You broke the election system….now fix it right!

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
December 6, 2010


On Monday, December 6, at the first council meeting of the new term, city council will be considering John Henry’s idea to introduce a concept he calls “community of interest” to assign councillors to look after constituency concerns of the various city neighbourhoods.

This is an attempt to distribute the constituency workload among the various councillors and to make sure that every neighborhood has a voice at the council table.

In other words, Henry’s idea is to institute a plan to re-introduce the ward representation that he voted to eliminate.

This is a rather asinine suggestion not at all keeping with democratic principles of representative government whose basic principle is that voters determine their own representatives.

The idea of assigned representatives suggests a movement away from democracy and a move toward a system where the autocratic elite divide the spoils among themselves…they divvy up the political landscape in backroom deals and decide who is going to represent the people. This is wrong and the complete antithesis of everything we know about democracy. It is more like the warlords divvying up the spoils in Afghanistan, much of Asia and the Middle East, and many parts of Africa and South America.

We have not seen this kind of feudal governing in the free world since the bishops, on behalf of the people, wrested absolute power from the British Kings close to one thousand years ago with the signing of the Magna Carta.

The real question if John Henry wants to re-introduce the semblance of ward representation is why he voted to eliminate it in the first place? Does he only now realize that he made an error? Or was his vote, as a “still wet behind the ears” “green political pup” highly influenced by the Council power brokers like Gray, Pidwerbecki, and Kolodzie that he wanted to please? Did he not understand the issue? If he did, did he not have the honesty and integrity to vote for what he knew to be right?

He should have been paying more attention to my presentations to council where I identified all of the short comings that have since materialized. He was so disinterested in what I had to say, or indeed under pressure from the power brokers on council, that he voted every time to deny me opportunity to provide him and council additional information.

John Henry and his council bosses didn’t want to expose my damaging information to the public any more than they had to for fear of it upsetting the self-serving plans they had to introduce the system not used in any large city in the country.

And what is more, the city newspapers, probably also under the influence of city politicians, in fear of jeopardizing their handsome city hall advertising contracts, were irresponsible in not taking up the communication and information mantle abolished by city hall. The Oshawa Times, in contrast, a Thompson Newspaper Chain Daily, unfortunately shuttered due to a labour dispute in 1994, featured my battles for ward elections on their front page almost every day for four years.

In supporting the move to the general vote, Pidwerbecki suggested that ward voting meant that politicians were only interested in their own wards to the exclusion of all others. His other assertion was that Oshawa was “just too large for ward voting,” an abject insult to the intelligence of Oshawa voters.

The idea of parochial politicians is a red herring that has been floated about by the opponents of ward voting, mostly the CAW and CAW retirees, even prior to 1985 when I brought ward politics to the city with the work of my “Ward System Now” political action group. At that time, Cliff Pilkey, former city councillor, MPP, city resident, and president of the Ontario Federation of Labour, took out giant ads in the newspapers denouncing ward voting.

As former manager of NDP Leader, Ed Broadbent’s Oshawa Constituency Office, Pidwerbecki is now the chief city council spokesman for the Labour Movement and thus took a leading role, in strategizing Oshawa’s return to the General Vote.

The auto workers union and the union movement has traditionally been against ward voting since it divides their city wide union membership reducing CAW and CAW retirees influence in the running of this city.

If Pidwerbecki was right about parochialism of councillors, the general vote didn’t improve the problem. Rather, it gave the city a more unequal concentration of political power.

The recent elections produced 3 reps in each of wards 3 and 4, 2 reps in ward 6 (both in the same political polling subdivision), one rep each in wards 1, 5, and 7, and none in ward 2…too bad ward 2 and the other underserviced wards, you don’t have many votes representing your interests at the council table…but congratulations 3 and 4, according to Pidwerbecki, with your combined majority vote, you’ll have parochial politicians looking after your every whim, and each of you has as much power now as the combined power of more than half the city (4 out of 7 city wards).

For Henry to assign ward responsibility to councillors, because of the unequal representation elected, he will have to assign responsibility to some that is outside their residential communities. Of course, no matter how wards are assigned, you can never dismiss the fact that all politicians will be more in tune with the needs of their home communities and more interested in delivering service there.

A major problem with the assignment of wards is that politicians will not be accountable to the residents of the wards assigned. Politicians are only held accountable by the vote and are not held accountable to voters of any single community in a city wide vote. Even when ward responsibilities are assigned, politicians will still demonstrate more interest and expertise in their home communities, perhaps giving second class lip service to the assigned communities they are less interested in.

The bottom line is that, because of low voter turnout, the plebiscite result was not binding on council.

Nevertheless, council members argued that the vote had to be honoured as the “will of the people.”

Council failed to consider its very flawed plebiscite process that denied voters the opportunity to understand and debate the issue. They did not provide any documentation to households explaining the meaning of the question, what it would mean to voting and council representation in the city, or why the question was asked.

Worst of all, they schemed to catch voters “cold” in the voting booth with a question they didn’t understand, had never heard or considered, and worded in a difficult and convoluted way compelling voters to vote “NO” to retain a system they were happy with since no public concern had ever been publicly raised about ward voting.

In short, politicians asked an unnecessary question, and then rigged the question and the process to trick the people into voting for the system preferred by the politicians.

The question of an accurate measure of the “will of the people” is highly suspect. It is clear though, that if council wanted an accurate measure of that “will,” they would have insured an informed electorate. Because they failed to inform the people, they showed they didn’t care!

With council’s arguments to implement general elections as the expressed “will of the people,” it would now be extremely unethical for them to introduce John Henry’s assigned ward responsibilities as that is inconsistent with the reasons they forwarded for implementing the general vote.

Are they now going to reject what they adamantly called the “will of the people?”

Council must complete the present term under the election system they signed up for and they must honor any increased workload that results in representing the entire city. They argued before that citizens wanted to vote for all and be represented by all at council. It is too late to change the rules of the game.

John Henry’s ludicrous "community of interest" idea should be abandoned and council should mount a giant communication program to fully inform the people during this term. Following the information campaign, they should conduct an online poll, supplemented by mail in ballots for those who prefer, to get a true measure of the voting system the people want with a promise to introduce that system for the 2014 election.

The election system has to be fixed this term…and any attempts by John Henry or Council to postpone fixing the system with Henry’s plan which is rife with faulty logic and an affront to democracy will not serve this city well.

Henry’s system will only perpetuate the problems we’ve seen with Oshawa’s system of voting not used in any large city in the country.

Any attempt to assign political responsibility to communities misses the vital democratic components of choice of representation and political accountability to the represented group.

Don’t put off the problem…fix it now…and fix it right!

POSTSCRIPT---Thank goodness. Common sense prevailed and city council voted, on a motion from former Mayor Nancy Diamond, to receive and file the staff report seeking direction on Mayor John Henry's "Communities of Interest" Idea. This effectively puts an end to the idea. It is significant that Council did not support Henry's first leadership initiative as Mayor. Wonder what this forebodes in the future for Henry's leadership.

Hopefully a condensed form of this column sent to all council members on the morning of the vote and the full version of the column available to them by the time of the vote had some influence in their decision.

Now we just have to get council on board to organizing an information campaign and an online vote to get citizen approval for returning to ward voting for 2014.

Be sure to follow Bill’s radio broadcasts, “Eye on City Hall”,
every Monday, 6-9 pm EST, on http://www.ocentral.com/thewave/

The Election of the Returning Council Members Can’t be Just a Co-incidence

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
November 15, 2010

In looking over the results of the recent election, I note that only four members of the last inept city council survived while seven members are no longer on council.

All this change is good and a key objective of my mayoral campaign. As the public memory is short, part of my campaign strategy was to incessantly focus public attention on the missteps, mistakes, and misdeeds of the John Gray led city council to foster the public mood for change.

I also had to focus public attention on the misrepresentations of council veteran Louise Parkes whom I saw as a disaster for Oshawa should she get elected. Her campaign platform calling for “Fair Taxation” seemed to grossly misrepresent her personal spending habits while on council, a fact that I exposed at every opportunity.

I ran for the position of mayor as that is the only office where any attention is paid to what the candidates have to say and is the one office which guarantees most face time with the media…a necessity if you have an important message that you want to get out.

Getting my message out resulting in a huge turnover on council was much more important to me than any ambitions I had for the Mayoralty.

Since the election, I have had some opportunity to analyze and reflect on the results and one of my observations has become quite telling because it has distinct and important consequences for the city.

I had always insisted that Mayor Elect John Henry had access to the Colin Carrie Sign list as his signs got erected very quickly once he declared his Mayoral Candidacy.

