So You Thought City Politicians Were Elected to Serve You? You’re Dead Wrong!

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and Unfiltered Opinion
Reprinted from Oshawa Central Newspaper
Bill Longworth, City Hall Columnist
May 30, 2011

Once elected, city politician’s chief job often becomes serving themselves and looking after their own interests.

It’s a little club and they look after themselves first---any service to you is simply a by product. It doesn’t seem the chief objective of their work.

Oh, from time to time, we do see politicians full of bluster at their “opposition” cohorts appearing to serve our interests, but that anger is an academy award performance like that mustered up for public consumption by the WWE boys in tights who get together for a few friendly beers after they’ve been socking it to each other for your entertainment.

What is best for the Region and the City, and you, is not always “the right stuff” to earn a politician’s vote.

While the “right” outcome is generally obvious to voters, it is frequently not the choice made by politicians.

Politicians are often “dead wrong” in decisions they make like implementing the general vote in Oshawa to make it virtually impossible to mount creditable campaigns to unseat incumbents. The motivation to implement the general vote was to protect incumbent's seats....or so they thought before the last council messed up so badly.

It’s easy to spot the rationale for many political decisions and, very often, it’s what’s best for the politicians.

Consider online voting. That would seem to be a convenience that would increase voting, something politicians “say” they are keen to do...but city politicians turned it down. “Not secure enough,” they said, while continuing to collect our taxes online and send confidential contracts and other communications electronically.

The real reason they’ve resisted this convenience for voters is that low voter turnouts favour the re-election of incumbents---it has nothing to do with security of the vote.

Those places that use online voting protect vote security by simply mailing voters an individualized identification code necessary to login to the voting site, similar to the system the city already uses for online registration and payment for parks and recs and seniors programs.

Politicians continually talk up transparency and care with the taxpayer dollar---yet they continue to vote for tax increases and hide details of their expense spending.

Two city politicians, “tax fighter,” Bruce Woods of Oshawa Taxpayer Coalition fame, and Tito Dante Marimpietri both exceeded their Yearly Expense Account Budgets in the first quarter.

This, despite the fact that Marimpietri’s Election Web Site championed what he called his 6 Progressive Tax Controls to reduce spending and property tax increases, and Wood, as the founder of the Oshawa Tax Coalition, was calling for tax cuts and more responsible city hall spending.

During the election, Marimpietri didn’t tell you he was going to splurge $426.24 of your hard earned tax dollars on Souvenirs and Mementoes and another $982.38 on Conferences and Travel during the first quarter for a grand total of $4598.81 ($1000+ per month) excessive first quarter spending over his second highest high-rolling city council competitor. And Bruce Wood, Oshawa Taxpayer Coalition Founder spent $625.20 on Communications (runner up spent $77.68 in this category) and $517.90 on civic receptions and meals (runner up Amy England at $318.87---$207.20 over next highest competitor). These excessive expenditures were highlighted by the very limited expense spending of some city politicians.

There are so many discrepancies in what a politicians say they’re going to do and what they do that political promises have no credibility.

Politically some things just make good common sense. Basic to our whole idea of democracy is Representation by Population, the idea that political representation is somewhat related to population, although alterations to this premise are necessitated when a small population resides in a large area.

In Durham Region, According to a report authored by the Town of Ajax, Ajax has a Regional Councillor for every 30,056 residents, Whitby has one per 27,796, Clarington has one per 25,940, Pickering has one per 21,959, while Oshawa has a regional councillor for every 17,000 voters---almost twice the representation of Ajax....and this inequity grows worse with each subsequent year as population growth in Ajax, Pickering, Whitby, and Clarington outpaces growth in Oshawa.

To correct these serious inequities in political representation, Ajax Mayor, Steve Parish, presented a motion at the May 18th Durham Regional Council to strike a committee to review the composition of Regional Council and make recommendations to adjust the present allocations for fairer representation.

Part of his motion called for a freezing of the size of Regional Council, thus adjustments in representation would result in losses in over represented communities and gains in under represented communities.

Oshawa, as an over-represented area, stood to lose 2 or 3 Regional seats.

Remarkably, this common sense motion to review Regional Representation was defeated 18-8 (2 absent) in a recorded vote.

Too bad!

Back room deals must have shuttled any common sense (and common decency) aside.

Politics is not for looking out for your best interests and mine...be damned what is right and proper for taxpayers! It’s all about protecting the interests of the politicians, in this case protecting the jobs of politicians already in the cosy Regional Club.

The representation review would have resuled in a reduction of 2 or 3 Oshawa members bringing our present 7 Regional jobs (not counting the Mayor) down to 4 or 5.

Such a reduction would result in a job loss for probably some of the recently elected politicians such as Amy England and Tito (High Expensing) Dante Marimpietri and potentially one other.

Because of danger of losing their jobs, both England and Marimpietri were most verbal in opposing any change to city regional representation to protect their jobs.

England called potential reduction of Oshawa’s representation “undemocratic” and argued for an increased council size to facilitate fixing the under representation of Ajax and Whitby. As population grows into the future, I guess her idea is that council size should also grow to preserve political jobs and grow taxpayer expenses.

Marimpietri argues that Oshawa taxpayers contribute more to the Regional Coffers than other municipalities and thus our relative “richness” deserves greater representation.

Democracy stands for the equality of votes among the population....not that votes by wealthier areas or wealthier people should be more plentiful or influential...and so Marimpietri’s argument runs contrary to everything democracy stands for.

Representation by population is the most basic principle of democracy without any reference to wealth or influence.

Both England and Marimpietri were stretching at straws to preserve their seats.

