Taxes, Taxes, Taxes---The only thing on Voter’s Minds!

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
October 4, 2010

Taxes, Taxes, Taxes---The only thing on Voter’s Minds!

Well, there may be one other thing on voter’s minds. One man wanted a lawn sign while I was out door knocking this week and said, “There has to be a wholesale change on council.” He said any sign that had the word “re-elect” on it lost his vote. “Taxes are just out of this world,” he said.

An email this week informed me that 12 Durham Region Works Department Maintenance Supervisors named on the Ministry of Finance Salary Disclosure List are making in excess of $100,000 and one of these, the foreman of a paving crew, earned over $130,000 with $40,000-$50,000 of these salaries in overtime supervising night time and weekend jobs from their 9-5 daytime assignments. This is disgraceful! The private sector pays half the money for these positions.

He thought these salaries were criminal when hard-pressed families are struggling to pay property taxes increasing twice as fast as inflation. Why shouldn't they be scheduled to work the same shifts as the workers they supervise and put an end to this outrageous overtime expense? How many workers do you know, he asked, make $40,000-$50,000 in overtime, more than most Canadians make, to top up their very generous salaries. No wonder we have the highest taxes in Ontario.

In my response to him, I related stories of city employees pocketing over $1000 per week, 52 weeks a year in addition to their generous salaries, for using their own vehicles on city business. This madness has to stop. It would be far cheaper for the city to provide a city vehicle for work related travel.

Many city-owned vehicles also are driven on long work-home commutes, using fuel and other auto related costs at taxpayer expense.

This mindset where city politicians and city workers feel entitled to reach deeper and deeper into taxpayer pockets to fund their own entitlements has to stop.

City workers are not alone in this drain on the city taxpayer.

You can read many claims of care for the taxpayer dollar and cost-cutting on politician’s campaign materials and websites that is equally disgusting, untrue, and misleading.

Louise Parkes has some display lines on her literature distributed by mail drop across the city that screams, “The Road to prosperity begins with fair taxation” and “Council must first set an example by tightening our own belt. Her signs of course say "Fair Taxation! Some fine example of fair taxation and belt tightening she provides!

While making this statement, she grabbed a 54% salary and expense spending increase in the first three years of this current term with the results not yet in for 2010. Fair taxation for sure! Over that time, her blackberry bill was only $23 less than the total of eight of her fellow councillors. She made a pitch at council for increased office budgets to cover her travel expense despite the fact her literature says council entitlements must end. Some belt tightening and some example of restraint! And some big lies completely inconsistent with her personal wallowing in the trough!

She has gotten some major press by calling for a 5% salary cut for council members and a wage freeze for the upcoming council term. This sounds good but is “smoke and mirrors” with no real savings for city taxpayers. The city portion of Councillor Salaries totals about $500,000 annually. So a 5% rollback would mean a total taxpayer savings of $25,000 annually or about $1 per household...now in a couple of years at that rate of savings, you could buy yourself one Tim’s coffee!

I am the only Mayoral Candidate calling for tax cuts. My plan, a 3% tax cut will cut about $3.5 million of fat, waste, and inefficiency out of city hall spending yearly at a slow enough rate that adjustments can take place without service cuts. City Hall rakes in about $115 million from residential taxes and it will be very doable cutting $3.5 million from their total tax take. It’d be easy! It’d be like finding a $3.50 savings out of $115 dollars in your pocket. And we’d have these regular 3% cuts until our taxes reach the levels of our neighbours. If they can have lower rates, why can’t we?

Parkes’ brochure claims she has opposed over $70 million worth of unnecessary spending this past term. This is a remarkable claim since she voted to support the $25M, but unnecessary, city hall demolition and rebuilding, pushed for the Cullen Gardens Miniatures purchase and wanted to spend another $2M for a site to host them, voted for the 13% tax increases over this term in a time when inflation was only 6.56%, initially approved the $46,000 MBA fundings until voters found out exposing the issue and then she jumped on the “political opportunity” bandwagon, and she throws around terms like zero based budgeting which doesn’t mean a damn thing in terms of tax savings for ratepayers.

While the “zero-based budgeting” sounds great, she knows that the budget items are all prepared by the bureaucrats and that council’s job is not to do the nitty-gritty job of micro-managing but to set the policy on big decisions like budget increases, approval of big capital expenditures, and setting policy for the city and finally approving the staff budget. Beyond that, it is a lie for her to let on to taxpayers that she has the knowledge, expertise, experience, qualifications, or time to know the fine details of every manager’s and every department’s spending details. They make up their own budgets, which are administered by the City Manager and his management team. Council only approves it.

