It’s Tax Time Again.... Get Ready For Your Annual Tax Hit!

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and Unfiltered Opinion
Reprinted from Oshawa Central Newspaper
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
February 21, 2011


Doesn’t matter that Oshawa is the highest taxed place in the GTA.

Doesn’t matter that we had a tax revolt in the city just prior to the last election and so voters turfed 64% of the past council out of office.

Doesn’t matter that virtually all those elected were calling for tax cuts, tax freezes, or holds on tax increases.

So hold your hats! Looks like we’re gonna be hit with another tax shot that’s gonna blow your wallet to smithereens.

It’s the season of political doublespeak and city staff and council members are priming you for a 1.4% tax increase on the proposed 2011 city budget.

During the election campaign, John Henry pledged financial accountability to taxpayers. He promised to go over the budget with a fine tooth comb with a process he called zero based budgeting whereby all line items would be generated from the ground up. “We’d start with zero dollars and build up the budget line by line justifying every expenditure along the way,” he said. With that promise we’d be expecting a change in the process, wouldn’t we?

Any change in the process though would have had to result from direction from council. But there was no motion! There was no discussion! There was no intent on Henry’s part to change the budget process! All of that gobbledygook about a new budget process was just there to fool the people and win votes. It was all a big lie! The only grand scheme Henry announced were two night time public meetings as opposed to daytime public meetings. Henry’s election promises to impose a new system were quickly forgotten upon his election....and by this he has broken the public trust in the biggest issue facing voters in the recent election.

The night time budget meetings were poorly attended by the public with only one person attending the first of the two meetings. Interested ratepayers know that even forensic accountants among the public would not be any more successful in wading through all of the ill defined budget lines than the politicians in comprehending the bureaucrat’s spending wish lists, BS, and ill defined budget lines so cleverly crafted so as to hide any disclosure they want from prying eyes and questioning minds.

Guess that’s why only one member of the public attended the first meeting...voters know it’s only a charade...and they don’t want to be used!

In any case, I pointed out during the election campaign that political oversight of the budget with the system Henry proposed would be an impossible task as bureaucrats have all of the detailed knowledge about the operations of city hall and hold all the trump cards in the budget battles. In the classic contest between bureaucrats and politicians, bureaucrats always win.

It’s like child’s play for bureaucrats to play pussy cat with weak politicians hiding all of their wish lists in mountains of numbers which are often rounded up in multiples of $5000 or $10,000 to provide plenty of space to hide the fat.

The budget hides so much excess fat to cover a myriad of unbudgeted items like huge consultant’s fees to supplement the handsomely paid but apparently inept city staff, and the almost $1/2M combined city/regional retiring allowances for defeated Oshawa politicians. Despite all of these unbudgeted costs, last year's .9% tax increase still generated a $650,000 surplus.

Excuses are always given for budget increases and this year it is expiring labour contracts and increased worker health insurance premiums, etc., but this is not new. There are always attempts at justifying requested budget and thus tax increases.

Bureaucrats have suggested some very politically unpalatable tax increases to replace lost tax revenue should politicians want to reduce the proposed residential tax hikes. They’ve suggested, for example, that reducing the proposed budget to only a 1% residential tax increase could be accomplished by: 1) Increased fees for downtown metered parking, 2) Introducing a $5 youth user fee for outdoor sports fields, and 3) Increasing senior’s basic annual membership charge for city recreational facilities from $5 to $122.37 yearly. They don't get it that these increased fees would greatly reduce participation.

No where do city officials suggest re-prioritizing budgeted items to cut city spending or indeed looking for increased efficiencies to make up the shortfall.

When you give the city staff the responsibility for coming up with the budget without giving them guidelines or direction, you are not likely to get anything different from past practices....and certainly not a hold or cut in taxes....that would only come as a result of demands from strong politicians.

Had I been elected as mayor, I would have led council to direct the city manager to present a budget reflecting a 3% tax cut for city property owners without any service cuts. And we would have sent back the budget as many times as necessary until the bureaucrats got it right.

Such a system would have caused city officials to look for increased efficiencies, set priorities, and gain some appreciation for administering the city without the benefit of a budget that balloons as much as necessary to include anything they damn well please. Such a system would even work to change the mental set of administers so they would have to start living within a fixed income budget like the rest of us.

Such a focus on limited finances would also focus the entire city staff to exercise more care in their expenditures. If the bosses don’t give a damn about wasteful spending, why should the front line workers.

As an example of not giving a damn about public expenses, some city workmen were doing some sidewalk and curb repair work on my street last summer and abandoned the barricades and sidewalk metal forms on the boulevard and finally picked them up close to two months after the work was completed when a neighbour called city works on a number of occasions, finally getting action when he threatened to take the stuff to the dump. Another example of lack of care are the snow plow operators beating the hell out of the curbs so as to create summer make-work projects.

The wastage of the make-work practices of many city hall workers reminds me of the old union “featherbedding” tactics of duplicating and then trashing work in unionized newspaper offices for work that had not been done in-house.

According to the Ontario Public Sector Salary Disclosure List, the city had 71 employees making more than $100,000 in 2009, with salaries ranging from just over $250,000 for the city manager and an additional four earning over $150,000 annually. This is significantly more than the vast majority of these individuals would earn in the private sector....and yet with all these handsomely paid workers, city hall still requires vast sums to be spent on consultant’s reports.

We need a new kind of business thinking whereby officials must figure out how to do more with less....the same as in the private sector.

Without focussing employee attention on waste, fat, improved productivity, and improved efficiency, you perpetuate the idea that these are not important...that city hall with politician’s blessing can simply go to the people for more and more cash every year.

The only way to focus attention on the bottom line and controlled spending is to determine the upper limits of spending at the beginning of the budget process and have city staff work to deliver more with less.

After all, this is the approach that must be taken by every private sector business if it expects to survive in this competitive world.

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

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/

Heard on the campaign trail

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
September 27, 2010

It is quite revealing out on the campaign trail these days. The biggest message you get immediately is the profound anger of voters at the antics of city hall.

Almost 100% of voters you meet at their doors bring up Oshawa’s high taxes and many can back up this concern by quoting facts and figures of friends and relatives tax costs in other municipalities.

One “property owner” I chatted with last Thursday, has been to city hall many times to get property rezoned and has been frustrated many times by, as he says, the insignificant peons sitting behind the desks at city hall who are frustrating and stalling progress in this city at every turn.

Invariably people point to the ineffective leadership of Mayor John Gray and want to turf him out of office.

Many residents are so sick and tired of this city council that they want to kick out the whole bunch and put new faces in every council seat.

Incumbency, they’re saying, is like a noose around their political necks. Council have fallen into every political pothole possible and have invented others to fall into if they weren’t just there naturally. People are fed up!

Voters are mentioning high taxes, the MBA’s, Cullen Miniatures foolishness, lifetime political health benefits, wasteful spending on city hall demolition and renewal, and the change to the General Vote which is producing an impossible ballot for voters to make sensible choices.

They place the blame on every incumbent council member for their role in helping city council fall into every mistake, mis-step, and mess-up possible and it falls head first drowning in every pothole it creates.

Over the last few days, I have heard the following comments:

• Hey Bill...you’re like the Rob Ford of Oshawa with your promise of tax cuts and shaking up city hall---We need it and I like it!...a lawyer...9/22/10

• Bill---saw you on the Roger’s TV mayoral debates and was really impressed. Love the way you went after the dishonesty of some of the politicians exposing them for what they are. Thanks for letting us know that Louise Parkes took a 54% salary and expense spending increase in the first 3 years of this term. I thought her press calling for 5% political salary rollbacks and her signs that say “Fair Taxes” showed she agreed with spending restraint. With her huge salary increases in this time of restraint, I know that her signs and calls for salary rollbacks are deceptive. Now with these deceptive tactics, I don’t think I trust anything she says. Boy...did she ever have us fooled!

• With the high Oshawa taxes, my wife and I want to sell and pull out of Oshawa.....heard numerous times

• The high Oshawa taxes are making it impossible for me to sell my house without taking a huge loss.

• My high Oshawa taxes are like having a second mortgage on my house---a Columbus resident who pays taxes of $12,000 yearly

• That was really stupid spending on the demolition and rebuilding of parts of city hall and I like your “Good Government Plan” that will seek public approval for these big projects and increases in politician’s salaries and benefits...A Glen’s Resident...9/22/10

• Politicians have introduced the General Vote to try to insure their election based on name recognition. Up here in Columbus, the name recognition of incumbents will lose them votes.

• Mr. Longworth---after explaining your plan to cut taxes by 3% annually, I believe you and trust you to carry out this promise. I might have been a little sceptical before I met you and heard your explanation. I now know it is completely sensible and doable after listening to you....a Glen’s resident, 9/22/10

• Mr. Longworth---thanks for stopping to chat....I’m impressed! ---a Glen’s Resident....9/22/10

• We have to throw out the whole bunch....heard numerous times

• I moved from Whitby and am really surprised at my taxes here which are much higher than I paid in Whitby---think I made a mistake!...a Glen’s Resident, 9/22/10

• Mr. Longworth----your sign---“Stop the Madness,” says it all!

• Mr. Longworth---I like your message! Can I have a sign and some of your literature to distribute in my community?

• Mr. Longworth---got your literature today. Can you come over to chat with me so I can put my questions to you face to face? My neighbours and I are mad as hell about taxes and there are a lot of votes for you here!

• How did we get this ridiculous General Vote and who is responsible?

• If Parkes gets elected as Mayor, the city will be in trouble and I’m making plans to ditch the city if that happens. Gray looks good compared to what Parkes would do!

• I see in the paper that Parkes spent $23 less on her cellphone bills than the total of 8 of her fellow councillors. Why is she calling for spending restraint when she hasn’t seemed to be exercising it herself?

• Why does Parkes have “Fair Taxes” on her signs when she seems to have the highest expenses on council?

• I know a lot of people who wouldn't vote for Louise Parkes if she was running against the devil --- a facebook comment

• When is Henry going to start saying something about his plans for this city if he becomes Mayor? By the way, thanks for telling me he was the councillor responsible for bringing lifetime health benefits for retired councillors to this city.

• Stop the press…just received as I’m writing this---I’m fed up! Council needs focussed and responsible leadership. You’ve got my vote! Please put your sign on my lawn…Doug J.

This campaigning really puts you in touch with the people of Oshawa and tells me I’m on the right track and the same track since being nominated on January 4, the first day for nominations. And, I’m not one to do a turn-around at election time!

I’m the only mayoral candidate calling for tax cuts and this is the key issue with ratepayers. They know that my tax cuts will cut out about $3.5 million annually from city hall’s approximate $115 residential tax revenue and feel, as I do, that this is a slow enough cutback to allow city hall to cut out the fat, waste, and inefficiencies, without any service cuts, and foster a mindset of restraint in every bureaucrat’s mind.

You too, can jump on the exploding “Longworth” bandwagon!

This is an important election to put Oshawa on the right track and I encourage every voter to become as informed as possible about the Mayor Platforms particularly, as it will be the Mayor who is most influential in setting the city policy framework for the next four years.

There has never been a time in the last decades that we’ve needed change more....and there has never been a time in the last decades that we need voters to be informed and get out and vote on October 25.

And now for one more benefit of this campaign….I’ve lost 15 pounds! Anyone want to help? This is better than weightwatchers.

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/

The screwing of the Oshawa taxpayer---the secret city hall doesn’t want you to know!

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
June 28, 2010

UOIT/Durham College is going to flood the downtown with students and this is going to cost all Oshawa taxpayers dearly.

It’s going to have enormous impact on every homeowner’s tax bill.

The university is critical to the city’s future but its expansion should not come on the backs of the Oshawa taxpayer.

This is a “scoop” not reported by city officials, city politicians, or any news media.

We’re exposing it here first in the Oshawa Central Newspaper…but undoubtedly the story will be picked up for future wider distribution and be of vital interest to all city taxpayers.

In an earlier column, I indicated that moving large masses of UOIT students downtown and creating a second UOIT campus there was a huge mistake.

Even though Mayor John Gray claimed movement of UOIT facilities downtown was part of a planned “domino effect” towards city center renewal, I argued lack of city and political vision discouraged foot traffic from the downtown thus making it difficult to run viable downtown businesses.

This resulted in huge inventories of vacant space and empty storefronts that could be had at distress prices.

This city council, most of whom have been on council for too long, had failed over their decades on council to develop a viable vision for a vibrant downtown. The city centre was dead---and nothing was being done for renewal.

Flooding the downtown with students will exacerbate the problem in a number of ways.

In all likelihood, the well-publicized problems surrounding the main UOIT campus will now be duplicated downtown further discouraging the consuming adult population from shopping or dining there.

The higher class restaurants and stores will disappear, to be displaced by burger joints, beer halls, and dance halls, which will be a magnet for rowdy teens and twenty-somethings from far and wide, hell-bent on joining the party. Policing costs will be increased!

But all this is just part of the story.

By the year 2015, UOIT/Durham College expects to service 5000 students in its downtown campus, and this is going to cost Oshawa taxpayers giant tax dollars.

To service the growing student population, the university expects, in future, to purchase or lease as much suitable downtown real estate as becomes available. They presently have their eye on the McLaughlin Square Condominium Building which would be converted to student use.

They already have the former Scotiabank building at 11 Simcoe Street North as the home for its Faculty of Education, the 30,000 sq ft. Former Bell Telephone building at the SW corner of Bond and Mary as the new home of its Social Science and Humanities Faculty, the Regent Theatre plus a new five story building to be constructed in the parking lot behind the theatre, and the large Alger Press Factory Building kitty corner to the Oshawa Clinic at 61 Charles, and lab space in the basement of the Genosha Hotel.

Therein lies the problem.

All of these properties produced significant tax revenues for the city but educational facilities, purchased or leased, are property tax exempt. All of this tax revenue will be lost to the city. Even the city reports supporting the UOIT downtown expansion fail to mention this lost tax revenue and the politicians were not swift enough to question this lost revenue.

At the commercial rate, even when vacant, these properties would have produced millions of dollars of tax revenue to help fund Oshawa’s operating costs.

And now that these revenues are lost, you, Mr. and Mrs. Oshawa taxpayer, will have to make up the shortfall.

While I do not, at present, know the tax amounts collected from these University acquired buildings, I shall file a freedom of information request, if necessary, to establish these lost amounts if they are not voluntarily forthcoming.

I do know, that in 2008, a 4.44% tax increase raised $4,126,938, so that approximately $1M is raised for every 1% tax increase.

At that rate, homeowners will be tabbed for an additional 1% tax increase for every million of taxation lost from the downtown commercial properties occupied by the university. This is a cost in perpetuity to the Oshawa taxpayer.

Beyond this, the Oshawa City Council has recently granted the university $7.5 million of our tax funds to help with UOIT’s downtown expansion. This is more than the $4.5M the university itself will invest in the downtown.

Fortunately, as with every other large city expenditure, such as the $25M City Hall redevelopment, the $45M GM Centre, and the $25M Legends Centre, we are given the "toss-out-line" that these expenses will not impact city taxes. So rest assured that taxes will not be collected to cover this amount...oh yeah!

In lieu of lost property taxes, Ontario Legislation dictates that the city does collect a “heads and beds” levy of $75 per student from the university.

For the loss of millions of dollars of commercial tax revenue lost from the university use of the downtown buildings, the city will get $375,000 for the "heads and beds" levy for the 5000 students expected downtown in 2015 in consideration of the lost tax revenue.

This is a costly trade-off for city taxpayers.

In addition to all these costs and tax losses, the city, according to Chris Brown, Director of Finance Services, has provided year 1 tax incentives of 90% of property taxes accruing from the privately developed student housing beyond the land-only assessments on the west side of Simcoe just south of the University and this tax incentive continues for the next 9 years decreasing 10% a year.

This taxpayer burden is being borne by city taxpayers despite the fact that the university is operating at a surplus position.

Why is the university not funding its own development costs?

Mayor John Gray and his city council are raping city taxpayers at every turn.

I guess Oshawa and it’s downtown will not shed the nickname, “The Shwa” anytime soon.

And oh yes, Mr. and Mrs. Oshawa Taxpayer. Thanks for subsidizing our university in Oshawa. You’ll pay every day of your life….and pay handsomely once again when your child attends OUR university.

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 Councillor claims things are rotten at Oshawa City Hall

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
April 12, 2010

When Mayor John Gray was criticized for spending in excess of $40,000 of hard earned taxpayer monies to fund his personal birthday party, also dubbed the Stephen Colbert Day, he justified the expenditure by insisting that the value to the city of the publicity gained by the expenditure was incalculable.

I wonder whether he feels the same way about the widespread national attention given to his use of $46,000 of taxpayer funds for MBA’s for Councillor April Cullen and his Executive Assistant, James Anderson. For this, he and the city got widespread publicity bordering on the incredulous and laughable from editorialists right across the country and downright anger from those at home having to pick up the tab.

In an earlier column, I explained that I was kept up to date with John Gray’s funding of these MBA’s in a commuter newspaper in Vancouver where I was volunteering at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

And this week, we find that groups of ratepayers have to sue the city to have them uphold the city bylaws restricting housing around the university as residential rather than as student rental housing which the residents claim is destroying their neighbourhood through ongoing problems with noise, parking, parties, garbage, and vandalism.

All this, the residents claim, is threatening the safety and well being of homeowners in the area. The resident’s lawsuit is about reclaiming their neighbourhood through the enforcement of bylaws already on the city books.

Once again, this story was picked up by the Toronto Star and has hit the national media and was read by hundreds of thousands of Toronto Commuters on Monday April 5 as the front page headline of the freely distributed Metro Newspaper screamed, “Rowdy renters…Oshawa families suing city in bid to reclaim neighbourhood.” No doubt, similar headlines featured the same story in commuter newspapers distributed in all of Canada’s largest cities.

Residents near the university refer to their neighbourhood as ”The Streets of Broken Dreams,” and cite broken glass, beer bottles and condoms strewn around, front lawns torn up by cars, eggs thrown at houses and garbage piled up.

In one case, students retaliated against an older couple who complained about rowdy behaviour by placing pieces of glass in their backyard to cut their dog’s feet.

Oshawa is getting so much negative publicity that it seems as if the negative publicity value of their actions is a major determinant of what they do.

And now we learn that part of Mayor Gray’s renewal plan for the downtown is to do everything possible to facilitate movement of some of the university faculties downtown so that those disruptive problems experienced in the university neighbourhoods will also be experienced downtown.

I guess Mayor John Gray’s idea of renewal is flooding the downtown with students to discourage the adult population with their superior buying power to go there to support higher end restaurants and stores. This will surely prove to be another disastrous step by Gray’s inept administration.

Just as the city hall is complicit in creating this future downtown problem, they were complicit in creating the residential housing problems around the university.

Short-sighted thinking along with city planner’s approval of housing renovations to install up to seven and eight bedrooms in some houses to allow for student rental housing was a shirking of municipal responsibility to uphold the areas as residential in the first place.

Any politicians on the ball would have been calling for student residential housing from the initial stages and setting aside land tracts zoned as such from the very beginning. And now we are seeing the same short sightedness with student housing in the downtown.

Earlier, Oshawa made the National News in the Toronto Star, The National Post, The Globe and Mail, and Macleans Magazine, when city hall bylaw officers with police and locksmiths in tow raided student housing around these same university neighbourhoods inspecting panty drawers of absent students to search for leasing documents.

This action hit the student newspapers of many of Canada’s universities informing many prospective Ontario students and their parents of Oshawa’s Neanderthal civic administration and, of course, discouraging their attendance and limiting the growth of our university here.

The proof is in the pudding! Oshawa city council has learned plenty of ways to get free national press. There was no need for Mayor Gray to personally spend the $45,000 on his birthday party to get that press that he called incalculably valuable.

And yet the city continues to spend countless numbers of our tax dollars to publish carriers for politician’s mug shots which are distributed at great cost to all front doors in Oshawa. Most of these end up unwanted and unread in the recycling bin. But where was the attempt to communicate when we really needed it---an explanation of the plebiscite question on our city council voting system which robbed our various Oshawa communities of their guaranteed representation on City Council.

With all of its press exposure, Oshawa is becoming one of the best known communities in this country. You can hardly pick up a newspaper anywhere without some reference to Oshawa. Unfortunately, most of the information is bad and a function of the political leadership of this city.

All of the national press has translated into making Oshawa a less desirable place to live, if housing demand indicated by housing sales figures released by the Toronto Real Estate Board is any indication. The first quarter sales figures for Single detached housing show an average Oshawa single family house price of $255,808 for the 194 sales that occurred in Oshawa for the lowest housing value over the entire GTA.

Late breaking news as I write this column is that Councillor Louise Parkes has announced her candidacy for Mayor of Oshawa in the upcoming October 25th, 2010 election.

In a Toronto Star article of April 7, 2010, Parkes stated that, “Leadership is a huge issue…Things are falling apart because of leadership style and a ‘systems failure’ at city hall…things are rotten,” she says, “and I aim to fix it.”

Parkes is right. Things are rotten at city hall and she is part of the problem…not part of the solution.

She was key cheerleader for the city’s purchase of the Cullen Gardens Miniatures and key critic of council’s decision not to proceed at great expense with the project.

She was asleep at the switch when she voted against providing citizen information about the ward/general vote plebiscite question and subsequently voted to rob communities of their guaranteed representation on city council; asleep at the switch while Mayor John Gray was approving the MBA funding; asleep at the switch while council was approving the costly and unnecessary demolition and reconstruction of council chambers and city hall “A” wing; asleep at the switch while the Mayor was funding his $40,000 birthday party; asleep at the switch while Council approved demolition of North Oshawa Arena, the Civic, and potentially Children’s Arena and Harmon Park Arena.

Indeed something is rotten at city hall. Louise Parkes was the councilor who pushed for bigger councilor office expense budgets and travel allowances…and pushed for failed Glyn Laverick to take over the Regent Theatre. After voting for high tax increases for Oshawa for years, she is now a convert for lower taxes. Yes…we need more of Louise Parkes at City Hall. Yeah! Right!

With Parkes now in the race, maybe Councillor John Henry will be encouraged to get into the race. Anti-council sentiment is at such a feverish pitch that I want to knock off as many sitting councillors as possible to give the people of Oshawa a new beginning in the governance of this city.

Because I am confident of becoming your new Oshawa Mayor, I want as many new council faces as possible. Oshawa needs a clean sweep of 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/

Mayor John Gray inflames the MBA Rage…again!

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

Mayor John Gray’s refusal at the March 8, 2010, City Council Meeting to allow further discussion on the MBA funding issue by calling a motion “out of order” to have city politicians reimburse city coffers $46,000 for their collective failure to stop Gray’s irresponsible and irrational MBA funding for Councillor April Cullen and his executive assistant, James Anderson, has once again ignited rage across the city and has been the subject of discussion in media coverage across the country.

John Gray obviously believes in the city motto, “Prepare to be amazed” and his “amazing” actions have made him and our city council the subject of national ridicule.

Canadians right across the country are certainly becoming amazed at the irresponsibility and the sense of entitlement of Gray and his self-serving council. He must feel so secure in his position that he doesn’t give a damn what he does to the public---even in the face of an upcoming election!

Council Members must feel equally secure in their positions to let this kind of bulls—t slide through with nary a whisper knowing that past history with the self-serving General Vote that they swung on the people lets them hide in the weeds of “name recognition” and shields them from electoral defeat.

Never before with Oshawa’s General Vote history prior to 1985 had any politician lost their seat through the general vote. But never before have we had such a politically incompetent mayor and council.

This ridicule focused on city council will certainly extend to city voters if they do not remove this Mayor and his band of incompetents, shysters, tricksters and free-loaders from control of our Civic public purse. We have had too much of their snorting at the pig trough at our expense!

The Toronto Star and Toronto Sun Oshawa MBA stories have been picked up by the national news agencies and published across the country.

Such widespread publication of this story documents the public interest in the extreme feelings of entitlement of this city council in using our tax monies for their own benefit rather than the benefit of the city.

There is such extreme national and international interest in this MBA story that a Google search using the words “Oshawa,” “Mayor,” and “MBA” will turn up 106,000 references as of the date of writing this column.

I was surprised to see an item in the “Leader Daily”, a free paper distributed at sky train locations for commuters into Vancouver where I am working as an Olympics/Paralympics Volunteer. Hundreds of thousands of Vancouver commuters all saw the same item that caught my eye—“Paid MBA not a free ride: political staffer,” which documented Mayor John Gray’s and his political sidekick, John Anderson’s, assertions that Anderson forfeited $36,000 of city pension contributions in exchange for his $23,000 MBA funding---a deal negotiated by Gray who thus took credit for saving the city $13,000.

Gray advanced this justification for funding the MBA tuitions at the Feb. 22, 2010 City Council Meeting

Gray’s gloating, however, proved to be an outright lie used in attempting to defuse the situation, a theory supported by Gray’s (and the city’s) refusal to make Anderson’s MBA funding agreement public in response to citizen “Freedom of Information” requests that have been lodged.

This refusal to release the document even questions the existence of any contract or agreement.

Gray’s statements were investigated by private citizens who discovered such agreements were an impossibility as Anderson didn’t qualify for any pension without giant time buybacks which did not require matching paybacks from the city.

When this information was publicized, Gray then said that his earlier statements were in “error.” I say Gray knew his words were an outright lie designed to mislead the public.

The outright “lie theory” is also supported by Gray’s use of the “lie strategy” in the past.

He claimed for public consumption on the televised council meeting in his preamble before final voting to adopt the general vote that city hall had no responsibility to communicate details of the plebiscite question to voters.

As I had just made a presentation pleading to council not to adopt the general vote, he said the communication responsibility was not the city’s but was the responsibility of citizens like me.

This was an outright lie as he would have known that “Third Party” citizen campaigns were against Ontario Elections Law which gives municipality’s unfettered ability and thus responsibility to fund such plebiscite information campaigns. You can view John Gray making this statement at http://www.motionbox.com/videos/4c9fdcb41510e6c3.

The other strategy used is secrecy and stonewalling, despite him gloating earlier on a transparency and accountability bylaw passed and signed by all councillors.

Gray not only refused to divulge the Anderson MBA contract, he says he negotiated, but also refused to disclose the $40,000 expenditure he personally approved for his personal birthday party dubbed the “Stephen Colbert Day.”

This information was not even available to our elected councillors until a $100 Freedom of Information Request was filed.

So much for the transparency and accountability policy the mayor personally wheeled out with great fanfare. It’s just pretty “Political Words” tarnished beyond recognition by his and council’s actions.

This whole issue leads to many unanswered questions about the agreement and about the integrity of Mayor John Gray and James Anderson.

Was this a verbal or a written agreement? If verbal only, what business acumen does this show about the Mayor? After all, this is a contract according to the Mayor that saved the city from paying $33,000 from Anderson’s pension. If the contract was written, dated, and witnessed, it must be made public. Failure to disclose the contract to the public will only lead to continued public speculation and anger.

Voters will rightly begin to speculate on the honesty of the mayor and whether the story about the pension payment savings to the city was a blatant lie “crafted” by Gray and Anderson to resolve the issue to public satisfaction.

Freedom of Information requests to disclose the Gray/Anderson MBA contract have so far been refused leading to speculation that:

a) There is no contract suggesting the tuition was an unconditional gift of taxpayer money.
b) The issue of foregoing pension plan paybacks for Anderson was never discussed and has only surfaced recently to appease public inquiries.
c) Was a city form used and the funding ceilings identified on the form superseded on the form or did the mayor draft up his own contract for the funding?
d) If there was a contract, was it properly drafted by the city legal department?
e) Where and how is the money identified in the city financial records?
f) At what point and in what way were the details of the MBA funding communicated to council?
g) Is there any record on council discussion on this matter after they learned the Mayor had personally gifted the funds?
h) What was the timeline in the approvals of both Anderson’s and Cullen’s tuitions?
i) What were the conditions of tuition payback when Anderson left his position if the Mayor was not re-elected?

You can undoubtedly devise many additional sensitive questions upon close examination.

The most important question though is, “Why did no politician SCREAM about this issue before it was made public by private citizens?”

But let us speculate that the whole idea of the pension payback was a lie perpetrated by Mayor John Gray and his executive assistant.

It would not be the first serious misinformation campaign perpetrated on the people by John Gray. His whole rationale for council’s failure to communicate the ward system plebiscite details to the public was a response to my criticism that the people had not been properly informed. What did Gray do in light of this criticism? He floated the giant lie, “The city had no responsibility---that was up to citizen’s themselves!”

This kind of statement demonstrates that Gray believes that the council need not communicate to the public. Nor should it be self policing---all is a public responsibility….Amazing!

As citizen Alan Slater wrote in a letter to the editor published in a local paper last week, “The MBA issue will not be over until Election Day. If Mayor John Gray has any supporters left, will one of them inform him that the affair is definitely not closed. It will not be closed until the coming election when voters are reminded of his arrogance and lack of business judgement, which has helped Oshawa to become one of the highest taxed municipalities in the country.

Anyone who votes for him or any of his colleagues can expect more of the same abuse of power and disconnection from the realities of life in these hard times.”

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

A Sure Sign of Election Year

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

City council approved a .9% increase this year, the lowest increase in years.

This is a political game designed to secure your vote for council incumbents in the October 25, 2010 municipal elections.

This low increase results from 2 factors---it's election year, and the outright anger of Oshawa residents about Oshawa city’s tax grab to give us the highest taxes in the GTA, if not all of Canada.

This obscene level of taxation will not change with the low tax increase for next year. You will still pay more next year than you ever have in the past.

City voters should not fall for this low one-time increase without looking at the past history of this Oshawa City Council and its mismanagement that has produced Oshawa’s excessive taxation level.

City tax levels are so high that about half of the 25 GTA municipalities will pay around 50% or less of the taxes you’d pay in Oshawa on a $350,000 house. Don’t be fooled by this one-time “election ploy” low increase!

Oshawa’s highest taxation levels in the GTA and among the highest in Canada hurt every Oshawa resident.

High taxes rob every Oshawa homeowner of tens of thousands of dollars of home equity, make Oshawa a less desirable place to buy, make it difficult for homeowners to sell their houses, and keep developers away who can increase their profit margins by selling houses at higher prices in lower taxed municipalities.

High industrial and commercial tax rates discourage relocation of businesses here limiting local job growth.

In every way, sky high taxes hurt Oshawa and its residents.

City Manager Bob Duigan has said this will be one of the lowest tax increases in Durham Region---this may be so but we will still pay significantly higher taxes than any place in Durham Region.

What city council needed to do, and which I propose as the next mayor of Oshawa, is to provide annual tax decreases until our tax rate meets the average in the GTA.

The investment rule of 72---dividing 72 by the interest rate approximates the doubling time of capital can also be used in computing halving time for financial amounts. This rule indicates that a 3% annual tax cut would half our taxes in 24 years but would quickly allow us to reach those average GTA tax levels in approximately a dozen years as other jurisdictions continue their annual tax increases.

This pace of closing the gap would be a slow enough cutback for our local government to transition to the impact of these reductions while at the same time alerting all city managers and employees to the need for cost cutting, increased productivity, less wastage, and a reduction in the costs of government. Every expenditure would be measured against “real need.”

That rule of 72 indicates that our 4% tax increases of the last few years, if consistently maintained, would have doubled our current taxes in 18 years (72/4) while the 9% tax increase supported by Mayor John Gray two years ago would have doubled our taxes in just 8 years (72/9).

Remarkable is the statement by present Mayor John Gray that Oshawa’s low increase this year will not impact as higher increases for next year.

Can we trust this of a Mayor who argued for 9% tax increases two years ago?

And what makes him think he can speak for the new council after the October 25th election?

With the rudderless leadership he has provided this dysfunctional council so far, and some of the irresponsible and faulty judgements he has made, and his many outright lies to the people, it is unlikely the angry electorate will re-elect him Mayor.

When voters are making their election choices, they have to look at the history of the Mayor’s and Council’s decisions over their terms on council and just not decisions they make in an election year.

Hopefully the memory of the voters is like that of an elephant or a dog beaten into submission---they just never forget!

Oshawa politicians like Brian Nicholson and Mayor John Gray have told voters that we enjoy the lowest taxes in Durham Region and among the lowest in the GTA.

They must think we’re dumb!

And how about their credibility with statements like this?

I think they owe the public a plausible explanation of why we’ve had consistent tax increases of 4% over the last few years when it is much lower this year.

Gross mismanagement has given Oshawa the highest taxes in Durham Region and in the GTA and the surplus charged by Oshawa, often in the thousands of dollars over other jurisdictions, and even neighbouring jurisdictions, would be enough to provide you a nice winter holiday in the sunny Caribbean climes or new appliances, or even to make a number of your car payments per year.

For example, that $350,000 Oshawa house would be taxed at $1275 less in Clarington, $1400 less in Scugog, $1300 less in Whitby, and an astounding $3200 less in Toronto.

Our tax rates are criminal!

Oshawa tax rates keep you poor and rob you of personal life-style expenditures that you have earned and you deserve!

In ratepayer meetings the Mayor attended recently, the only thing the angry voters wanted to talk about were the sky high taxes. When questioned, the Mayor suggested that high taxes resulted from some lower priced neighbourhoods and that was the reason taxes were high for those gathered.

Such Bunk!

Every city has both higher and lower priced neighbourhoods and the mayor must realize this---but once again, either he’s not very smart or he thinks we’re very dumb.

Taxes are high only because of the mill rate set by the politicians and for no other reason.

As you know, taxes result from the market value of your house as assessed by the Ontario Property Assessment Corporation, an arm of the Provincial Government, multiplied by the mill rate set by the local municipal government.

Those low priced neighbourhoods the mayor referred to would also be taxed at the highest levels in the GTA for equivalently valued homes anywhere in the GTA.

Everyone in Oshawa, no matter the value of your property, is taxed at significantly higher levels than any other part of the GTA.

In fact, compliments of the politicians on your city council, Oshawa is among the highest taxed places in all of Canada.

Isn’t it nice to be #1? After all, the city motto is, “Prepare to be amazed!”

My sister who lives in Vancouver showed me her tax bill.

Her home, assessed in 2008 at $414,500, had a 2009 tax bill of $1630. An Oshawa house of this value would pay 4 times as much---about $6500 in 2008.

It’s interesting also that her municipality had a referendum at the last election on a capital project---the enlargement of an arena.

Wouldn’t it have been democratic for the Oshawa ratepayers to be asked whether they supported the demolition and rebuilding of city hall council chambers and “A” wing---I think I know the answer!

It’s interesting also that my sister’s tax bill had a cost breakdown for various components of the tax---municipal general ($1285.82), regional library ($44.39), drainage (waste/storm water $109.49), North Delta Recreation ($29.51), Arena Enlargement (from the aforementioned referendum $25.37). This is a transparent and open tax bill, isn’t it?

Using this idea of a breakdown of costs attributable to each home for various facets of city expenditures, maybe Oshawa’s tax bill should have a separate line item for such costs as the $3M annual money losing GM Centre, the $1/4M Cullen Gardens Miniatures purchase, the $40,000 expenditure approved solely by the Mayor for the Stephen Colbert Day (Mayor’s Birthday Party), the $40,000 Mayor’s “Boy Toy” bright yellow gas guzzling Muscle Car, Councillor April Cullen’s and the Mayor’s Executive Assistant’s $40,000 tax funded MBA’s personally approved by Mayor John Gray, the $25M demolition and rebuilding of Council Chambers and City Hall “A” wing and the refurbishment of city hall Rundle Tower, the $100 tax-free weekly gas allowance for each city councillor, the costs for taxpayer funded advertising including the needless city publications distributed to all homes which always feature the mug shots and comments of all city councillors, the taxpayer cost for the $1M demolition of North Oshawa Arena and the costs to demolish all of the other targeted arenas.

I could go on and on but I think you get the idea of a truly useful transparent tax bill that we need to judge the performance of this city hall bunch and see where our tax dollars really go.

And what do you think the wish of city voters would be on a plebiscite about demolishing city hall and the civic auditorium?

Yeah! Ridiculous! Irresponsible! Wasteful!

Governments operate with a mindset of increasing budgets every year…and they have a rush to use up all unused cash at the end of every year….Lord forbid leaving any cash in the till because that would lead to a smaller allocation in subsequent years.

This is thinking that has to be changed. It leads to burgeoning fat, inefficiencies, and unnecessary expenditures and wastage all at taxpayer expense.

This is a mindset that has to be changed and will be changed under my administration.

It’s a mindset that wouldn’t be tolerated in any business where the bottom line is important…and it won’t be tolerated in my administration.

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!