The mayor’s parallel reality takes a hit – a river of gravy does not run through City Hall Trick question: What’s the connection between a TTC supervisor (allegedly) urinating in a bush in front of paying customers and the mayor’s office offering buyouts to thousands of city employees in his never-ending quest to save money?
It may require a bit of imagination to tie the two together, but stay with me. At City Hall, that hilarious house of horrors, nothing ever happens in a vacuum. A strange synchronicity is always at play.
And the way the mayor has been pissing on the city bureaucracy since he took office (so much garbage, etc), a little more wet discharge on the subject of T.O.’s $774 million deficit seems an appropriate metaphor to go out on before council’s long-awaited summer break.
It’s no coincidence the talk now of offering buyouts to city employees as a way to cut the deficit was leaked on the same day as KPMG released the first report on its review of city services, or Core Service Review. Surprise (not so much to lefties, though): KPMG found little wriggle room for savings in public works and infrastructure, the water department, technical and transportation services.
It’s no shocker that vats of gravy weren’t found around every corner, really. The vast majority of services offered by those departments, some 96 per cent, are mandatory, either required by provincial legislation or essential to operations of the city. A lot of departments are already very lean.
KPMG’s report is just the prelude, however, to the big kiss-off coming when the Core Service Review looks at the Community Development departments and Parks and Rec, where workers are already bracing for a lockout. Will we see community centres run by private fitness clubs?
Reducing clearing of windrows (snow piles left by plows) and removing fluoride from water, two cost-saving “opportunities” identified by KPMG, are not exactly gimmes among suburbanites who voted for Ford. Suburban soccer moms are just as concerned about their kids’ dental health as everyone else. And Ford ally Denzil Minnan-Wong has already said the windrow plan is a non-starter.
Truth is, the mayor’s office needed to offer up something to blunt the message implicit in the KPMG report that maybe there’s not that much gravy floating around City Hall after all.
The added blow to the mayor, the wake-up call if you will, is what the city’s own consultations on the Core Service Review found – the majority of the 13,000 residents who took part want city-delivered public services and are willing to pay higher property taxes for them.
The mayor’s office was in full spin mode on that one, leaking details of its plan to buy out employees to the press even before the city manager, Joe Pennachetti, the guy at whose desk the buck supposedly stops on the buyouts, had a chance to formally tell city employees the news. He apologized to the good men and women of the public service for that. Sometimes it’s hard not to be left with the distinct feeling that the folks in charge at City Hall are flying by the seat of their pants, but that’s a tangent for another day.
No matter. The news of the employee buyout had the desired effect – creating the alternate reality that the Fordists were continuing the good work they’ve started to whip city government into financial shape.
The wheels were in motion to deflect attention from the KPMG report and onto the buyout just in time for council’s regular monthly meeting Tuesday.
The buzz at 100 Queen West Monday was that something “apocalyptic” was coming down the pipe. At least that’s what the mayor’s strategic planning guy, Mark Towhey, was overheard telling one councillor. A press conference was scheduled for 10 am, presumably to offer details on the rumoured buyout plan, but there was some sort of mix-up, and reporters were told to come back at 1:30 pm, where Minnan-Wong appeared to answer questions about the KPMG report instead.
Then the Globe got hold of an internal memo that it quoted saying buyouts would be offered to all 50,000 city employees. Pennachetti would say later that the number of employees eligible for the so-called “voluntary separation” is closer to 17,000.
To add to the maelstrom, Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti was ushered before the assembled media, with the mayor in tow, to announce the formation of three separate task forces to study homelessness, ice rinks and daycare. The Respect for Taxpayers sign so familiar during the election was pulled from the closet for the cameras to drive the message home that taxfighter Ford and friends are hard at work for you. Mammo talked P3s. Old news. The mayor finally fielded a few questions on the KPMG report and buyouts business, though it would be more accurate to say he danced around both, not saying what cuts he’s prepared to make. He stumbled through, almost tripping over the flag in the backdrop at one point. This gravy train thing is starting to look more like what weapons of mass destruction were for Bush.
How many will opt for the proposed buyout is another question. If Pennachetti has a number in mind, he’s not divulging it. These are tough economic times, and what’s been offered – a maximum six months’ pay – doesn’t exactly equal a soft landing. Which raises the spectre of layoffs sometime down the road for those who don’t opt for a buyout.
But layoffs are more complicated. There is a collective bargaining agreement to stickhandle around, and right now it says temporary employees have to go before permanent staff can be laid off.
In any event, it’s unclear what savings will accrue from any exodus. Some of those who go will have to be replaced. Their jobs are essential to the operation of the city.
The savings that can be achieved through normal attrition are perhaps in the tens of millions. The city’s union estimates that some 1,200 employees are approaching retirement in the next five years. Some 1,900 employees took buyouts during amalgamation, but they were offered a year’s pay then.
Some in the city’s employ would no doubt be happy to take their services elsewhere and not have their jobs held over their heads in the “do this or else” culture now pervading 100 Queen West.
In that sense, the proposed buyout is a brilliant move from the point of view of changing the culture in the professional ranks continuing to show signs of bucking the Ford agenda.
On the other hand, it looks like a desperate move to create the grand illusion that there is a plan to slay the deficit, which was created in large part, it should be noted, by blowing the surplus left by the previous administration. Indeed, some on the left think the mayor has seen the other KPMG reports and knows full well that the hoped-for river of gravy running through City Hall just doesn’t exist.
The money Rob Ford’s pissed away while preaching respect for taxpayers
$4 billion Or thereabouts killing Transit City and insisting on burying a part of the Eglinton Crosstown.
$3 million On consultants to provide political cover for his Core Services Review
$410,000 To remove bike lanes from Jarvis, Pharmacy and Birchmount
$1.29 million On Fort York bridge before it was killed
$170,000 Salaries for two public health nurses offered by the province.
$1.2 million To scrap plans for a four-pad ice rink on the waterfront
$200,000 For buddies Case Ootes and Gordon Chong to lay the ground for the big social housing sell-off and privatization of the TTC
Untold millions Getting rid of city advisory committees, thereby trashing the collective smarts of Toronto residents.
It may require a bit of imagination to tie the two together, but stay with me. At City Hall, that hilarious house of horrors, nothing ever happens in a vacuum. A strange synchronicity is always at play.
And the way the mayor has been pissing on the city bureaucracy since he took office (so much garbage, etc), a little more wet discharge on the subject of T.O.’s $774 million deficit seems an appropriate metaphor to go out on before council’s long-awaited summer break.
It’s no coincidence the talk now of offering buyouts to city employees as a way to cut the deficit was leaked on the same day as KPMG released the first report on its review of city services, or Core Service Review. Surprise (not so much to lefties, though): KPMG found little wriggle room for savings in public works and infrastructure, the water department, technical and transportation services.
It’s no shocker that vats of gravy weren’t found around every corner, really. The vast majority of services offered by those departments, some 96 per cent, are mandatory, either required by provincial legislation or essential to operations of the city. A lot of departments are already very lean.
KPMG’s report is just the prelude, however, to the big kiss-off coming when the Core Service Review looks at the Community Development departments and Parks and Rec, where workers are already bracing for a lockout. Will we see community centres run by private fitness clubs?
Reducing clearing of windrows (snow piles left by plows) and removing fluoride from water, two cost-saving “opportunities” identified by KPMG, are not exactly gimmes among suburbanites who voted for Ford. Suburban soccer moms are just as concerned about their kids’ dental health as everyone else. And Ford ally Denzil Minnan-Wong has already said the windrow plan is a non-starter.
Truth is, the mayor’s office needed to offer up something to blunt the message implicit in the KPMG report that maybe there’s not that much gravy floating around City Hall after all.
The added blow to the mayor, the wake-up call if you will, is what the city’s own consultations on the Core Service Review found – the majority of the 13,000 residents who took part want city-delivered public services and are willing to pay higher property taxes for them.