My 3% tax cutting plan, on the other hand, is straightforward and simple to implement and is a “policy decision” which is within the purview of elected officials. I’d simply say to the managers, “You had “X” dollars last year. You have 3% less this year. You have to cut 3 cents out of every dollar you spent last year. Cut out the fat and waste, improve efficiencies of city hall, and make sure there are no service cuts. As I said earlier, this would save taxpayers about $3.5 million annually at the present assessment rates and is a small enough adjustment for changes to take place. The biggest change, however, will be in the mindset of officials who will concentrate on real needs and just not on wants.

Louise Parkes misleads the public in every way possible and she is not to be trusted. In academic credentials she presented to a local newspaper in response to a candidate questionnaire, she said that she had an “Honours Degree---fourth year incomplete.” That fourth year would be a requirement for the degree and so Parkes was misleading the public in saying she has that honours degree when she does not.

Along the same theme, earlier, Brian Nicholson claimed on Facebook to have a BA in Economics and Political Science from Trent University, and this claim as a person trained in Economics may have secured him all those Regional and City Finance and Economic Committee Chairmanships he’s had over the years. When questioned about the degree, Nicholson deleted all the references to it but not before I had a screenshot of his claims. He threatened to sue anyone, including a Toronto Star Reporter, who pursued the story. In his bio submitted recently to a local paper, he confirmed that he is only a high school graduate with some university courses in Economics and Political Science. His claim to the Economics Degree did not serve Regional or City Taxpayers well as his untruthful claim to an Economics degree would have held undue influence with his political cohorts.

But then, politicians often claim to be different than their records indicate. Mayor John Gray gave me a call this past week and, among other things, informed me that Mayor Candidate, John Henry, who campaigned on a promise not to take the $100 weekly car allowance in the last election, did in fact take it and cancelled it only recently when he declared for Mayor. If this is so, perhaps the extra thousands he would get would explain why he held on undeclared for so long.

John Henry also has portrayed himself to be a guy looking after cost-cutting, restraint, and responsible use of taxpayer money. But the most recent political entitlement, “Health Benefits for life for retired politicians” which got taxpayers mad as hell was moved by John Henry. And as a guy who wants to cut costs, why has he not been calling for tax cuts...or why hasn’t he been putting forth a platform.

Even as a fellow Mayor Candidate, I have no idea what John Henry stands for. To me, he is still a “pig in a poke!” I would never put my “John Henry” next to his name...although it is a great political name...and sometimes people vote for the strangest reasons.

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/

The Preposterous Mr. Gray

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

Absurd, crazy, daft , foolish, harebrained, idiotic, dopey, loony, nutty, half-baked, off-the-wall, batty, unglued, bonkers, and wacky are not usually words used to describe your mayor, the chief executive of your city. But Mayor John Gray’s asinine actions that have recently become public have once again earned our “leader” these apt descriptors.

You’d think that nothing could beat using our tax moneys to fund MBA’s for his ”chosen” or using our scarce tax monies to fund his own birthday party to the tune of $45,000, but this week we discover that he has used our property tax monies to the tune of $916 to pay Provincial Offences parking tickets and dog bylaw offences for private individuals.

While $916 is not a huge amount, there are important principles involved. Is there anything that the Mayor will not fund with our property taxes?

We just wonder how much more creative Mayor John Gray can get in the inappropriate use of our tax monies and wonder whether we are just discovering the tip of the iceberg in his reckless and unethical squandering of taxpayer resources.

As for these fines, a letter released by the City Director of Finance Services in response to details requested by the Finance and Administration Meeting of March 25, 2010, states: 1) that a media member attending the Oct. 7, 2009 KISS Concert was advised by a representative of the city to park in a handicapped parking space and was subsequently fined. The Mayor’s office paid the $316 fine to the Provincial Offences Office and was subsequently reimbursed by the media member’s employer in April 2010, and 2) The remaining $600 is comprised of tickets issued on Aug 12, 2009, by Animal Services staff to an individual for “allowing an animal to run at large (3 tickets @ $125 each) and for failure to register an animal ($110). These fines were increased to $600 due to late fees and were paid directly by the Mayor’s office to the Provincial Offences Office.

There are giant questions arising from these fines: 1) Was it the mayor who counseled the press to park in the handicapped parking zone and, if so, what does that say about the mayor’s attitude toward accessibility by the handicapped? 2) Is it legal for the mayor to use tax funds to pay fines issued to private individuals? 3) What is Oshawa’s Auditor General’s comment on this use of property tax funds? 4) How widespread is the mayor’s indiscriminate use of our tax dollars? 5) Why was the city reimbursed for the parking infraction in April 2010 only after the expenditure was discovered at the March 2010 meeting? 6) What is the mayor’s comment justifying the use of tax monies to pay personal fines?