Securing sign locations is a time consuming activity and was something that could not be done prior to Henry’s declaration as a mayor candidate without the secret getting out of the bag.

Also his sign campaign was far stronger in the east side of the city (Carrie’s riding) rather than on the west side of the city which is in Jim Flaherty’s Federal Riding.

Henry also likely had access to Colin Carrie’s election machine which has developed over three successful elections since 2004. There is no other explanation of his “running away” with the election. He certainly did not perform as a “superstar” councillor, being rather unremarkable at the best of times.

Colin Carrie has been in regular and frequent public disputes with outgoing Mayor John Gray and thus would have sufficient desire to see him replaced.

This would provide Carrie motivation to seek out and “appoint” a candidate to succeed Gray. Thus Carrie is likely at the very beginning to have convinced Henry to seek the Mayoralty offering help from his Federal Campaign Team as the bait.

Running for Mayor without Carrie’s help and intervention would have been unlikely since the general consensus by council observers was that Henry’s run for Mayor was premature. Even one of Henry’s friends indicated this to me at the first Mayoral Debate.

In the CAW retirees Mayor Debate, for example, John Henry, in answer to the question on how he’d attract industry and jobs to the city, stated that we have a deepwater port, a major highway, a main rail line, an airport, a skilled work force---we can built anything and ship it anywhere in the world. He failed to see that we’ve had these attributes for the last 50 years and still experienced a net loss of industrial jobs.

Not recognizing that the city has the highest industrial/commercial tax rates in the GTA making us uncompetitive even with Whitby, Ajax, and Pickering and that downward adjustment of these rates was imperative to attract industrial investment and jobs to this city, you’d think would be basic information and insight necessary to lead this city.

It is unlikely Henry would have sought the Mayor’s chair on his own volition without intervention from Carrie. His $100,000 salary as a Regional Councillor would have made profits from his small office products retailing business seem redundant and been a major loss to him.

A vital question then, is what Carrie might have offered Henry in the way of lucrative Federal Appointments to replace his $100,000 Regional salary had his quest for the Mayor position been unsuccessful.

So now you’re probably beginning to think that my suggestion of Carrie’s meddling in city politics is slightly delusional, schizophrenic or mad.

So how else would you explain that three of the four returnees to city council were also the three city councillors invited by Carrie to Ottawa, in May, 2009, to meet with the Government Leaders over the harbour, and even at the time get an introduction to the Prime Minister. You will recall that Henry, Neal, and Marimpietri were criticized by John Gray as “stooges” at the time.

Funny that all three were elected when we had such a major turnover on council.

Is this just co-coincidence, or is the hand of Carrie, and his election machinery, behind the re-election of all three.

Pidwerbecki, the fourth returning council member is, of course, popular within the NDP community as manager of former MP, Ed Broadbent’s, Oshawa Office.

Interestingly, Henry, Neal, and Marimpietri do not sit on Carrie’s Riding Executive, although Local politicians typically try to conceal their political leanings and associations in any case.

Doug Hawkins, a candidate for Regional and City Councillor, sits on Jim Flaherty’s Riding Executive. He finished well out of the race, placing 15 out of 26 Regional Council Candidates, and didn’t appear to get any significant or “official” help from the Flaherty election machine.

There are consequences to the re-election of Henry, Neal, and Marimpietri.

These are three of the six votes needed to insure that there are no glitches in the Federal/City Waterfront Agreement that support the continuing industrialization of the East Wharf, the construction of the Ethanol Plant, and the building of a rail spur to the waterfront industrialization zone.

Of course, this increasing industrialization makes the waterfront less attractive for condo and commercial development, such as fine dining establishments, as the pollutants, dispersants, dirt and grime and odours will discourage top developers with their financing from coming to Oshawa to develop our prime lakefront resource.

I guess my dream of a world class waterfront will not come to fruition and the marina will not be as impressive as I’d envisioned.

The Shwa will have increased industrialization guaranteed at our waterfront while other places like Toronto, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and even Buffalo, have been busy reducing lakefront industrialization and working at transforming their lakefronts into people places.

Maybe the next thing we’ll see at our waterfront, along with the ethanol plant and the railway spur line, will be giant cranes and a cargo container storage facility leveling some of our treed areas on the east port as the present bulk cargo facilities at our harbour get replaced by cargo container handling facilities in general worldwide use today.

Too bad….but the Oshawa people….and Colin Carrie have spoken.

Late footnote---I've just been informed that Colin Carrie was at Henry's election headquarters the whole night as returns were coming in and even attended Henry's victory celebration party on election night looking over him like a mother hen, I'm told---even accompanied Henry to the private feast at Sopprafino's following. Interesting that Sopprafino's is owned by Tito Dante Marimpietri's wife's family! I wonder whether Marimpietri and Neal also attended this feast---and which other elected politicians attended which may give an indication that Carrie's hand extended far greater than we have so far surmised.

Be sure to follow Bill’s radio broadcasts, “Eye on City Hall”,
every Monday, 6-9 pm EST, on http://www.ocentral.com/thewave/

Oshawa doesn’t deserve this City Council

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
September 6, 2010

The municipal elections are now a scant seven weeks away and candidates are heating up their campaigns as the deadline for nominations for election to city council approaches.

At present there are 47 declared candidates to appear on the ballot. Candidates for Durham Public Board of Education or the Separate school board will be in addition to these.

Do you have a chance in hell of becoming an informed voter? To do so, you’d have to know who each of the candidates are, have a chance to meet them, and know what they stand for. An impossible task! Hell, there are so many candidates that even the candidates themselves do not know all their opposition candidates.

The latest totals for each office are Mayor---Vote for 1 of 6 candidates, Regional Council---Vote for 7 of 25 candidates, and Local council---Vote for 3 of 16 candidates.

This general vote election and the huge impossible election ballot with 53 names for Public School Supporters when trustee candidate names are included and 52 names for Separate School Supporters is compliments of Mayor John Gray and Councillors Pidwerbecki, Kolodzie, Parkes, Henry, Sholdra, and Marimpietri. If you think their implementation of the General Vote after refusing to inform voters about the plebiscite question is a travesty of democracy, they should not get your votes on October 25th.

It’s interesting that the plebiscite question was placed on the 2006 election ballot despite the fact that there was not one whimper of expressed citizen discontent with ward elections. This should raise serious questions in your head about why the question was on the ballot.

All of the action for change has come from city politicians and so the plebiscite question and the result they wanted arose simply as another form of entitlement for the politicians

We already know that they vote themselves huge salaries, lifetime health benefits, huge retirement benefits, $100 per week tax free car allowances, free advertising and campaign materials on the taxpayer’s dime, free travel, city charge cards---they even voted to demolish council chambers and city hall “A” wing at $25M to give themselves more palatial office space more becoming of their station in life.

So why not shanghai democracy to give them a lifetime council seat. This is the atrocity they’ve perpetrated on the Oshawa people.

Their manipulation of democracy to get a result they wanted is more akin to the election systems in North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and many African countries, etc.---the kinds of governments where western nations have seen serious losses of troops trying to bring justice and fairness to citizens entrapped under inhumane dictatorial governments.

To secure the desired plebiscite result, Council followed a strategy of keeping the issue secret to confront voters “cold” in voter’s booth with a question they had never heard, never considered, and didn’t understand….and then you had to vote “NO” to preserve a system that everyone was satisfied with….CLEVER!

Realizing this “ploy,” I did write to the Mayor and Council and Committee Chairman, Cathy Clarke, whose committee steered the issue through council, suggesting an information brochure explaining the pros and cons of the ward/general vote systems be sent to all residents but this suggestion was ignored in the interests of keeping the secret to election day.

I even offered to write the argument for preserving was elections but this offer of help was also ignored.

While Canada’s Supreme Court has frequently stated that an informed public is a basic necessity of democracy, Oshawa’s City Council decided on this “strategy of secrecy” to keep the public in the dark and catch them with a trick question that no one had heard, considered, or discussed, and which had confusing terminology that was never defined, and worded in such a way that the “yes” answer most will give when confronted with a confusing question they don’t understand, resulted in a change from the system everyone seemed satisfied with.

Amazingly, Mayor John Gray stated at city council, just before the adoption of the general vote, that city council had no responsibility to inform the public about the question council asked. He said it was the responsibility of the concerned public to fundraise and organize to inform the public. He didn’t say such third party fundraising and campaigning is against the Ontario Municipal Election Act, nor did he say that the same Act gave City Council unfettered and unlimited spending ability to communicate details of plebiscite questions to their publics.

