You, I've Got Mine is like watching a slow-motion train wreck. Except despite everyone's commentary just after the election where the chattering class was convinced that Ford wouldn't cooperate with anyone else on council and find himself isolated and impotent, it's actually a faster-than-expected train wreck.