In light of this squandering of tax resources, and to really put icing on the cake, the various mayoral candidates were asked by a local paper to comment on the major issues facing the city. All responded, “High Taxes!”

John Gray, the guy who paid these personal parking and dog infraction fines out of your tax dollars, and led a council wasteful in so many ways of our tax dollars, agrees that high taxes are a big issue. He said the city’s high tax rate results from its aggressive program of capital improvements. He didn’t mention them, but he might have mentioned the consistent million dollar losses of the GM Centre, the unneeded demolition of city arenas, and the needless demolition and rebuilding of a large part of city hall. He mentioned the low tax increase this election year but failed to mention the record high increases in previous years to give us the highest tax levels in the GTA. You can bet your bottom dollar that Gray expects to recoup tax revenues lost this election year with record high increases immediately following the Oct. 25, 2010 municipal election. You will recall that he pressed for a 9% increase immediately following the last election!

John Gray’s record is not one that favours lower taxes.

Two other candidates, Louise Parkes and Cathy Clarke are also city politicians who have consistently voted for the slash and burn and rebuild philosophy that has run our city debt levels to record highs. Both, like Mayor John Gray, are now calling for restraint this election year, no doubt to go back to the “drunken sailor” days of spending after the next election that they exhibited while on council.

A vote for those on council, past or present, is an invitation for them to persist with the wasteful and extravagant ways of the past that runs up our city debt, wastes your tax money, and digs a hand ever deeper into your pockets to feed politician’s sense of entitlement. If you’re pleased with the direction city politicians have been taking this city, vote for them!

If you feel the city needs new direction, you should consider a clean sweep of council. Those who have sat on city council and contributed to putting this city in the fiscal and high-tax and management mess that it finds itself should disqualify them from getting your vote.

As your new Mayor of Oshawa, I promise to give this city the real visionary leadership it needs starting with annual tax cuts until Oshawa reaches the average tax rates of the GTA. I believe 5 to 6 years of 3% annual tax cuts would do the trick at the same time as providing a slow enough cutback to city hall for adjustments to take place to cut out the fat, and cut out the waste and needless expenditures at the same time as protecting our levels of service.

Tax cuts, of course, are not the only aspect of my new leadership of Oshawa. I have visionary plans for the downtown and lakefront that you might read at www.wepromise.ca.

Come the New Year, Oshawa voters will literally throw out the old and usher in the new…we’ll throw out the tired and uninspired leadership of the past and usher in a new vision and a new beginning for our 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/

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/

Moving UOIT Students downtown is a giant mistake!

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
March 8, 2010

I’ve heard of LBWA---“Leadership by walking” around which has some merit…but leadership by following the crowd and hoping for the best…never!

Leadership requires vision…not simply watching things happen and then trying to weave these happenings into some kind of coherent “plan” devised after the fact.

In his annual “state of the city address” on February 18, 2010, to about 150 city business and political leaders and city hall staffers, Mayor John Gray seemed to be looking at the city through rose coloured glasses taking credit for things far beyond his control, while taking bows for the General Motors Centre, which has a $3 million annual taxpayer loss, as being a catalyst for bringing the new Provincial Courthouse downtown, which in turn precipitated the move of UOIT and Durham College faculties and residences downtown---a carefully planned domino effect, he said!

"Last year, I stood before you,” Mayor John Grey spouted, “and pledged that within five years, the downtown would look and feel dramatically different than it had before. One year later, this pledge is soundly on its way to being realized."

The Mayor’s right! One year later, the downtown is starting to look and feel a lot different. The future of the downtown looks and feels a lot bleaker than it did just one year ago!

John Gray took credit for the GM Centre which he promoted for the downtown, and which presently has perpetual annual operating losses of $1 million plus debt servicing costs approximating $2 million, as the catalyst for downtown renewal. The losses to taxpayers are so significant that there are rumors the city will try to sell the GM Centre after the next election, and swallow the huge taxpayer losses.

But the Mayor’s “take” is different---“A planned ‘domino effect’ from the GM Centre was responsible for the Provincial Consolidated Courthouse,” the Mayor said, even though we all know this courthouse has been in the wind from almost the time the mayor was in diapers.

Then, he said, both created the thrust to attract our University to relocate some of its faculties downtown---first, the Education Faculty responsible for training teachers, and then, the College’s Legal Services Faculty responsible for training law clerks and such.

The Mayor spins such a teasing yarn! He should be in the spinning business!

The prime reason for the movement of these students downtown was not the GM Centre or even the Courthouse, but the availability of space that the university could get for a song.