Governments should not be about protecting political jobs but be about providing effective and cost-efficient governance.

The Minutes of the May 18th meeting have not yet been published so we can only speculate that Parish's motion gained support from Ajax and Whitby Councillors, plus one other, and was opposed by all others. It is obvious that it would have been opposed by Oshawa Councillors plus those of the Brock, Scugog, and Uxbridge, the municipalities whose low populations spread over large areas, justifies their richer representation...but they wouldn’t have wanted to “chance” this being changed.

I see any adjustment to reflect rep by pop as a good thing and a first logical step in wiping out the costly and superfluous local municipal governments like Oshawa City Council that has few meaningful or important responsibilities.

Despite losing all real responsibilities to Regional Governments, local Civic Administrations have persisted with expensive unneeded duplicate departments for responsibilities now carried out at the region. While their roles have been lost, the costs of retaining these unneeded duplicate departments continues to consume about 1/3 of our municipal taxes.

The city now only acts as a tax collector for the Region and the Board of Education, administers City Parks and Recreation Services, Library Services, and Fire Protection Services, collects garbage which is transferred to Regional Trucks for disposal, and maintains local roads even running their snow plows over Regional Roads with plows lifted to get to their local streets.

Such a waste...and the duplicity of politicians and bureaucrats to sell us on keeping something we don’t need, all for saving their jobs is criminal.

That’s why when you look carefully at City Hall Agendas, there’s nothing of substance there....and why our city hall meetings, since verbose grandstander Brian Nicholson got defeated, can now be over in an hour or so!

So city taxpayers, keep smiling as you spend thousands of tax dollars on a city government you don’t need!

Keep dishing out that taxpayer cash to keep the political charade alive.

Editor's Addendum
A classic example of the idea of politicians serving themselves even at the expense of putting their government (and the world) in jeopardy is the recent refusal of USA politicians to come to timely decisions to raise the American national debt ceiling until the eleventh hour.

This was part of the plan for the scare-mongering Republicans with their 2-stage debt reduction plan to bring renewed budget battles to the fore during the next presidential campaign to undermine President Obama's electoral chances at a second 4 year term.

This irresponsble action has cut the USA credit rating for the first time in history, caused huge week-long massive declines in the stock market and cost all investors, large and small, considerable losses. This game of political gamesmanship will no doubt put the gun to the head of all borrowers by pushing up interest rates and provide a significant pull-down of the American and world economies.

American brinkmanship has additionally hurt small Canadian RRSP and mutual fund investors who have lost close to 30% of their investment as a result.

So much for politicians doing what is right and best for their nation,for their people, and for the world!

As I've stated in the main article, national interests (or municipal interests in the case of local governments) are trumped by political interests and what is best for the politicians!

And here is another prime example of a politician priming his own pump at taxpayer expense....despicable!

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

There's Gold in Them There Government Palaces

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and Unfiltered Opinion
Reprinted from Oshawa Central Newspaper
Bill Longworth, City Hall Columnist
April 11, 2011

The Sunshine List of high roller public servants has just been published and no doubt has all private sector workers yearning for public sector employment.

The list confirms that there are now two classes of workers---those that work in the public sector and those that work in the private sector.

According to a Canadian Federation of Independent Business Report, Federal public sector employees enjoy a 15.1% wage premium over their private sector counterparts. Similar premiums over the private sector are earned by Provincial and Municipal government workers.

But wages are just part of the story according to the CFIB Report. Public sector non-wage benefits such as pensions, paid vacation time, paid health and insurance benefits, etc. remain, on average, 60 per cent higher than those of equivalent private sector employees boosting the Federal employee wage/benefits premium to 23.3% over their private sector counterparts when non-wage benefits are included.

And dramatic Public sector employment growth, up 24% since 1998, combined with the salary premiums paid public sector employees, has fuelled dramatic increases in the costs of government, all banking on that seemingly bottomless pit of taxpayer cash that redirects our disposable income away from the productive segments of the economy that would contribute to growth of every citizen’s standard of living and to the country’s productivity and wealth.

Since 1998, total wages and salaries paid to general federal government employees are up 28% compared to inflation and private sector wage growth over that period.

And then there is the question of job security. While private sector wages are frozen, workers laid off and plants shuttered, and workers fall prey to the vagaries of the sputtering economy, public sector workers soldier on with iron rice bowl job security with their guaranteed salary and benefits increases that bear no resemblance to the uncertainties in the real world

When we consider the wage and benefits premiums enjoyed by public sector workers, the Ontario’s Sunshine List, the list of public sector workers making over $100,000 annually, rubs salt in the wounds of taxpayers footing the bill.

The current Sunshine List for the City of Oshawa, lists 81 workers making in excess of $100G’s, 6 in excess of $150G’s, and one, the City Manager, at $259,110.75 including his taxable benefits. There were only 71 workers making in excess of $100G’s the previous year for a high income growth factor of 14% over the previous year, an unsustainable growth of city hall high income earners that city taxpayers just cannot afford.

Computing from a city report of February 2009, there were approximately 1194 total city employees at that time stationed in the various work sites with about 550 of these at city hall. Assuming most of the highly paid workers work out of city hall, almost 15% of city hall workers would be in the $100,000+ salary levels. This is a proportion of top earners not to be found in any corporate head office in the country.

In comparing salary growths for 2009 to 2010, the City Manager went from $251,526 to $259,110, a $8435 (3.3%) increase, Commissioners went from $168,192 to $181,978, a $13785 (8.2%) increase, the Auditor General went from $163,589 to $169,842, a $6253 (3.8%) increase, the City Solicitor went from $140,883 to $152,415, a $11,532 (8.2%) increase, and the City Clerk/Sr. Director Level went from $127,822 to $136,408, a $8553 (6.7%) increase....and all this without any market-place bottom-line performance criteria.

