Fords clumsy practitioners of city cutbacks

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/08/2011 (5363 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you’re a journalist, the arrival of political characters like Rob and Doug Ford is kind of like winning the lottery.

Rob (the blustery, newly elected mayor of Toronto) and Doug (his brother, a blustery, newly elected city councillor) have been a constant source of headlines and column fodder since last fall, when they stormed local government in the country’s biggest city.

Mayor Ford is the self-proclaimed leader of “Ford Nation,” an uprising of Torontonians that last fall led him to a crushing victory in the municipal elections. The fact his brother Doug was elected in the same election, well, that’s been the icing on the cake.

In the style of all the populists who came before him, Mayor Ford promised voters they could have their cake (a well-run, well-serviced, well-maintained city) and eat it, too (without indigestion from increased taxation). Facing what is estimated to be a nearly $800-million budget deficit for next year, Ford promised to cut more than $2 billion of city government fat without harming core services.

The city hired KPMG to do a review of city services to identify savings. Unfortunately, the consultants only confirmed a harsh reality: To get the $2 billion in cuts Ford envisioned, core services would have to be scaled back. Those included police and fire, transit, recreation and libraries.

In Ford’s political strategy, citizens will be forced to voice their opinions about which services are ‘must-haves’ and which are ‘nice-to-haves.’ The mayor is resolute that not all core services are created equal. “Are libraries more important than child care? Is policing more important than safe roads?” Ford asked last week before a marathon, 22-hour meeting to discuss budget cutbacks. “You tell me.”

If older brother Rob wasn’t creating enough headlines, Doug Ford had a few of his own to throw onto the pile. In an exchange over library services, Coun. Ford was asked if he would close some to help bring city spending under control. He replied in the affirmative. His comments raised the ire of many Torontonians, including iconic author Margaret Atwood. Doug was not impressed. “I don’t even know her. If she walked by me, I wouldn’t have a clue who she is.”

Blustery hyperbole aside, there is something very important brewing in Toronto. In essence, Mayor Ford is forcing his own citizens to choose between core services, knowing the more you engage in this kind of debate, the more people will think you can pick and choose the services you want to support with your tax dollars. In reality, cities work when we all pitch in to provide an array of services. Some we use and others we don’t.

This is, by any measure, a divide-and-conquer approach to forging public policy. In any municipal corporation, there are no doubt areas where savings could be achieved. But the savings may come from innovation, and process improvement and investments that increase productivity. The ‘more-from-less-government’ approach does not have a good record of success because in most cases, less is just less. However, in the process of getting to less, populists like Ford are prepared to pit citizen against citizen, neighbourhood against neighbourhood, and that’s not good for any community in the long run.

Mayor Ford and his brother would be well-advised to take a look at the approach used by Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz. He has frozen property taxes, boosted user fees for some essential services while cutting back on others. Contrary to the shock and awe of the Fords, Katz’s cuts have been slow and methodical and barely worth noting for many in the local media.

Katz would never close libraries, although there are discussions about amalgamating older branches. But Katz has led council to approve budgets with little or no increases in funding for libraries, which for a dynamic, labour-heavy service is tantamount to a budget cut. Katz added free wireless Internet to city libraries, but did it by taking money out of the fund that provides computers to those same libraries. Without the bluster used in Toronto, Katz is still pitting citizen against citizen, neighbourhood against neighbourhood. And with each re-election, he is proving conflict can be good for a politician at the ballot box if people aren’t paying attention to what’s really going on.

The country should watch the Ford experiment closely, and then use it to deduce how much of what the Fords are trying to do in Toronto is actually happening in other cities across the country, albeit in a less clumsy way.

Make no mistake about it, essential municipal services are under siege in this country. And the irony is that rather than just forcing cutbacks on citizens, clever populists are learning how to use us against ourselves to make it happen.

That makes for news, but it’s not a good-news story.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca