“Toronto has a spending problem, not a revenue problem.” Along with “blah blah blah Gravy Train.” This was Rob Ford’s favourite saying during the 2010 Mayoral elections. To open up the Gravy Station I will be focusing on Rob Ford’s various campaign promises and the feasibility and logic, or lack thereof, of each of them.
Ford’s website highlights under “issues,” the following: downsize council from 44 to 22 councillors, reduce politicians’ expense accounts, limiting the mayor offices budget, hire 100 additional police officers, open garbage collection to bids from private companies as well as current unions, improve customer service at city hall, abolish vehicle registration tax, and eliminate land transfer tax.
Before we get into the first of Rob Ford’s campaign promises, lets talk a bit about one of my favourite aspects of politics. The meaningless platitude. As you can see in my description up top, part of this blog’s stated mission is exposing meaningless platitudes for what they are: meaningless, easy to digest, nuggets of political marketing. They are a great way to say something message, while actually not saying anything at all. This allows people to project their beliefs on what you say. Things like “change you can believe in,” “common sense revolution” and “stopping the gravy train.” These meaningless platitudes are repeated over and over again and stick in the minds of the electorate. By the time people start to research the candidates they want to vote for, they have no doubt been influenced by the constant repetition of each candidates “brand” or as I like to call them, their meaningless platitudes.
The meaningless platitude we heard the most from Rob Ford during the election other than “gravy train” was “the war on the car.” The vehicle registration tax is apparently one of the previous regime’s weapons in the “war on the car” and abolishing it has been made Rob Ford’s priority for his first city council meeting. The vehicle registration tax, for those of you who don’t know, is an annual tax of $60, paid by those who live in the city of Toronto when they renew their plate stickers.
I know what you’re thinking, “wow $60, that’s so much money. Let’s stop this crazy war on the car right now. Damn you environmentalists, get a job!” Obviously, paying taxes isn’t fun, but let’s break this down personal finance guru style. Basic math tells me that $60 per year is $5 per month. For all you fans of platitudes we can cite the “latte factor” here. That’s one latte per month or for those of you that are not members of the “downtown latte-sipping elites” two large double-doubles and 2 maple dips per month.
Where does this whopping $5 per month go? According to city hall’s website, it goes to “address City funding shortfalls and is helping the City to maintain and improve Toronto's roads and public transit networks.” So let me get this straight. The people who drive their cars in the city have to pay an extra $5 per month to maintain our roads and public transit networks. Damn this “war on the car.” Why don’t the people who ride public transit pay for it. (What’s that? Oh, TTC riders already pay the highest percentage of operating costs in North America?) What’s next? Taxing us for driving our cars into the city? No great city would ever try that.
According to the 2009 City of Toronto Financial report the tax brought in
$51,717,000. Some of this money goes to public transportation and some of it goes to road maintenance. To me, this tax seems like a pretty good one and the logic behind abolishing it doesn’t seem clear. Part of Rob Ford’s transportation plan hinges on raising money by selling off streetcars and lowering maintenance costs by eliminating downtown streetcars. But he announced the day after he won that he was not going to get rid of streetcars. His brother claimed it was a rumour “from our competition.” This was the first campaign promise Ford broke. No doubt, more are on the way.*
$51,717,000. Some of this money goes to public transportation and some of it goes to road maintenance. To me, this tax seems like a pretty good one and the logic behind abolishing it doesn’t seem clear. Part of Rob Ford’s transportation plan hinges on raising money by selling off streetcars and lowering maintenance costs by eliminating downtown streetcars. But he announced the day after he won that he was not going to get rid of streetcars. His brother claimed it was a rumour “from our competition.” This was the first campaign promise Ford broke. No doubt, more are on the way.*
I know we can’t all afford to give back our salaries like the generous Ford brothers, but, $5 per month doesn’t seem like a lot to spend to keep our roads and transit system working. If the city’s finances are in such dire straits (they’re not) and “we’re going to have to find efficiencies” like Ford, Smitherman et al kept saying all election, why is the first council priority something that takes over $50 million out of the city’s pockets. It doesn’t seem so fiscally responsible to pull money out of the budget before we know how much we’re going to be spending on other campaign promises.
*This is a virtual guarantee, unless he can convince 50% of city councilors to fire themselves.
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