These one year pay increases are clearly unconscionable during yearly inflationary times of 1.3% (2009) and 2.4% (2010) but do indicate how “outrageous greedy civil servants can be. While you’re hoping to keep your job, they are grabbing pay increases of these mind-blowing magnitudes.

Actual wage 2010 increases by city senior bureaucrats quoted above ranged from 3.3% to 3.8% to 6.7% to 8.2% to accompany the 2010 inflation rate of 2.3%. Even the last term of council increased city taxes by 13% while inflation hovered about 3% over the term. Government costs are increasing far faster than citizen’s pay increases.

As an example of escalating salaries, if we compound the city manager’s salary into the future at the 3.3% increase he had last year, his 2010 $259,110 salary would compound exponentially to $267,660 in 2011, to $276,493 in 2012, to $285,617 in 2013, to $295.043 in 2014 at the end of this council term, to $304779 in 2015, to $314,837 in 2016, to $325,226 in 2017, to $335,959 in 2018, to $347,045 in 2019, to $358,498 in 2020, to $370,328 in 2021, to $382,549 in 2022 a mere 10 years into the future. These kinds of increases will bankrupt our citizens! Just how much can we afford? City officials need some restraint...and some common sense!

All this while Provincial Finance Minister Dwight Duncan has recently announced Ontario Welfare rates for a single person will rise 1% ($5.92) from $592 to $597.92 monthly, while a single mother raising a child will get an additional $10.14 monthly.

Shame! The single welfare mother with a child will get a measly extra $121.68 a year while some city employees will get a yearly salary increase of $13785.

Reminds me of my youth when my welfare family of 5 lived in one room in downtown Toronto.

The growing disparity between the rich and poor is highlighted by the obscene raises taken by senior city bureaucrats and this disparity is raising alarms by widely divergent voices from Chinese President Hu Jintao to British Prime Minister David Cameron to IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

In 2007, Canada's highest paid 100 CEOs pocketed the average Canadian's annual pay of $40237 by 9:04 a.m. on January 2, the first day of work in the new year.

Income inequality has emerged as a major social and economic issue in Canada and elsewhere, writes Canadian author and political commentator Frances Russell. No longer is it the sole concern of the left. A working paper by the International Monetary Fund states that if income inequality remains unaddressed, the revolutions taking place in the Middle East could possibly spread elsewhere.

It’s now time for those city politicians who got elected based on tax restraint to start pegging staff salary increases to performance and to some semblance of reality reflected in the private sector.

Thoughts from the Federal Campaign Trail

Got a Colin Carrie election flyer Wednesday inscribed with the apparent personally handwritten message, “Sorry to have missed you---Colin.” Only perplexing thing about this was it was delivered with my regular mail by the postman. Leaves me wondering whether the postman is campaigning on behalf of Carrie on his rounds----or is this a cunning and dishonest deception by the Carrie Campaign?

We do know Harper’s main message in seeking a majority government is to decry the potential for an “unstable” and “dangerous” coalition government, the same coalition he worked to form to unseat the Martin Government in 2004.

Harper fails to mention that it was a Lester Pearson Minority Government that brought us the Canada Pension Act, the National Health Act, the Auto Pact, and the National Flag---proof in the pudding that minorities have been good for Canada.

Did you unknowingly donate to some Municipal Election Campaigns?

The municipal candidate’s campaign financial forms are now on the city website. They disclose that Colin Carrie donated $750 to Mayor John Henry’s campaign and $200 to each of Roger Bouma, Bruce Wood, John Neal, and Tito Dante Marimpietri.

The real question is whether Carrie unethically and dishonestly used his parliamentary expense accounts, and thus your tax dollars, to donate to these campaigns.

This is only a part of his undue influence however. There are so far only two Carrie signs in my neighbourhood both arriving in the first days of the election. During the municipal election, one had a Henry sign and one had a Bruce Wood sign, that neighbourhood resident probably turning down Henry’s sign as he is a close neighbour of mine.

The indications grow stronger with the Federal Election that Carrie used his campaign team, his sign locations, his telephone bank, and probably his parliamentary expense allowance to promote conservative candidates at city hall, an undue influence usually avoided like the plague by most senior government politicians...but perhaps part of Stephen Harper’s agenda to gain control of politics across the country right down to the municipal election.

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

Greed trumps Trust--- Even in the Public Service!

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and Unfiltered Opinion
Reprinted from Oshawa Central Newspaper
Bill Longworth, City Hall Columnist
March 7, 2011

You can hardly pick up a newspaper these days without reading about more waste and abuse of public monies by public officials.

As I write this column, the Toronto Star headline screams about spending abuses on Toronto Police paid duty assignments whose officers are paid $65 an hour for unnecessary assignments around construction sites where the work could be done equally well by a few barricades....but such is the strength of public unions that negotiate the laws and hourly rates necessitating this public waste.

In 2009, Toronto taxpayers paid $7.8M on uneccesary police duty assignments, notwithstanding the extra wastage spent by the Provincial Government ($3.5M), City of Toronto entities (Toronto Water, Toronto Hydro, TTC---$2.6M) Construction Companies ($5.5M), Utility Companies ($5.2M)---most for work that could be performed by a few $5 barricades and reflective plastic traffic cones.

These paid duty assignments as well as paid court appearances, which probably act as an incentive for many officers to be quite aggressive in laying traffic charges, account for the incidence of many police officers earning well over $125,000 on Ontario’s Public Salary Disclosure List.