Why was the space available? Because the downtown is dead, and businesses cannot survive there---and Civic Administration and the Politicians have not taken a lead in the development of the downtown. They seem to manage by walking behind.

They didn't take the initiative to lead downtown development by developing and implementing a feasible vision for a vibrant downtown. They managed by putting things to chance and hoped like hell that something worthwhile would happen.

The downtown invasion of UOIT/Durham College students will prove once again to be a mistake.

It offers only a quick fix to occupy vacant downtown spaces, at the same time as destroying opportunity for a longer term development of the downtown into a vibrant magnet for attracting quality shops, restaurants, and cultural institutions---a quality place to attract the adult population and their consumer dollars from far and wide to the Oshawa downtown.

Oshawa has the least attractive downtown from Kingston to Niagara Falls, and this is not going to change with the student invasion.

And if I were a student attending the University, I would be damn mad about being banished from the main campus with all its libraries, student facilities, and campus atmosphere, all of which is an important part of university attendance, learning, and growth. There is something special for serious students about the atmosphere of wandering the campus of academia, rather than walking the streets of a downtown.

So, I’ve claimed that overstocking the downtown with students is bad for the development of our downtown and a serious error by city council. Let me explain!

With a preponderance of students, most of whom are on low fixed budgets, the only kind of business that will thrive over the longer term are fast food joints, beer and jive dives, and oftentimes, groups of students raising hell. After all, students still do want to have boisterous fun and kick up their heels from time to time. That has not changed from the time you and I went to university.

But this is the very thing that will drive the adult population away, and in turn drive the higher class, higher priced, restaurants and shops out of the downtown.

The Mayor thinks these students will work wonders with downtown businesses. Good luck!

Wonder what he’s been drinking as he looks at Oshawa with those rose coloured glasses that gives him an unrealistic and unreasonable view of our city?

The influx of students downtown will also attract non-student youth to the downtown, and we will have a repeat of the serious problems of rowdy youth when we had the huge teen nightclubs in town that used to attract troublemakers from far and wide, necessitating huge police servicing costs.

Thank goodness, we finally got rid of this problem---for a while!

The mayor insists that it’s a great idea to fill the downtown Scotiabank building, the Alger Press Building, the Regent Theatre, the Genosha Hotel, and any other space that becomes available with students …

He thinks these students will work wonders with downtown businesses.

I think it’s a catastrophe!

And I think it demonstrates a weakness in John Gray’s long term vision for this city, and a real weakness in his analytical skills in failing to see something that is plainly visible to all.

But what more can we expect from this mayor whose judgement personally approves $40,000 of taxpayer money for funding the Stephen Colbert day (the mayor’s personal birthday party), and personally approves $46,000 of taxpayer money for MBA’s for his Executive Assistant and Councillor April Cullen, and who has “gone Hollywood” with taxpayer money with his bright yellow “boy toy” gas guzzling 426 HP sports car graffitied with his signature across the fender?

I have a very different vision for the city than Mayor John Gray who, by selling the Regent Theatre to the University, deprived the downtown of a potential cultural icon, and opened the floodgates to the student invasion.

My vision will be somewhat harder now to implement although it is something we still believe in.

As your future Mayor, I have an exciting vision for your downtown.

I have ideas about redirecting the one way traffic around the downtown four corners and creating landscaped walking malls and gardens on Simcoe Street from Bond Street to Athol, and on King Street from Centre Street to Mary.

I have also envisioned commissioning an international design contest to study our downtown streetscapes, to come up with a common design theme for the building facades, and then providing tax incentives for building owners to update their building street facades.

I have envisioned a pleasant place with strolling musicians, and art shows, and festivals over the summer.

I have plans to remove all downtown parking meters which presently keep people out of the downtown, and provide free downtown parking in all city parking lots perimeter to the downtown.

As for the vacant Alger Press Building, I had thought, before the University’s 30 year lease, that the old factory would have been a great site for the kinds of boutique warehouses created at Toronto’s Harbourfront, with space rented to artists and cultural groups and cottage industries with boutique clothing lines, and antique vendors. It was part of my plan to create a downtown that would be a magnet for the consuming Oshawa public, as well as those from out of town.

It’s only if we can attract people to our downtown that vibrant, high class, and profitable businesses will be attracted there.

Port Hope, Port Perry, and Cobourg are nearby neighbours that have vibrant downtowns. Why can’t we?

We need a mayor and city council that thinks “big,” and maybe then Oshawa will become more than “The Shwa.”

The planned domino effect the mayor said he planned is not quite the one that we will see following the October 25, 2010 municipal election.

At that time, citizens are planning to topple The Mayor and Oshawa City Council one-by-one…a domino effect indeed!

In the meantime, the Mayor continues to fiddle while Rome burns!


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