Amazing, city council asks a question to get public opinion on an issue and says they have no responsibility to inform the public about the issue, and lies about this being private citizen responsibility.

This was lying to the public at its worst---or it showed a tremendously uninformed mayor. In any case, it definitely demonstrated that Gray is unfit to lead our city and lead our council.

Don’t you think that if city council wanted an accurate measure of public opinion on this question, they would have wanted to inform the public?

Because they didn’t provide the necessary information, they showed they didn’t care.

They just knew the result they wanted and followed a strategy to get it.

This is vote fixing in the extreme and is a practice we would expect from third world authoritarian fascists, despots, dictators, and tyrants….but in Canada---no way!

How can a city council that pulls this “secrecy strategy” to “trick” the public and “fix” the vote ever claim to be open, transparent, honest, accountable, democratic…and respectful of city ratepayers?

And what is just as important….If they pull a “fast one” like this on such an important question, can you trust anything they tell you?---like the city’s debt position or the costs of city hall demolition, rebuilding, and renovations….or their election promises.

Presently John Gray and every member of council are acknowledging that taxes are too high after voting for them and now to say they believe in holding the line or cutting is just too hard to believe. In fact, two months after the last election, Mayor John Gray was calling for 9% tax increases.

So why did politicians want the general vote? Easy! 1) They wanted to “semi-retire” by eliminating all constituency work. When everyone is responsible for everything, no one is responsible for anything, and besides…your vote is not important in the bigger scheme of general elections---they’re not responsible to you! And, 2) they’re virtually guaranteed lifetime re-election. This is the history of the general vote in Oshawa when for seven general vote councils counting for 107 seats, not one councillor lost their seat by the vote. All change took place by death or resignation of members. Only name recognition is important in a general vote election….not service to the public! And 3) they’ll now be able to demand more salary claiming they have twice the constituency size of the Federal or Provincial Government!

The General vote is going to cost taxpayers “big time” as politicians claim these greater salaries for greater responsibility, bigger staffs to handle a claimed bigger workload, and bigger offices to house the increased staff, more palatial offices consistent with their increased importance, and bigger office budgets to cover their bigger needs….big, big, big, $, $, $...all piled on top of the highest taxes in the GTA….ridiculous!

Service to you, the voter, is irrelevant for politicians under the general vote. Politicians can snuff their nose at you! Your single vote is relatively unimportant when 20,000 or so votes might be required for election and so no politician will put much effort into solving your problem.

Instead politicians will devote great attention to the wishes of trade unions, the golf club, large churches and organizations, etc. as they feel that these organizations will encourage their city wide membership to vote for the “friendly” and “helpful” politicians that have jumped in to serve the needs of the large organization.

Therefore the voting power and the interests of politicians shifts from individual homeowners, taxpayers, and residents to the larger organizations controlling or influencing large blocks of votes.

Our general vote here in Oshawa is proof positive that your politicians don’t give a damn about democracy. Everything is secondary to their sense of entitlement. That’s why we have a system here not used in any large city anywhere in Canada.

And don’t you think if the system implemented here was any good, it’d be widely used across the country?

The job of city voters come the October 25th election is to turf out the whole damn self-serving bunch before they do more harm to democracy and to this city!

Be sure to follow Bill’s radio broadcasts, “Eye on City Hall”,
every Monday, 6-9 pm EST, on http://www.ocentral.com/thewave/

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
August 23, 2010

The inspiration for this column came from the cover picture on last week’s issue of the Central Newspaper. It pictured Mayoral Candidate Louise Parkes with the Istanbul Mayor, with whom she apparently had “exchanged ideas.”

The Central Newspaper Cover picture and caption were “lifted” from Louise Parkes’ Facebook Page where she had informed her facebook readers that she had met and discussed and exchanged ideas with the Istanbul Mayor.

This column addresses the practice of politicians, like Louise Parkes, and others who will be specifically addressed later in this column, of deceiving the public with a fragile and complex weaving of the truth, half truths, lies and lies of omission, in order to get the public to believe something other than the truth. Sometimes the web is weaved to make the politician seem more influential, important, and a “big shot” to their ardent supporters.

This was the thought I had when I first saw the picture and did a Google search of the Istanbul Mayor, something you can do for yourself. You’ll note clearly that the good-looking, slim, young guy with lots of hair, pictured with Parkes and whom she claims is the Mayor of Istanbul is not the same old balding guy that the internet pictures as the current Istanbul Mayor.

Is this a tangled and dishonest web of deception to “sell” Mayoral Candidate Parkes as more influential and important than she is? Next she’ll claim lunch with Barack Obama.

I can’t imagine the Mayor of Toronto or Vancouver or Montreal devoting part of his busy day to Oshawa Local City Councillor Parkes, never mind the mayor of Istanbul.

But dishonesty knows no bounds by someone impressed with their own importance. They may stop at nothing to deceive their followers into believing the same thing. Trouble is, dishonest politicians use the same practices in everything they do. If they’re dishonest in one circumstance, you can bet they’re dishonest in most others as a matter of everyday practice.

Parkes missed the special council meeting on the Goodman Retention Pond Beaver Cull and the word at the time was that she was on a special mission on behalf of the city to Europe. Now that sounds important!

As it turns out, she was part of a UOIT delegation supporting a “twinning project” they had established with a Turkish university. Why she was part of the delegation, or more importantly, who paid her travel expenses, is probably a good question that should be investigated. She does seem to do a lot of travelling and earlier in this council term had made a pitch for increased political office budgets to cover travel expenses.

For a politician that jumped with both feet onto the MBA funding issue for the political opportunism presented, only after it had been exposed by private citizens, it seems odd that she would try to increase her own “travel entitlements” at the behest of the taxpayer. It’s almost like the pot calling the kettle black! We’d think any politician who was awake at the switch would have blown the whistle when the MBA issue first came to council attention in the budget documents which she voted for. Perhaps Parkes’s jumping on the MBA issue was retribution for Cullen’s role in exposing Parkes for leaving a downtown restaurant without paying her bill which resulted in the firing of Cullen’s son’s girlfriend who was Parkes’ waitress.

Louise Parkes also voted, in every possible instance, against my attempts to inform Oshawa voters of the ward/general vote plebiscite issue, and obviously was one of the councillors who supported the entire “secrecy” strategy to avoid public knowledge, information, and debate about the issue, which would have raised public awareness before the plebiscite vote.

When I mounted a facebook page, Oshawa O’Neill Community, and made the statement, “Both your city councillors, John Henry and Louise Parkes, are supporting the general vote which will steal your community city council reps from you, and In the event of a problem in your neighborhood, there will be no politician directly responsible and accountable to you and your neighbors,” Parkes made the statement televised at council that this was threatening and slandering her.”

Parkes didn’t want the O’Neill Community to know that she wanted to rob them of their guaranteed representatives on City Council---Some Slander! Some Threat! Some accountability from the “slandered” councillor! She didn’t want her community to know her vote!

With giant hyperbole, at an all candidates forum held at Durham College for the 2006 Federal Election, Federal Liberal Candidate, and local city councillor, Louise Parkes made the incredulous claim that she was responsible for bringing huge Federal and Provincial and GM Grants to UOIT for the establishment of a R&D Automotive Engineering Programs and Facilities there.

She also claimed credit for bringing a new hotel/Conference Center to the downtown which has since fallen through, and claimed credit for bringing in Glyn Laverick as owner/operator of the Regent Theatre which failed miserably, and she was the chief architect of the $250,000 city purchase of the Cullen Miniatures fiasco, and the chief proponent of the city spending milions more to develop a site to host the miniatures.

Incidentally, Laverick, who also operated the Music Hall on Toronto’s Danforth Avenue went bankrupt last Thursday. Parkes has a way of picking out “real winners.”

With a record like this, I think Oshawa would be better off without Louise Parkes in the political kitchen. She’d probably even turn a lunch with Barack Obama into another disaster.

Parkes is not alone in lying to or misleading the public.

Perhaps the biggest political lie of all time was Mayor John Gray’s pronouncement at the April 30, 2007 televised city council meeting, just prior to council voting to adapt the general vote. He stated that city council had no responsibility to inform the public about the details of the plebiscite question---what it meant, why it was asked, what difference it would make, why a change was needed, etc. He said the communication responsibility was that of the public who should organize and fundraise to run an information campaign if they felt strongly about the matter.

Amazing!!!! City Hall asks a question....and then the mayor says its the public's responsibility to inform everyone about it. Incredulous!