In Toronto, irresponsible, if not criminal, spending problems have surfaced within the Toronto Community Housing Corporation.

A week or so ago, Toronto’s Auditor General disclosed extensive wastage of public funds by staff officials of the Toronto Community Housing Corporation who expensed $40,000 of public money for a Christmas Staff dinner while many residents of Toronto public housing undoubtedly went without a Christmas dinner, $1000 for Holt Renfrew Chocolates, and $800 for staff massages at a summer picnic. Beyond these transgressions, TCHC staff disregarded corporate procurement policies and purchased big ticket items with sole sourced contracts, less than arms length deals, and spent $25M on an unsolicited proposal.

TCHC was governed by a Board of Appointed Citizens plus some politicians and resident appointees. But this civilian oversight was insufficient to properly supervise the spending approved by employed officials of the Corporation.

The Civilian Appointees to the TCHC, like politicians elected to oversee public organizations, simply do not have the skill, expertise, or intimate knowledge of the workings of the large organizations and, like stealing candy from a baby, hired bureaucrats can easily hide inappropriate and wasteful spending from prying eyes.

As I’ve said repeatedly in my columns, and in my campaign for mayor, the only way to insure growing productivity and efficiencies in public expenditures is to squeeze these out of the system with reduced annual capital allocations to force spending cuts, combined with a directive that there be no service cuts.

In addition, It would be helpful if all public senior managers were hired on renewable term contracts to insure their easy dismissal if they were unable to produce these growing efficiencies with decreasing tax allocations.

After all, this is the strategy the City of Oshawa implemented to control the investigations of its highly paid Auditor General who will have his 5 year term with its handsome salary renewed only as long as his reports remain supportive of city operations, politicians, and senior bureaucrats. He doesn’t have the independence of the Toronto Auditor General or those holding the position at the Provincial and Federal Levels. He’s literally a sheep in a wolf’s costume!

Jobs for Life guarantees, like those in Toronto for city CUPE employees, muzzles politician's abilities to work for increased productivity and increased cost efficiencies through contracting out. This is unusual job security foreign to the private sector. This iron rice bowl type of employment has even been abandoned in China where it led to an unproductive, unmotivated, and inefficient workforce that hindered China’s international industrial competitiveness.

Even here in Oshawa, city employee’s job security, salaries, and benefits are the envy of Oshawa’s work force.

Of course, appointed community representatives are often just as good as politicians and bureaucrats in hiding self-serving expenditures from prying eyes.

I was once invited to a fancy restaurant dinner by a federally appointed member of the Oshawa Harbour Commission who blatantly advised me, and the manager of a well-known local media organization eating with us, to order from the right hand column on the menu---the price column. It seems that blowing public money is contagious to all positions of public trust. Burning up OHC cash seemed a greater priority than what we ate.

Even highly respected politicians like long serving Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion is under an investigative cloud for donating only minimal proceeds from her charity fund raising events to advertised recipients, and of course, her potential conflict of interest charges for unduly influencing her son’s hotel development project in her city. It seems, no matter your moral compass at the beginning, increased tenure in the job moves you closer to the ethical edge.

I have commented often on all of the fat and waste in governments of all levels and of all stripes in these columns and have stated unequivocally that, while politicians contribute their fair share to this waste of taxpayer’s resources, they do not have the skills or the detailed knowledge of the government operations they oversee on our behalf to eliminate fraud, irresponsibility, deception, cheating, lying and unlawful or unethical conduct that occurs on their watch.

And the trust we have in politicians to come clean with the facts is often compromised by their proclivity for putting unjustly favourable or incomplete spins on the facts.

According to a report on Preventing Fraud and unethical behaviour in Government presented by Deloitte and Touché Canada, one of the largest and most prestigious audit, consulting, financial advisory, risk management, and tax service accounting firms in the country, a typical organization loses 6% of its revenue to occupational fraud, and 10.5% of these cases are government related with average losses of $45,000 with one in six occurrences resulting in losses exceeding $1M.

Frighteningly, governments failed to prosecute in 26.1% of these cases out of fear of bad publicity.

The report also indicates a direct relationship between employment tenure which is presumably correlated with increased responsibility and size of fraudulent loss, and presumably politicians move closer to that ethical line with increased public service....providing context to the Hazel McCallion case quoted earlier.

Internal fraud according to the Deloitte report is perpetrated by false financial reporting, kickbacks and bribes, phantom vendors, submission of fraudulent expense accounts, and payroll fraud...and we frequently read of such crimes against the taxpayer through investigative journalism or criminal investigation...unfortunately though, not in Oshawa where we have no news watchdogs over city council, except for this columnist and a few interested and public minded citizens who expose some transgressions that do escape the top secret mindset of city council and administration.

A recent highly publicized example of fraudulent and criminal misuse of taxpayer monies was exposed in the Gomery Inquiry which investigated bid rigging, fraudulent sole-source advertising contracts, and kickbacks totalling in excess of $100M, some of which was filtered back to political party election preparedness coffers.

Ron Fraser, Oshawa’s Auditor General, works under a 5 year renewable contract which makes him a “yes” man for city bureaucrats and politicians. His terms of employment require that his investigations result from city council direction and his renewable term precludes him from raising any fuss normally associated with Federal or Provincial Auditors General or indeed the Toronto Auditor General, all whose contracts make them much more independent from the political and bureaucratic functions in which they work.