The mayor’s office was in full spin mode on that one, leaking details of its plan to buy out employees to the press even before the city manager, Joe Pennachetti, the guy at whose desk the buck supposedly stops on the buyouts, had a chance to formally tell city employees the news. He apologized to the good men and women of the public service for that. Sometimes it’s hard not to be left with the distinct feeling that the folks in charge at City Hall are flying by the seat of their pants, but that’s a tangent for another day.
No matter. The news of the employee buyout had the desired effect – creating the alternate reality that the Fordists were continuing the good work they’ve started to whip city government into financial shape.
The wheels were in motion to deflect attention from the KPMG report and onto the buyout just in time for council’s regular monthly meeting Tuesday.
The buzz at 100 Queen West Monday was that something “apocalyptic” was coming down the pipe. At least that’s what the mayor’s strategic planning guy, Mark Towhey, was overheard telling one councillor. A press conference was scheduled for 10 am, presumably to offer details on the rumoured buyout plan, but there was some sort of mix-up, and reporters were told to come back at 1:30 pm, where Minnan-Wong appeared to answer questions about the KPMG report instead.
Then the Globe got hold of an internal memo that it quoted saying buyouts would be offered to all 50,000 city employees. Pennachetti would say later that the number of employees eligible for the so-called “voluntary separation” is closer to 17,000.
To add to the maelstrom, Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti was ushered before the assembled media, with the mayor in tow, to announce the formation of three separate task forces to study homelessness, ice rinks and daycare. The Respect for Taxpayers sign so familiar during the election was pulled from the closet for the cameras to drive the message home that taxfighter Ford and friends are hard at work for you. Mammo talked P3s. Old news. The mayor finally fielded a few questions on the KPMG report and buyouts business, though it would be more accurate to say he danced around both, not saying what cuts he’s prepared to make. He stumbled through, almost tripping over the flag in the backdrop at one point. This gravy train thing is starting to look more like what weapons of mass destruction were for Bush.
How many will opt for the proposed buyout is another question. If Pennachetti has a number in mind, he’s not divulging it. These are tough economic times, and what’s been offered – a maximum six months’ pay – doesn’t exactly equal a soft landing. Which raises the spectre of layoffs sometime down the road for those who don’t opt for a buyout.
But layoffs are more complicated. There is a collective bargaining agreement to stickhandle around, and right now it says temporary employees have to go before permanent staff can be laid off.
In any event, it’s unclear what savings will accrue from any exodus. Some of those who go will have to be replaced. Their jobs are essential to the operation of the city.
The savings that can be achieved through normal attrition are perhaps in the tens of millions. The city’s union estimates that some 1,200 employees are approaching retirement in the next five years. Some 1,900 employees took buyouts during amalgamation, but they were offered a year’s pay then.
Some in the city’s employ would no doubt be happy to take their services elsewhere and not have their jobs held over their heads in the “do this or else” culture now pervading 100 Queen West.
In that sense, the proposed buyout is a brilliant move from the point of view of changing the culture in the professional ranks continuing to show signs of bucking the Ford agenda.
On the other hand, it looks like a desperate move to create the grand illusion that there is a plan to slay the deficit, which was created in large part, it should be noted, by blowing the surplus left by the previous administration. Indeed, some on the left think the mayor has seen the other KPMG reports and knows full well that the hoped-for river of gravy running through City Hall just doesn’t exist.
Ford’s forked tongue
The money Rob Ford’s pissed away while preaching respect for taxpayers
$4 billion Or thereabouts killing Transit City and insisting on burying a part of the Eglinton Crosstown.
$3 million On consultants to provide political cover for his Core Services Review
$410,000 To remove bike lanes from Jarvis, Pharmacy and Birchmount
$1.29 million On Fort York bridge before it was killed
$170,000 Salaries for two public health nurses offered by the province.
$1.2 million To scrap plans for a four-pad ice rink on the waterfront
$200,000 For buddies Case Ootes and Gordon Chong to lay the ground for the big social housing sell-off and privatization of the TTC
Untold millions Getting rid of city advisory committees, thereby trashing the collective smarts of Toronto residents.
Origin
Source: Now magazine
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