John Gray knew that informal third party citizen campaigns were illegal according to section 39 and 82 of the Ontario Municipal Elections Act. He also knew that section 39(8) of the same Act gave municipality’s unfettered spending ability to inform their voters about plebiscite questions. He would also have known that an accurate measure of voter opinion required an informed public. Because Council failed to inform the public, and promote public discourse and discussion on the issue, they showed they didn’t care.

Instead, council knew the result they wanted and fooled voters with a trick question designed to get the result they wanted---the General Vote which protected incumbent’s seats for life, if past Oshawa history with the General Vote is any indication.

John Gray’s sense of democracy is more like Stalin’s or Mussolini’s when Canada’s Supreme Court has ruled regularly that an informed public is a vital and necessary component of democratic rule.

In that same televised April 30, 2007 council meeting, Councillor Joe Kolodzie said he’d never heard of a government informing the public about a plebiscite question. That, shortly after the Ontario Government spent over $6 million informing the Ontario public about their own electoral reform question on the last Provincial ballot. Even then, the Commissioner of Elections was concerned that not enough money was spent to adequately inform the public.

In a press report following the plebiscite vote, Councilor Pidwerbecki stated that Oshawa needed a change because it was just getting too large for the general vote. What misinformation spouted by a 20+ year veteran councillor. He knew exactly the opposite was true. The bigger the municipality, the more it needs to be broken down into wards.

As an aside, Professor Andrew Sancton, the most respected expert on Municipal Governance in Canada, was in Oshawa a week ago, and stated without reservation that city council was absolutely wrong to impose the General Vote on a city the size of Oshawa.

For some, the position defines their identity. When Councillor Parkes mistakenly addressed Mayor John Gray as Councillor Gray at a recent committee meeting that was videoed and went viral among local facebook readers, he indignantly exclaimed, “I’m the mayor!” He exclaimed the same thing to me just prior to the recent Mayoral Debate when I greeted him as “John.” As a former part time bookkeeper, I guess John needs his fragile vision of self importance re-supported regularly by the “Mayor” or “Your Worship” titles, the same way Parkes reinforces her vision of glory and self importance from the people she’s said she’s met.

Is there no room for honesty, integrity, accountability, common sense and good old fashioned values in Oshawa City Politics?

Be sure to follow Bill’s radio broadcasts, “Eye on City Hall”,
every Monday, 6-9 pm EST, on http://www.ocentral.com/thewave/

Mayor John Gray and His Merry Band of Beaver Killers

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
JuLY 26, 2010


At the June 28, 2010 city council meeting, city council were presented with a staff report that addressed the problem of a colony of beavers building dams in the Goodman Creek storm management retention pond. It reported that city staff had engaged trappers to ensnare the colonizing beavers with underwater traps. This would cause the beaver to die a slow and terrifying death by drowning.

If you mistreated your dog in the same fashion, you would be called up on the carpet and subjected to a lengthy prison term, and an examination of the state of your mental health.

This deplorable staff information was accepted unanimously without comment by any member of council who are used to voting to destroy or demolish everything that comes to mind---city hall, North Oshawa arena, the civic, rundle house, the downtown, etc., etc., etc….and now, the Goodman Creek beaver colony!

This is just another episode in a never-ending litany of incidents, bad judgements, and political pratfalls by our current crop of Laurel and Hardy Keystone Kops "Comedy of Errors" City Council that can’t seem to get anything right. It would all be so funny, if it weren’t so damn serious.

This city council is so politically inept that it trashes this city under the “bad publicity” bus with virtually every action it takes.

This week, it’s the Goodman Creek beaver colony….next week---stay tuned!

This city council is so inept that city staff must be toying with the politicians by slipping in this beaver killing information at the last council meeting prior to the October 25th election. Perhaps city staff, like many city residents, wants to see a complete Election Day wipeout of all of the present incompetents.

Voters will have an important choice to make on the Oct 25, 2010, voting day---whether to re-elect the incumbents to give us more of the same incompetence and lack of responsible oversight or to replace the old and tired faces with new who would be more alert to responsibly managing the affairs of this city.

Voters will have the choice to have more beaver cullings, more MBA tuition fundings for politicians, more needless destruction of city arenas, more life-time retirement benefits for politicians, more needless and expensive construction projects like replacing our iconic council chamber and “A” wing of city hall with a misplaced aluminum-clad beer-can replacement, more salary and benefits perks for politicians, more Cullen miniatures purchases, more student housing fiascoes, more high taxes, and the never-ending list goes on...OR a complete break with the past and the election of a complete set of new faces on city council.

In watching Oshawa elections for the last 30 years, I’ve never seen such potential political talent stepping up to the election plate as I’ve seen this year.

Every councillor has a duty to yell and scream when they see irresponsible or unethical actions or bad judgements being made by council or city staff, or any individual member of council. Instead we see a council that is not self-policing in any way…a council whose members jump on politically expedient bandwagons only after bad/unpopular decisions have been exposed by the public.

Every member of council was silent on this “beaver issue” like they were so deafeningly silent on actions such as funding the $46,000 MBA’s or the $45,000 Mayor’s birthday party Stephen Colbert day, or the $1/4 Million Cullen Miniatures purchase, until the wastefulness was exposed by private citizens. And only then did some see political opportunity in jumping on the bandwagon already exposed by private citizens.

Voter’s have to be cognizant of those politicians who speak out of both sides of their mouth at once…voting one way at council and then supporting the opposite positions to voters.

This is not the first time this city council has voted in support of inhumane killing of beaver in this pond. They reluctantly admitted to killing six beaver here in November, 2009, after first lying to residents that the beaver had been captured and relocated.

The November killing raised considerable public furor at the time and you’d think that the fuss raised would have taught council and city staff that the public would not condone this brutal action. Guess they are either slow learners or just don’t give a damn about voter’s concerns.

Of course, we all know that staff can take control if there is weak leadership at the helm...and Mayor John Gray is often seen as an enthusiastic cheer leader for city staff. In his hard hearted fashion, fully supportive of the staff decision to slaughter the beaver and refusing to call a meeting to review the matter until forced to do so by a petition of the majority of council, Gray intoned, "We just have to get rid of those critters some way."

I received an email from Andrea Bragg, an Oshawa resident concerned that beavers in Goodman Pond were once again being inhumanely killed in the same barbaric fashion as last fall, and that despite the public concern raised at that time, city staff have not come up with recommendations that would include relocating the animals or installing a beaver pipe that would control water level buildups at the same time as allowing the beaver to continue to exist in the pond.

Ms. Bragg suggests that city hall’s action to drown the beavers, which graces Oshawa’s Coat of Arms in recognition of it being a First Nation’s Trading Post for beaver pelts in earliest times, is brutal, unethical, and unacceptable in present times.

Besides, beavers presence in the retention pond and their subsequent raising of water levels has resulted in the emergence of a more diverse ecosystem including ducks, swans, herons, fish, mink, muskrat, turtles, frogs, snakes and foxes, and a more interesting mix of plant life---a little bit of Canada’s cottage ecosystem right in the middle of Oshawa. Hell, the beaver are providing free engineering and labour to do a job of parks beautification and naturalization that city hall and its taxpayers would otherwise be spending big bucks to do. Perhaps city hall sees these busy beavers as a contentious labour issue!

The vast majority of city voters would agree with Ms. Bragg and it is totally unbelievable, that in this election year, no city council member would object to the inhumane culling of this beaver colony.

Ms. Bragg said her group was ready to call in the Toronto media, even though, as she says, “This city does not need any more negative publicity.” In my response to Ms. Bragg, I suggested that she should call in the Toronto media as the most expeditious way of trying to save the beaver, since any reasoned plea to city council usually falls on deaf ears, especially as council has recessed for the summer and will not now be meeting until after the October 25th election.

Even adverse publicity has not stopped this city council from irresponsible action in the past, but it is the best hope Ms. Bragg’s group has of stopping the senseless slaughter of the Goodman Creek beaver colony.

Ms. Bragg and Marissa Kata organized a protest rally attended by about 55 residents and a couple of city councillors at the Goodman Creek Retention Pond on Saturday, July 17. They also invited the Toronto Press.

In preparation for the July 17th event, concerned resident Jack Snedden was checking out the surroundings around the Goodman Creek beaver pond. Despite city hall’s assertions that the traps involved were underwater snares, he found two “loaded” beaver traps partly buried in the mud and vegetative material surrounding the pond. Had children stepped on these, they would have been seriously injured with expensive potential lawsuits lodged against the city.

Councillor Brian Nicholson, who was at the rally, insisted that these snares were not the ones engaged presently by the city and that these must have been left over from last November in the last beaver cull.