In terms of some investigative work to discover huge wastages and lost tax savings in the city, I’d suggested politicians direct the auditor general to look at:

1) Mileage and private automobile use allowances paid to high auto expensing city staff members and suggestions on how to save money in this area. Two Toronto employees were billing $20,000 per year, in addition to their salaries.

2) Cost of duplications of service between city and regional levels of government and cost savings that would result from eliminating Oshawa Municipal Government and Administration

3) Cost of individual consultant’s reports to city hall, how and why they were sourced, how their fees were set, and their relationship to any city hall bureaucrats or politicians.

4) Commission Time/Study, Productivity and work efficiency studies in the various city hall departments to improve cost effectiveness

5) Analysis of the city hall general vote plebiscite process and strategy to establish whether voters were sufficiently informed of the impact of the change.

6) Costs and effectiveness of city PR, advertising, and promotion activities

7) Investigation of City Expense Accounts, staff and politician’s use of city charge cards,

8) And the list goes on....

Without a daily press or any investigative reporting in Oshawa, and a press controlled in large part by city advertising revenues, it is hard to pin down this kind of excess and wastage of public monies in Oshawa, but you can bet your bottom dollar, it’s just as bad.

Unethical conduct and spending by both politicians and bureaucrats alike will continue to go unreported like the MBA scandal did until uncovered by interested citizens interested in digging to find the truth.

And city taxpayers will continue to be penalized with the highest taxes in the GTA as this wastage continues!

Political and bureaucratic greed will continue to trump trust in serving the public.

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 budget’s set! It time again... to start burning all that taxpayer cash!

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and Unfiltered Opinion
Reprinted from Oshawa Central Newspaper
Bill Longworth, City Hall Columnist
February 28, 2011

As expected, the wily bureaucrats have again outfoxed, outsmarted, and out-manoeuvred city politicians during this annual tax setting charade and come up with another tax increase.

While it’s not the .7% size of increase that’s important, it is the continual tax escalation by politicians, the majority of whom promised tax cuts or freezes during the recent election campaign. The politicians by voting for the increase have sent a clear message to bureaucrats that nothing has changed....Its tax and spend business as usual!

Politicians have told city officials in no uncertain terms that there’s no need to make changes. There’s no need to run a more frugal ship or to look for city hall operational or administrative efficiencies. The city hall spending spree goes full steam ahead. The incremental tax increases will continue to generate fat and waste within the system.

And politicians are being smug and self satisfied about their job overseeing the budget.

Theo Moudakis, Toronto Star

Amy England is patting council on the back for reducing city politician’s expense budgets by $800 each saving a total of $8000 of taxpayer’s dollars out of a budget in excess of $115,000,000, a small gesture, she agrees, but important because council is asking other groups to do with less and so council members should try to work with less as well.

This all makes sense except when we note that Amy also says focussing on reducing politician’s much less transparent Regional Expense budget totalling $280,000 over the term is insignificant compared to some much bigger Regional items to alleviate taxes.

Funny perspective I’d say, suggesting that an over $1/4M expense is not worthwhile focussing on for potential cost savings while taking bows for saving $8000 of taxpayer money.

In patting council’s back over this year’s smaller tax hike, Roger Bouma says, “It’s a great start and we’ll do even better next year!” Roger should know that the tax cuts should start now and not next year....unless we elected a bunch of procrastinators. And besides, taxpayer's current taxes are their immediate concern! And they know that future taxes will balloon on top of tax increases this year! They know the floodgates have to be closed!

Interestingly, one bit of cost saving to make this year’s budget possible was to postpone non-essential hirings to September.

I’d have thought that any council interested in controlling costs would have prohibited non-essential hirings completely. Hiring non-essential staff is pure fat and gravy personified isn’t it? And so city officials and politicians have implemented a directive to postpone hiring extra fat and gravy at city hall until September and then they’ll get back to their regular policy of hiring non-essentials I suppose.

Mayor John Henry wanted to bring a business sense to the operation of city hall. How many businesses are you aware of that hire non-essential staff?

I can see it now---a giant ad in the Financial Post---Oshawa City Hall now hiring highly paid non-essential workers with great lifetime health, pension, job-security, and retirement benefits. Guaranteed annual salary increases. As a non-essential "surplus" worker, you’ll have little work, and certainly no important work to do. Apply today! Send us your address and Mayor John Henry will come out in a Mackie's Moving Van to interview you.

While this year’s .7% tax increase may sound minimal to some readers, I want to remind all that last year’s .9% tax increase produced a $1M surplus in just two accounts that have been publicized with a $650,000 budget surplus to be rolled over to this year and also the $350,000 unbudgeted windfall paid out to defeated and retiring politicians.

And these surpluses are just the tip of the iceberg.

They don’t account for any of the additional needless and wasteful spending, operational inefficiencies and duplications, and a myriad of mismanagement excesses including unnecessary consultant’s reports that produce reports supporting bureaucratic decisions that have already been made.

But these wasteful excesses are borne from an organization that has learned that they can dip further and further into taxpayer pockets for as much cash as they can spend with little regard for costs.

And of course, the .7% increase politicians are boasting about will produce a .7% increase in all of the fat and waste over last year’s surpluses.

This year’s .7% tax increase will boost that $1M surplus of fat generated last year by an additional $805,000 this year for a total fat and waste of $1.8M generated in these two years alone....and of course this is a pattern that repeats each year with incremental tax increases resulting in huge excesses that balloon up city hall excesses, salaries, perks, and privileges. And this "fat" estimate doesn't even include fat to be generated by taxes on new construction.

No business could be sustainable with incremental increases in spending every year. It takes spending limits to force efficiency, productivity, and improvement on any system.