This lack of care is even more serious if the traps had been left there over the winter and had not been collected and accounted for by the “experts” who were paid to set the traps on behalf of the city.

As a result of the protest rally, enough councillor signatures were gathered to hold a special city council meeting on July 21 to review the earlier beaver killing decision. A motion by Brian Nicholson to immediately stop all beaver killings in the Goodman Retention Pond and for city staff to come up with a comprehensive plan to control water levels and flooding potential in city beaver ponds was passed on votes of Brian Nicholson, John Neal, Robert Lutcyk, Tito Dante Marimpietri, and April Cullen.

Opposed to the motion, and continuing to support the brutal slaughter of the animals, were Mayor John Gray and Councillors Nester Pidwerbecki, Joe Kolodzie, and Mary Anne Sholdra.

This was such a hot issue that Mayoral Candidates, Councillors Louise Parkes and John Henry, were not there to vote on this important issue---Guess they didn’t want anyone to know how they felt on this important issue and that speaks tons about their potential leadership of city council.

Be sure to follow Bill’s radio broadcasts, “Eye on City Hall”,
every Monday, 6-9 pm EST, on http://www.ocentral.com/thewave/

City Politicians Signal Intention to Work to Rule---an Early Victim of the General Vote

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
JuLY 19, 2010

City politicians have now voted to “Work to Rule!” They have decided to withdraw their service from responsibilities that don’t provide them a salary.

They will no longer serve as unpaid Council Representatives on the many Volunteer Boards of Community Organizations that create the social fabric of Oshawa life---like the Volunteer Board of the Oshawa Senior Citizen’s Centers.

City politicians have shown it is not important work for them to sit on these boards. Hopefully the many city volunteers who have sat on these boards for many years, and perform invaluable efforts on behalf of this city, will not follow the politician’s lead and make the same service withdrawal decisions. If this becomes the case, these organizations will flounder and fold and Oshawa and its citizens will be the losers.

Hopefully the community volunteers will prove to be more responsible than our city politicians and will not withdraw their service.

Councillor Nester Pidwerbecki was at a McLaughlin Art Gallery show opening a week ago representing the Mayor who was on a midweek holiday. Pidwerbecki was approached by a senior---a cultured lady who asked, “Why is city council withdrawing city council representatives from the Senior Citizen’s Centers Board of Directors?”

Pidwerbecki responded with the same stock answer he gives for taking a lead role in introducing the general vote to city elections.

“We have a new philosophy at city hall,” he said. “We want all of our council members to take a city-wide view in their council duties. We don’t want politicians to become parochial by taking on any special interests. And besides, he said, the councillors assigned to these non-paid roles never show up anyway.”

Perhaps Pidwerbecki was talking about himself for failing to attend as Council Rep at Board Meetings of voluntary organizations he was appointed to. Perhaps he showed up at this art opening only because its election year.

By withdrawing from the local volunteer boards, Politicians are isolating themselves from important aspects of city life. In Pidwerbecki’s comment, he also inferred that politicians don’t take interest in attending volunteer boards unless they are paid. Some philosophy eh?

The lady responded to Pidwerbecki’s explanation, “How will city council know what problems and challenges Oshawa Senior Citizen’s Centers are facing? Who will champion our interests and our needs on city council? Who will be our liaison with city administration?”

“Everyone will represent your interests on city council,” Pidwerbecki responded. “With our new philosophy, everyone is responsible for everything. That’s why we have introduced the general vote for the upcoming elections---to remove councillors from taking a special interest in any specific community.

How about applying Pidwerbecki’s philosophy to your workplace? Wipe out all of the specialized responsibilities of the staff and make everyone responsible for everything. Would anything get done? Of course not! When everyone is responsible for everything, no one is responsible for anything. It’d be a recipe for disaster in your workplace. Same for city hall!

For effective work, responsibilities have to be assigned. The benefits of assigned division of labour has been known and practiced since the beginning of time. Perhaps our council dinosaurs and flat earthers are in a time warp regressing beyond the cave man that even then practiced division of labour assigned responsibilities.

The general vote is seen by many of our aging councillors as a way they can reduce their workload and semi-retire, at the same time as securing their council seats till their death or resignation, and calling for greater salaries, office staff, and office space, because the 160,000 city size of their constituency will be twice the size of that of our MP’s and MPP’s.

Why a reduced workload? Half of a ward councillor’s responsibility and effort is looking after constituent concerns. Community work is time consuming, but with the removal of ward councillors, no politician will be specifically responsible for answering the concerns of any community or representing its needs on council. With the few votes your local concern represents, city politicians will not be any more interested in handling your problem than sitting on Boards of our voluntary community organizations, which is the first formally reduced workload casualty of the general vote.

Why a more secure job tenure? The maximum cost of city wide elections now has been pegged at $80,000 for city councillors and $90,000 for city and regional councillors, both about 7 or 8 times the maximum cost of ward elections. The only candidates able to raise campaign funds are the incumbents who take donations chiefly from the development industry, in return of course, for favorable votes supporting their donor’s projects. The high cost of elections wipe out serious and competitive campaigns of the vast majority of candidates since the only source of campaign financing for non-incumbents is their own bank account.

Over time, because of the high cost of city wide elections, all city councillors will eventually come to reside in a few of the richer areas of Oshawa leaving vast areas of the city unrepresented and forgotten on city council.

Pidwerbecki’s idea of politicians taking a city wide view to reduce parochialism is a spurious and misleading argument.

Ward representation didn’t result in parochialism among politicians. Every council action required a majority vote of ward councillors---the building of the Legends Centre in the North end, the building of the South end recreation centre, purchase of the Cullen miniatures, city hall reconstruction and refurbishment, demolition of North Oshawa Arena and the Civic, failure to protect historic Rundle House from the wrecking ball, etc., etc., etc.

Ward politicians have two functions---1) To look after the overall interests of the city, and 2) To handle the constituency concerns of their ward residents. This important latter function will be lost with the general vote.

In actual fact, the general vote will result in increased parochialism by city politicians. As all politicians come to reside in a few of the richer areas of the city, won’t these richer areas be better served by the politicians? We are already seeing this with the demolition or planned demolition of all south end arenas except for Donovan depriving the less mobile south end children from skating/hockey opportunity. These south end arenas have been replaced with new arenas in the newer richer North Oshawa communities. Rather than reduced parochialism, the general vote will result in increased parochialism as the politicians look after their home communities first.

If there is merit to the argument that city wide elections provide better government, we should apply the General Vote principles to Federal and Provincial elections which presently are ward systems. We should wipe out individual ridings to let politicians run across the Province and the Nation. The result? You guessed it! All of the MP’s and MPP’s would come from the higher population centers and low population low voter areas would be continually unrepresented and forgotten.

This is exactly what will happen in Oshawa with the general vote. If the general vote is better, wouldn’t it be used widely in the country? In fact, Oshawa will be the largest city in the country to use the general vote without the use of municipal political parties which are at present illegal in Ontario. The general vote is used only in small centers in the Province. Experts from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing have quoted an optimum size of about 20,000 for communities to use the general vote, which interestingly is also quoted as the optimum size for wards.

Oshawa general vote politicians will have constituency sizes about twice as large as our MP’s and MPP’s, a ludicrous state of affairs for local government which is supposed to be closest to the people.

This “parochialism” argument that Pidwerbecki put forward in terms of justifying politician’s withdrawal of city council representation on the voluntary boards of city organizations is a spurious bit of misinformation that Pidwerbecki spouts from time to time.

When we first got ward elections in 1985, Pidwerbecki was not on city council. He applauded the move as one of the best things to happen to Oshawa. “Now we shall see new faces on city council,” he said. “We will get rid of the country club that has been there too long!”

Now as a 20+ year member of the country club he once derided, he now champions its return. What a self-serving hypocrite!

His biggest bit of misinformation, though, was his comment on why Oshawa needed the general vote. “Oshawa is just getting too large for ward elections,” he claimed.

Of course, we all know that the larger a municipality, the more it needs ward elections. Can you imagine the City of Toronto going to city wide votes and voters across that city coping with a book-sized ballot of hundreds of candidates to select the 43 or so to be elected to Toronto City Council?

Does Pidwerbecki think the Oshawa voters are stupid?

We have seen city council devoting much time and effort in looking after their own self interests….improved health benefits, MBA education benefits, increased salaries, and handsome retirement/electoral defeat settlements---but the greatest foist of all was the introduction of the general vote.

Hopefully all of the strategizing they’ve done to look after their own self interest will backfire this time, and the whole lot will be turfed out on their ear.

We need politicians interested in looking after Oshawa for a change.

Be sure to follow Bill’s radio broadcasts, “Eye on City Hall”,
every Monday, 6-9 pm EST, on http://www.ocentral.com/thewave/

One for You and Two for Me!... Are some city politicians on the take?

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
June 7, 2010

While we undoubtedly have one or two city council members who are there to perform some ethical and valuable public service, we have others who are there to line their pockets with higher salaries than they’ve ever earned or could earn in the private sector, who play every ethical question so close to the line so as to seemingly erase the boundaries between right and wrong, and skim off every dollar in every way they can for their personal entitlements.

With the release of the recent Oliphant Inquiry commenting on the brown bags of cash former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney received from Airbus lobbyist Karl Heinz Shreiber, questions arise as to the honesty of elected officials everywhere and at every level. Mulroney, of course, stuffed the cash in a New York safety deposit box “forgetting” to declare it as income to Canada’s Income Tax authorities until it became public information.

Recently, Canada’s Federal Parliamentarians rebuffed Sheila Fraser, Canada’s Auditor General, from auditing the half billion dollars of expense money Canada’s 308 MP’s and 105 Senators burn through annually.

And recently, Oshawa City Council voted against public disclosure of their own expense records. What do they all want to hide? Is ethical public service less important to our elected officials than drowning their chops in the public trough? And isn't this secrecy contrary to the city's transparency policy?

To assure citizens that city politicians were acting in the city’s interest, City Council passed a by-law on October 14, 2008, putting in place a Council Charter as a guideline for the conduct of members of Council. It provides a single public statement of Council values, responsibilities and desired behaviour.

It stated, “Public service is a public trust, and as such, Council members hold positions of privilege. Every elected municipal official should be committed to the highest standards of ethical behavior and discharge their duties in a manner that recognizes, and is committed to, the well-being of the community."

The Charter Along with the transparency and accountability policy, we were told, will help ensure that the public interest is protected and Oshawa residents may have trust in the integrity and impartiality of their local government.” Good luck on this!

Council actions show that these are simply PR Documents which misrepresent the day-to-day values and actions of many of our politicians. These documents make it clear that the principles and values declared are operating guidelines only without any censure processes. Good thing for some of the politicians because some continue to operate in ways that most citizens would declare unethical, unfair, dishonest, and unprincipled.

Even though they were passed as bylaws…and you and I know that all bylaws have enforcement penalties---but not these bylaws, that have to do with council actions and behaviours.

In any case, we thought we’d look at some of their principles and just see how they’re working for the citizens of our city.

The charter says the key role of council is to “Act as the guardian of the public interest.” So we’d ask Mayor John Gray who trotted out this Council Charter with great fanfare how spending $46,000 of taxpayer money for the MBA’s was acting as a guardian of the public interest; how secretly spending $45,000 of taxpayer money on the Stephen Colbert Day (the Mayor’s $45,000 birthday party) was acting in the public interest; and we’d ask council how demolishing city arenas in older Oshawa and rebuilding north of Taunton was acting in the interest of the less mobile children in these older sections of Oshawa; and we’d ask council how needlessly demolishing our council chamber and “A’ wing of city hall and rebuilding at a cost exceeding $20 million is acting in the public interest. We’d ask the same question about the $40 Million GM Centre in downtown that loses $3 million annually was acting as a guardian of the public interest and about the $250,000 Cullen Gardens Miniatures purchase. We could go on asking this question about most of the city politician’s actions since this same gang has been on council.

The Charter’s first paragraph preamble says, “Municipal Council members hold positions of privilege. As leaders of the community, they are held to a higher standard of behavior and must discharge their duties in a manner that recognizes a fundamental commitment to the well-being of the community, and maintains and enhances public confidence and trust in the Corporation.

So Councillor Brian Nicholson attends Oshawa’s Committee of Adjustment, presided over by his spouse, Mrs. Kyle Nicholson, on behalf of one of his political donors in order to get development approvals through the Committee. What? Assisting his and his wife’s and his brother’s political donor to get development approvals!!! And this was for the selling a portion of Chopin Park initially assessed at over $180,000 for only $15000, with the city picking up all the standard developer costs of over $10,000 to allow the developer to build 24 apartment units? We haven’t established whether there was going to be a “sweetheart deal” with all of the lot levy developer charges but fortunately with the widespread media attention to this sell-off of our parkland, the deal did not get council approval.

It’s interesting that Nicholson went to bat for his political donor friend even though city planning officials had always recommended against approval. We don’t know what discount was proposed over the $408,000 the developer would have been expected to pay in development charges for the 24 units he was proposing. As former long time City and Regional Councillor, Bruce McArthur wrote, this guy was certainly one "lucky" developer to have a friend like Councillor Brian Nicholson.

So much for that “higher standard of behavior and discharging of duties in a manner that recognizes a fundamental commitment to the well-being of the community.

Nicholson's action raises serious concerns. Are politicians expediting development and selling their votes for political donations? This is an extremely serious question and an important reason to make corporate donations illegal and publicly fund election campaigns.

And what do you think about the ethics of a city politician representing a donor in front of his wife to get some development favour? Such favours are all at the expense of Oshawa taxpayers, of course.

The question of city political appointments for the spouses of politicians is very questionable and smells of nepotism, corruption, and profiteering. Nepotism and Cronyism are both defined as political corruption by wikopedia. All city hall actions should be squeaky clean and at arms lengths. Nicholson, no doubt, lobbied and voted for his wife to get that chairmanship of Oshawa’s Committee of Adjustment…but representing one of his political donors in front of his wife is reprehensible in all ways and stinks of rot. Former City and Regional Councillor and now Mayor Candidate, Cathy Clarke, lobbied and voted for her spouse Michael to get the City Harbour Commission Appointment.

All these connections sounds like Chicago politics in the day of iron fisted Mayor Richard J Daley.

The requirement of the City Charter in, “Ensuring the accountability and transparency of all decisions and operations of the municipality,” does not exist for this City Council. The city still precedes virtually every meeting of council with an in-camera session. And the Mayor personally dictated the $46,000 funding for his birthday party, the Stephen Colbert Day, and even city councillors could not get the cost for this until one filed a freedom of information request at a cost of $110. But the truly telling example of negating this principle was the Ward/General Vote Plebiscite and for which the Mayor said the city had no responsibility to inform the public of the question, its meaning, the difference it would make, etc. saying all this communication responsibility was that of concerned citizens themselves.

In respect of the Charter Principle, “Act as the guardian of the public interest," one need look no further than Councillor April Cullen having the gall to apply to use city tax money to fund her MBA degree tuitions, and when she is on her last courses, announces that she will not be running again, and takes an instructional job with Durham College, a job that she would be unqualified for without her taxpayer funded MBA. Her $100,000 political salary, I guess, was not enough for her to pay her own tuitions, despite the fact that many parents and their children go deep in debt to pay for their own education. Cullen justified the taxpayer cost as “only 48¢ per citizen over her four year term…as if she places costs above principles. Shame!

Usually when one has an employer funded tuition, one is required to work for a declared number of years to insure employer return on the investment. Pay back of the tuitions is now necessary as taxpayers are receiving no benefit from this expenditure. City council must vote to withhold Cullen’s tuition costs from the healthy retiring allowances she will receive. Of course, an ethical politician would direct that the tuitions would be withheld. We’ll keep an interested eye on how this develops.

And, of course, if city council was really interested in acting as a guardian of the public interest, they would have stopped approvals of these tuitions at the beginning. But politicians wouldn’t want to step on other politicians sense of entitlements, would they, for fear their own entitlements would be withheld.

We’d ask how the extension of health benefits to retiring and defeated politicians recently approved at the final hours of this council prior to the upcoming election is acting in the public interest, or is it, as is so much of council business, acting in the politician’s interest.

The Charter Principle, “Treat each other, City staff and members of the public with courtesy, understanding, trust and respect, at all times,” is a real laugher. To hear the bickering and the accusations and to witness the widespread council tension, conflict, and infighting is shameful although this is to be expected when all politicians are competitors for the same votes in the upcoming "General Vote" municipal elections. Council behavior seems to be more like a school yard brawl than adults working cohesively for the benefits of this city. And council members sometime extend this lack of respect and aggressiveness to citizens making presentations to council and its committees. With this negative and bullying behavior extended to each other and to private citizens, we have a dysfunctional and non-productive council…and Oshawa is the loser.