Of course the low increase boasted about this year is a huge lie as some city taxes have simply been shifted from residential taxpayers to those same taxpayers who will now pay greater tax to park downtown or have their elderly parents or grandparents pay a 1200% fee increase in senior’s basic fitness membership for using the city recreational facilities. These are increased taxes pure and simple. And as the saying goes, a rose by any other name is still a rose! And this rose stinks!

These user fee taxes may very well result in lost revenue as fewer users refuse or can ill-afford to pay the increased fees. I, for one, refuse to go downtown because of the parking costs. Why would I when free parking abounds at the Oshawa Centre or any of the other shopping plazas around. There is absolutely no incentive to go downtown and, of course, this results in downtown decay and shuttered businesses. Elimination of downtown parking fees, not increases, is necessary as a first step in making the downtown user friendly

Oshawa has continued tax increases despite the promises of virtually all politicians elected to bring tax cuts or freezes.

Real leadership would have followed Rob Ford’s Toronto example.

Like him or not, he is proving true to his word in cutting out the Toronto Gravy Train.

Ford has not only come in with a zero percent residential tax increase, he has also slashed other taxes like the $60 Toronto vehicle registration tax and stopped utilities like the TTC from raising ticket prices when their budget was cut.

In the case of the TTC, to fund $25M of budget projected shortfall, he directed transit officials to come up with $8M of fat and waste within their budget and for Toronto city hall to come up with $16M of fat and waste within their budget to cover the projected TTC shortfalls. These savings of fat, waste, and inefficiency were easily found.

Ford’s system requires public bureaucrats to squeeze the system for cost savings, operational efficiencies, wiser spending and more care for public money, and he is putting systems and cost restraints in place to insure just that.

As Toronto's Budget Chief stated, “We’re in a hole next year and everybody knows it...and Rule Number One when you’re in a hole is stop digging.” This is a message Oshawa politicians have not learned.

As Toronto City Budget Committee Vice Chair Doug Ford, and brother to mayor Rob stated recently, “There is not a lean and efficient department in Toronto City Hall!” The same is true here in Oshawa. When there are no constraints on spending over the years, those with spending authority have a field day.

With Toronto City Council’s approval of their tax freeze budget, city departments will have to find those efficiencies in order to survive, and their mindset will become much more businesslike as they prioritize in spending on needs and not simply on wants.

Oshawa City Council, on the other hand, have demonstrated by their weak leadership on this budget issue that the Oshawa City Hall gravy train continues and spending motors full steam ahead.

It’s unfortunate for Oshawa city taxpayers that little is being done to increase the efficiencies of program delivery and administration at city hall.

After all John Henry promised to bring a business-like approach to city hall.

And yet Henry’s City Council has announced that they are providing over $8M more of taxpayer money for city bureaucrats to spend next year.

Obviously, Mayor John Henry is no Rob Ford!

So get to it boys! Time to start burning all that extra cash! There’s a bit more where that came from!

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

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/

Oshawa---Prepare to be Amazed!

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
reprinted from Oshawa Central Newspaper
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
January 31, 2011


There are a couple of Oshawa City Hall topics receiving coverage and comment in the media and considerable criticism in the social media this week.

First is the appointment of a replacement local councillor for the disgraced Mike Nicholson who refused to be sworn to council after winning a seat in the election, an occurrence that undoubtedly could only happen in Oshawa, and in two elections in a row in Oshawa--- “Believe It Or Not!”

This is so bizarre, it could probably be featured in the Ripley column by the same name for those old enough to remember the syndicated newspaper cartoon panel which pictured items so strange and unusual that readers might question the claims.

Anyway council deliberations for Nicholson’s replacement will take place at a February 3rd Special Council Meeting and should be great fun for all who want a good night of free entertainment and a night of democracy (or not) in action.

Council has decided to appoint rather than call an election to fill the vacancy so some favored son or daughter is going to be gifted almost four years of part time employment requiring approximately 10 hours a month at a salary of approximately $300 per hour (1/3 tax free).

The lucky recipient will also be placed in a “shoo-in” position for election in the regular municipal elections in 2014.

The idea of appointment, and the appointment process itself, has generated giant Facebook debate by the chattering classes on both the pro and anti appointment sides of the question.

Of grave concern to some is that the right to be a candidate is contingent upon being nominated and seconded by a council member. This has led some to observe that, while candidacy in a regular election is open to all, is non-political, and is automatic upon applying and posting a fee with the city clerk, the appointment process chosen by council is more akin to council opening up its arms to consider only “friends” into the club and is therefore seen as cronyism and nepotism.

In supporting his successful motion to consider any interested candidate nominated and seconded by a member of council, John Aker stated, ”Everyone (every politician, he meant!) will be able to bring forth a candidate. It satisfies democracy. No one (no politician, he meant!) is excluded.”

So democracy we learn is about giving politicians the power to select council members, not the people. Hell, you learn something new every day! There are rebellions occurring today in Tunisia and Egypt by citizens who oppose that view as well as civil unrest in many places in the world where the people are too repressed even to rebel.

The process of requiring all those considered for appointment to be nominated and seconded by a sitting council member makes politicians themselves the gatekeepers of who can be considered and this is a very dangerous precedent.

It is however, the distinctive mark of dictators and despots worldwide who bestow their blessings on the chosen thus insuring continuation in perpetuity of the beliefs and policies of those in charge. Hell, they'd never appoint someone with new ideas who brings new or contrary thinking to the club.

The other danger in City Council’s process is that the names of those interested in the position is secret and only the names of those nominated will be made public. While citizens will not get a chance to vote, they will not even know who expressed interest in the position, unless they are nominated, to speculate on reasons for council’s choice.

The politicians have turned down a by-election because of the cost. But hey! There is a cost to every election and so should we throw out the idea of democracy to save money? Maybe dictators are just efficient cost savers!

As astute Facebook writer, Tom Mitchell stated, “If Mayor John Henry really thinks that money is the issue in filling the vacant council seat, he should hold an auction. Get a grip your worship!” Mitchell continued, “Politics isn't the office furniture biz!”

In terms of appointing rather than electing politicians, I’ll never forget a young guy I met whose Chinese name translated into English as “Red Star Rising.” He had reported to Shijiazhuang, the Capital City of China’s Hebei Province where I worked, to have his Assignment as Mayor changed to another city. At the time, knowing a little bit about Democracy and the Electoral Process in the free world, I was a little surprised to see politicians being directly appointed by a government. But now I know you needn’t go all the way to China to witness this phenomenon. You can see it right here in Oshawa.

But anyway, make sure you skedaddle down to city council chambers for the special meeting on Thursday Feb. 3 if you want to see all the fun. As with other meetings this year that might generate considerable public interest, this decision will be made on a night when Rogers Cable does not televise the event....All in the interests of non-transparency and non-accountability of course!

The second event of interest this week is Mayor John Henry’s infantile publicity stunt to hightail it out of Oshawa in a jump seat astride a Mackie’s 24 wheeler Moving Truck to various Golden Horseshoe Mayor’s offices and council chambers seeking support for Oshawa’s opposition to the Provincial Plan to terminate construction of the expanded Highway 407 at Simcoe Street.

The 407 issue is one that John Henry didn’t mention on the campaign trail so it appears he is a Johnny-Henry-come-lately to the cause. All of the considerable public interest so far has been generated by the superb leadership of the issue by Columbus resident, Rosemary McConkey. She has organized bus protest groups to Queen’s Park, has organized extensive sign campaigns, has generated media coverage, and has brought in many prominent speakers and politicians, even MP’s and MPP’s and the Provincial Leader of the Opposition to focus attention and interest on the cause.

And while many issues simmer in this city with little apparent action, our mayor is now hopping on McConkey's 407 bandwagon and cavorting around in a giant moving truck with prominently displayed, “Mackie’s Moving,” emblazoned on the side to chat with Golden Horseshoe Mayors and Councils. They must be impressed!

I wonder whether Premier McGuinty would have sprung to attention in Peterborough recently if he’d seen Henry jump out of the moving truck to greet him?

Maybe use of the Moving Van was symbolic.

During the campaign, I spoke to a number of people in new housing subdivisions north of Taunton who reflected to me that if they’d known about the enormous taxes here, they’d have never come. And the high taxes have decreased their house values below their outstanding mortgages trapping them here. If they could afford to move, they would, I was told repeatedly.

So maybe Henry’s use of the Moving Van was symbolic of this widely-held sentiment...even Henry is grabbing a moving van out of town!

In one report, I read, in response to criticism of being “anti-green” in burning all the gas in the giant rig rather than driving in his car, Henry said, “The truck was going past St. Catharines anyway and so I just hitched a ride.” There was no report on how he was getting home---the bus, hitchhiking, or helping to unload the Mackie’s Truck and then catching a ride back in the empty rig.

While it is common for municipalities to get their ideas supported and sanctioned by other municipalities, and numbers of such requests appear on Oshawa City Council Agendas every council meeting, it is extremely unusual for busy mayors to have the time or interest to make personal representations at many out-of-town council meetings. Mayors who do this either have time to burn or get an image boost from such public appearances....and John Henry might need an image boost after spending 20 years driving around in a truck to pick up office equipment for repair!

Maybe with all these meetings from Cornwall to Windsor, Henry is hoping to bolster his image and buttress support for a run at some higher office. LOL! If so, nobody best see him scamper out of that 24 wheeler!

With this PR stunt, it is obvious we have a mayor more interested in PR than substance. As PM Harper's conservative plant in the city, he is following his leader well....no substance, no action or leadership here, but flying around the world playing the big shot while looking for photo ops. Henry is learning well at the hand of his master!

With this Mackie Truck antic, Henry is continuing as a mayor of image rather than substance.

Anyway this image of Mayor John Henry jumping on the Mackie’s Moving Truck has sure enough generated tons of publicity for Mackie’s.....and tons of ridicule for Oshawa!

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

Oshawa's Annual Turkey Strut Tax Setting Mating Dance

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
reprinted from Oshawa Central Newspaper
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
January 17, 2011



Well it’s city budget time and the annual mating dance ritual, “The Strut of the Turkeys” between bureaucrats and politicians has begun.

It follows a predictable time worn pattern and the steps along the way are craftily designed to make you ecstatic in accepting your yearly tax increase.

Tax cuts, sold by the politicians, will usually come with some sleight of hand magic that will make you thankful for the city revenue cuts in some well publicized areas while taxes and user fees and service cuts are introduced in a myriad of other areas to more than make up for the well publicized cuts.

The real test of tax cuts is to see bottom line cuts in operating revenues of the city and real cuts to bottom line government expenditures. We must see a total reduction of monies taken in by city hall, not simply a rebalancing of tax sources with the net revenues remaining the same. We need governments to operate with more efficiency at less cost, the same goal as every profitable business worldwide.

I have written in past columns that when politicians approve incremental percentage tax increases, which is the usual case, the effect is to pad any past fat, waste, and inefficiencies that had crept into the administration over the years. The only way to cut such fat, waste, and inefficiencies is to incrementally cut departmental budgets.