A key element of the City Charter is that politicians “Not use the influence of his or her public office for any purpose other than for the exercise of his or her official duties.” This Charter principle is obviously not important to Councillor Brian Nicholson. He has not only represented his political donors in front of the city’s Committee of Adjustment, he has used his political office to represent individuals, presumably at a fee, at other hearings. Apparently Nicholson presented his Regional and City Councillor business card at a Landlord and Tenant Board hearing in Toronto as his credential.

The city subsequently received a letter from Bryan Hackett, Hackett Simpson Tripodi LLP, Barristers & Solicitors, on behalf of Adel Kirloss, Landlord, inquiring as to whether Councillor Nicholson’s appearance before the Landlord and Tenant Board as an agent for the Tenant concerning a Landlord & Tenant matter (TST-01070-IN) with respect to 196 Spadina Road, Toronto was authorized by City Council.

It would be interesting to check to see whether city or regional council or committee meetings were scheduled on the day(s) of this hearing to establish whether Nicholson was putting his own financial interests ahead of his responsibility to voters.

Perhaps, the law office involved should have filed a complaint against Nicholson with the law society for acting as a "non-qualified" agent for a defendant in a pseudo-legal hearing.

Such complaints in the past have resulted in severe penalties for politicians which ultimately resulted in huge legal costs and the loss of their council seat.

Space limitations here prohibit me from further exploding the myth that the City Council Charter has on assuring positive values, ethics and behavior of city council members.

The Charter was only a PR Document designed to fool the gullible public about the true actions, attitudes, and motivations of many of our city council members.

While only some members of city council have been named in this article, more are guilty of serious transgressions. For example, all those who voted for the General Vote---Councillors Pidwerbecki, Kolodzie, Parkes, Sholdra, Marimpietri, Henry, and Mayor Gray were all voting out of their own self-interest and do not deserve your support in the upcoming Oct. 25, 2010 municipal elections. They put their own interests in getting re-elected until their death or retirement in front of the city's interest in having a representative, accountable, functional, and productive city government.

They designed a convoluted and difficult to understand plebiscite question and followed a strategy to limit public information and discussion in order to catch voters "cold" in the voting booth with a question they didn't understand, had not heard or considered, and worded in a convoluted way such that the "Yes" vote most voters would give, if they didn't understand the question, resulted in the change the politicians wanted.

This is vote fixing, a manipulation of the public, and an underhanded assault on this country's democratic principles.

City voters must throw out the incompetent and self-serving bums at the earliest opportunity if we are to get this city on track again.

City voters must elect a local government that works!

Be sure to follow Bill’s radio broadcasts, “Eye on City Hall”,
every Monday, 6-9 pm EST, on http://www.ocentral.com/thewave/

DO YOU DESERVE THIS KIND OF JUDGEMENT LEADING YOUR CITY?

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
February 22, 2010


This week’s column is about more reckless and irresponsible spending of your taxes, like a drunken sailor on shore leave, and is just another example of why Oshawa has the highest taxes in the GTA.

The issue of the week is Mayor John Gray’s personal approval for taxpayers to fund the MBA degrees for his politically appointed executive assistant, James Anderson, and for Councillor April Cullen, both of whom are studying for taxpayer funded MBA’s in Community Economic Development at Cape Breton University, which is ranked 98 out of 100 Canadian MBA Schools.

Neither of these individuals may be around after the next election with the outraged anger citizens are demonstrating at this wasteful and unethical expenditure which breaches city policy in every way.

Under the city’s corporate training and financial assistance policy, staff and council can use city cash, up to $2,000 in one year and $5,000 over three years, for “cost-effective training and educational opportunities.”

Any extra cost must be approved by the department head and city manager, but John Gray, not the city manager, signed off on both MBAs costing taxpayers $46,000— something he says he’s entitled to do as CEO of the corporation.

In a letter to concerned citizen, Melissa Kata, who has led the charge in illuminating this important issue, Rick Stockman, Commissioner of Corporate Services, stated in a Feb. 10, 2010 letter, “The Council approved “Corporate Training and Financial Assistance Policy” applies to Council members and staff. The policy requires that the City Manager approve any staff applications for financial assistance of the magnitude indicated. The approved candidates are few in number as any funding must be directed at career, organizational development or succession planning.

If approved, the applicant must enter into an agreement to remain with the City for a prescribed period or proportionally reimburse the Corporation if they leave prior to the end of the stated period.

In the case of the identified individual and Councillor, they fall under the Mayor’s Office, and the Mayor authorized the educational expenses in his capacity as the Chief Executive Officer.

If the approval of the councilor and his executive assistant do fall under the Mayor’s jurisdiction, as suggested, don’t you think that the mayor would be expected to give approvals under the same strict conditions as applied to staff?

In this case, John Gray personally approved $46,000 for Councillor April Cullen and his Executive Assistant, James Anderson.

Gray says he’s entitled to disregard established city policy.

This smells like Gray’s personal and private $40,000 spending approval for his own birthday party---the Colbert day.

He’s found a new way of governing our city---like a dictator, he’s making some expensive spending decisions by personal fiat.

Did we elect a mayor who figures he can do whatever he damn well pleases with our money? It seems so!

Besides these MBA’s and the Stephen Colbert Day, he’s driving around in that bright yellow boy toy 426HP muscle car purchased for him at taxpayer expense.

Gray certainly seems to feel a sense of entitlement for himself and his chosen few on council, to live high on the hog at taxpayer expense.

Perhaps what is really at question here is the mayor’s judgment, as this issue has become a lightening rod of citizen anger.

It’s become a tangible symbol of entitlement, over-spending, and unethical disregard for tax payer’s hard-earned tax dollars.

To defend this MBA expenditure is ridiculous and embarrassing, yet some city bureaucrats who have no other choice are forced to clench their teeth and remain silent at the Mayor’s largesse with his council and office friends.

James Anderson, Gray’s executive assistant was appointed by Gray and is not even a city employee.

He is on contract to the city while Gray is Mayor and will depart with Gray, probably in October.

Why is he even considered an eligible candidate to take advantage of the city’s education policies?

While the staff policy extends to council members, it makes no mention, nor should it, of extending this benefit to contract employees.

Nor does it mention any possibility of extending the spending limit beyond the $5000 three year limit which the Mayor’s largesse has greatly exceeded with his $23,000 gift to each of the two MBA candidates.

Tuition benefits are only offered to selected employees by employers when there is a long-term benefit to the employer.

This is never offered to contract employees who are always hired on their existent skills…and politicians should never be elected in the first place if their performance is having to be supported by considerable additional education at taxpayer expense. I have never heard of getting a job and then seeking the training to do it.

Citizen outrage has sparked council candidate Bill Steele to start a rapidly growing facebook group “Invoice for April Cullen and James Anderson---We want our money back now!”

Mr. Steele also sent an email to the press and the individuals involved stating “Your MBA is something that the residents of OSHAWA are opposed to, is abusive to our financial position in Oshawa, and was granted under circumstances that should be investigated.

I strongly suggest that you make the repayment of the $23,000.00 you took for your MBA.

You have refused to explain why the taxpayers should be on the hook for so much money when our City is in financial trouble.

Give us our money back.

I am asking that you please pay the $23,000.00 in full. Arrangements will probably be made (to collect) after you leave office in the fall.”

According to Steele, Rick Stockman, the Commissioner of Corporate Services, said John Gray had never before been involved in such training approvals. He has never signed off on any single training request.

John Gray’s precedent setting single signature approval over ride’s Oshawa's established policy which requires multiple approvals but the Mayor’s single signature approval allows him to gift his friends and council supporters MBA's at $23,000 each while denying council members who don’t toe his line access to this funding.

It must be emphasized, however, that funding degrees for any politicians or political appointees is never justified. We expect these individuals to come to the position fully qualified. Only seminar type instruction on topics needed to fully understand complex issues they’re asked to vote on is justified.

This, despite the fact that Nestor Pidwerbecki reportedly headed over to his Polish homeland at taxpayer expense in recent years to check out their “state of the art(?)” incinerators as research on the Durham Region Incinerator being built on the Oshawa border that both he and Councillor Kolodzie voted for, and which is going to pump considerable health damaging particulate matter into the atmosphere and into the lungs of our children.

I believe the Mayor has shown questionable and faulty judgement in approving wasteful expenditures---the $40,000 Colbert day expenditure that he personally approved without council’s knowledge, the yellow muscle “boy toy” camarro automobile he bought at taxpayer expense, and his statement that city council had no responsibility to inform citizens about the general vote plebiscite---and now funding MBA’s for Councillor April Cullen and his Executive Assistant who is not a city employee but is on contract to the mayor.

It just makes me wonder if John Gray has good enough judgement to be our Mayor and City CEO.

I say, enough is enough!

I believe that all Oshawa citizens owe a big vote of thanks to Marissa Kata and Regional Councillor Candidate, Bill Steele, for taking a lead role in investigating this travesty and exposing it for all to see.

Be sure to follow Bill’s radio broadcasts, “Eye on City Hall”,
every Monday, 6-9 pm EST, on http://www.ocentral.com/thewave/

Introductory Column...Nov. 15, 2009

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
November 15, 2009
Mr. Longworth is a retired school principal with a Master’s Degree from the University of Toronto and an Undergraduate Degree from Queen’s University. He was Oshawa’s Federal Conservative Candidate in the 1990 Federal By-election and a past president of Oshawa (Parkwood) Rotary Club. Since retirement, he has worked in China, England, and Egypt. He has been an Oshawa resident since 1972. He writes the blog www.oshawaspeaks.com which comments on Oshawa City Hall.

I am pleased to have been asked to write this weekly column, “Eye on City Hall” and host a weekly radio show commencing in early December on the same topic.

In both of these endeavours, I will cut through the spin at city hall to bring you the “truthful” message that politicians do not want you to hear.

I have been a long-time city hall watcher. I’m also a strong believer in the key democratic ideals and principles of an open, accountable, responsive, inclusive, and honest government whose key role is to serve the people-- important principles which I’m confident you also believe in…but which are being eroded in Oshawa

Because of my strong belief in these principles, I worked for a number of years to bring ward voting to Oshawa and was personally responsible for bringing ward elections to Oshawa in 1985. I personally designed and presented the winning case to the 21 day OMB hearing, the longest of its kind in Provincial history, and at the time was widely acknowledged as a premier expert on the question of ward voting vs. the general vote for the election of municipal councils in Canada. A study of our case and our strategy was published at the time by a Trent University Professor in “Municipal World” Magazine.

Also, because of my strong belief in these democratic principles, I will give you the respect and honest and straight-forward analysis you deserve…something that is drastically lacking from the bunch at city hall. City politicians often treat you like the typical mushroom…they feed you sh-- and keep you in the dark. I believe you deserve more.

A case in point---City Hall placed a plebiscite question on the last municipal ballot in respect of ward elections vs. the general vote. They worded the question in the most complicated way possible and voted to not provide you any information about the question…what it meant…what difference it would make to you…why the question was asked since the existing system had never been subject to any public concern…or why a change was needed...or why the system we used which was also used in virtually every community in the country was insufficient for Oshawa. If City Hall wanted an accurate measure of voter opinion, don’t you think they would have provided you this background information?

Realizing a large number of voters will vote “YES” to a question they don’t understand, council worded the convoluted plebiscite question which required voters to vote “NO” to keep their existing ward system while “YES” supported the change the councilors wanted. The mayor in a deceitful manner states the question had to be worded in the “affirmative”…a “spin” that may convince many people but one that my Master’s Degree does not help me see this as supporting the way the question was asked. The fact is Provincial Law governing plebiscites makes no such condition---only that plebiscite questions must have “YES” or “NO” answers.

In another deceitful comment, the mayor said that it was not the city’s responsibility to inform voters about the meaning and ramifications of the plebiscite question stating this was a responsibility of the concerned public to fundraise and inform the public. He knew such third party campaigns are contrary to Ontario Election Law and that the same law provides unlimited spending ability to the city to inform the public about such matters. He would have been truthful if he respected you!

Councillor Nester Pidwerbecki was quoted at the time as saying Oshawa was just getting too large for ward voting. Ludicrous! Exactly the opposite is true. Large jurisdictions absolutely require ward voting.

Don’t we deserve an honest mayor and honest councillors that level with the people?

We shall examine many specific examples of deceit and foolishness in future articles in this column.

Democracy absolutely requires an informed public and City Council refused to give you information you required to make an informed and knowledgeable choice. Because Council refused to provide the information, they didn’t care about the accuracy of the result. They just knew the result they wanted and manipulated the system to get it. This is not the democracy our soldiers fought and died for. Because of Council’s failure to insure an informed public, the plebiscite result is completely invalid and does not justify a change in election system.

To City Council, the end justifies the means. Lying and deceit are a common practice in putting forward support for their decisions. We shall examine many such examples over the coming weeks.

In terms of the plebiscite, City Council knew the result they wanted and manipulated the question and the process to get their desired result. They wanted a result that would protect their council seats and their rear ends from any serious electoral challenge. With salary and perks like holiday travel expenses to any place they can find an excuse to visit, car allowances of $100 per week, pension and health benefits, food and entertainment expenses, advertising expenses like their Remembrance Day messages purchased with your tax dollars, and now their university tuition expenses etc., etc., etc., all approaching $500,000 for part-time work over their four year terms, they wanted a system that would protect this windfall. That is the real reason why we will have the general vote. City politicians wanted a system that would serve them---a system that let them hide in the weeds and still be elected--be damned accountable, responsible, inclusive, representative local government, all of which have taken a back seat to politician’s own interests.

Your city politicians have given Oshawa an election system not used in any large city in the country. If it was a better system, don’t you think it would be widely used?

Oshawa will be the largest city in the country and probably the world to use this system of voting. The only way this system could work is when combined with the use of municipal political parties which are outlawed by Ontario Municipal Election Law having to do with fund raising, expenditure reporting, party approval of candidates, and lack of party identification on the ballot. If the general vote was better, wouldn’t it be used widely in the country?

The general vote makes all politicians responsible for all parts of the city. Try that organization in your workplace and let everyone be responsible for everything. When everyone is responsible for everything, no one becomes responsible for anything! City politicians have stolen your guaranteed community represention on council.

The general vote also makes every city politician responsible to twice as many voters as our Federal and Provincial Government members. That is ludicrous for a local government that is supposed to be closest to the people. Mark my words. It won’t be long before politicians are asking for wage parity with these senior government members as they’ll be claiming equal responsibility.

The general vote will produce an impossible and unworkable ballot with the names of up to 100 candidates for the various offices with the names of incumbent politicians standing out because of their efforts to get their names known. Politicians will do whatever is required to get elected. If name recognition is important, that will dominate politician’s efforts and time. This leads to a dysfunctional council as all politicians are competitors for the same vote and thus they will backbite, bitch, bicker and grandstand to grab the press.

We have seen ample evidence of this dysfunction. Mayor John Gray has called certain members of his council “Stooges” and Councillor Louise Parkes has recently sent an email to ratepayer groups in which she refers to municipal staff as "unelected bureaucrats with big dreams," and councillors as "blindfolded overseers with rubber stamps that treat their council job as a hobby." While controversial to air dirty laundry in public, the quote about her fellow councilors is probably quite accurate. The gist of her email though was to prohibit city bureaucrats from answering press inquiries since in a general vote, it is important for politicians to grab all the press ink to enhance their “name recognition.”

Under ward voting, politicians have to serve the public and respond to their concerns because every single vote is important. Not so in the general vote where 25,000 votes or so will be required for election. Instead the gods to the general vote politicians will be large groups like churches, trade unions, the golf club, etc. in the hopes that these groups will encourage their city-wide membership to support “friendly” politicians, and of course, the development industry which will provide the huge city-wide election funds to “friendly” politicians. Which system would serve you and your neighbours best?

Under Oshawa’s last period of general vote elections, the 7 councils leading up to the change to ward elections in 1985, not one politician out of 107 elected over that time lost their seat by the vote. All change took place through the death or resignation of members and not one politician lived south of King Street. Half of council members lived the old ward 6 in the city’s North End’s and a third of council members lived in one polling subdivision of about 100 houses at the east end of Regent Drive. Only the richer areas of Oshawa were represented on Council. Not one politician lived south of King Street which in those days was about half of Oshawa. By adopting the general vote, politicians have stolen your and “real” vote.

Political accountability is a direct function of voter’s ability to defeat underperforming councillors. Since councilors couldn’t be defeated, they were not accountable. They could (and did) do anything to you without the fear of electoral defeat. With sky high taxes and the exploding Oshawa debt, and many other foolish decisions, present politicians certainly have fear of the ward system that increases the need for careful and prudent management of the city’s affairs.

With the general vote, politicians know that they will get away with such fiascoes as the Cullen Gardens Miniatures purchases, the discriminatory student housing practices, having the highest taxes in the GTA, the indiscriminate use of expensive consultants, their “search and destroy” missions to demolish city assets like city hall and our arenas and replace them with north end facilities thus depriving south end children of arenas…and the list goes on and on.

Wake up Oshawa. Don’t let the politicians get away with all this! We need ward elections to have some control over their reckless ways!