The Annual “Strut of the Turkeys” budget process for governments at all levels is always the same and follows the following well defined processes.

1. Politicians call for a tax cut, hold, or small increase

2. Bureaucrats raise alarms about the disasters to occur as a result of anything less than the inflated X% increases they’ve requested and outline an exaggerated or inflated list of outrageous and alarming service cuts required to meet the demands of the politicians.

3. All of the cuts bureaucrats outline as required to meet political demands are those that have the highest public profile and political impact.

4. As a result, the politicians get cold feet at the alarms raised by the bureaucrats and they moderate their demands about the cuts, holds, or small increases, and give the bureaucrats the moderate increases they really wanted in the first place. In the process, bureaucrats make imperceptible adjustments to meet the reduced allocations with no discernable difference to the public. It’s like selling a used car---ask high so there’s room to negotiate down to the price you wanted in the first place.

In Oshawa, all those elected called for tax cuts or a tax freeze since this was the number one taxpayer concern.

Politician’s push for tax cuts is offset by a bureaucratic push for bigger budgets and all of the power is with the bureaucrats. If knowledge is power, bureaucrats have all the knowledge of their operations and by selectively providing or withholding information, mislead politicians about the true state of affairs. The combination of information denial and the provision of falsified information by bureaucrats underlie the annual cat and mouse budgeting process which defines bureaucrat’s reluctance to be dragged away from their gold plated lattés.

Part of the lies, of course, are the expensive expert "consultant's reports" written by consultants who agree to write what the city wants them to write in order to get politicians to "buy into" decisions favoured and already made by the bureaucrats.

All in all, politicians have no idea what is happening on the micro level in city hall and have to rely on senior officials for all information....and by selectively providing and withholding pertinent information, bureaucrats can effectively manage political decision making.

I recall a statement from a Director of Education who was asked to recount his frustrations at his Board of Trustees spending inordinate amounts of time discussing unimportant issues. "Frustrated? Hell no," he said, "If they waste all their time talking about those issues, they'll never get around to discussing the important stuff." What the Director implied with those words, of course, was his encouragement (and leadership) to keep non-vital issues in front of the Board so he was free to run the Education System without political interference. And of course Oshawa City Officials operate in the same way.

This is where we need strong political leadership to impose the council will despite the bureaucratic protests. Unfortunately, based on weak political leadership and inexperienced politicians, the present city council doesn’t seem to have the strength or will to grab control.

As policy setters, strong politicians can set policy for bureaucrats to implement and insure that it is followed. In terms of budgets and the resultant taxation levels, politicians can only approve tax cuts or increases and major expenditures. As a “show,” some politicians will suggest some cuts to simply show they are on top of the issue.

I’d like to point out examples of the “Strut of the Turkeys” budget deliberations by our present council to point out how the four principles of the Turkey Strut works in Oshawa but this is an impossible task, since nothing has been happening here on anything.

Hell, City Politicians haven't even figured out yet how to replace the disgraced Mike Nicholson who reneged on accepting his council seat after wnning the election because he found out he couldn't hold any elected office as a TTC bus driver. Good thing he isn't getting a chance to help run the "sometime complicated" issues confronting city business if he didn't know and understand that.

Because of the devoid of Oshawa City Council activity, I will have to look to Toronto examples which exist under the strong leadership of Mayor Rob Ford, who, in contrast to our new Oshawa Mayor, actually defined a platform during the election that people voted to accept. Winning on a defined platform, of course, gives the Toronto Mayor legitimacy in taking action to implement his platform. John Henry, in not having an election platform except for a few platitudes like “restoring trust,” “improving transparency and accountability,” and, “respect for the people” has had no real plan of action endorsed by the people.

In Step one of Toronto’s Annual ”Turkey Strut”, Mayor Ford called for funding cuts of 5% for all Toronto City departments and asked that all Departmental Budgets be produced reflecting that cut.

In Step two of the Toronto’s ”Turkey Strut”, Police Chief Bill Blair blared, “That’s impossible! We’ll have to cut 1200 police jobs!” he announced to a citizenry already concerned with crime and public safety even though Toronto crime rates have been decreasing for the last decade according to statistics. The poker faced chief knows he has to bluff when he only has a pair of deuces in his hand.

In response to questions of studies of required staffing numbers, he confirmed there’d been no staffing studies, and further that Toronto’s policing levels shouldn’t be compared to other Canadian Municipalities which don’t have Toronto’s problems but rather with similar sized Chicago which has twice the officers per capita and where every citizen has a constitutional right to carry a revolver in their pocket or purse.

Sure chief, Toronto, with its 59 homicides last year, should be compared to Chicago with its 458 in 2009. Right on Chief! Brilliant!

And by the way Chief, Canada is one of the safest countries in the world and Toronto is the safest city in North America---but hey Chief, in the turkey trot, you're expected to gobble up as much tax cash as you can to grow your department....whether you need the staff or not. It's the bureaucratic way!

In any case, Blair came out of a meeting with the Mayor beaming about a 2% increase to his budget during these times with a 12 month inflation rate of 1.9965%.

I guess the chief will not have to cut any fat, waste, or inefficiencies out of his department!

Toronto’s Library Board also defied the Mayor’s call for a 5% cut by asking for a 2.6% increase stating Ford’s cuts would mean reducing book purchases by 18,400 books and the closing of the City Hall Library Branch. Cutting books from the library’s $171M budget and closing the downtown city hall branch hits as close to the heart as possible without rendering the library system clinically dead and implies they are running a remarkably skimpy "no fat" system.

The Toronto Civic Administration also avoided a last minute 10¢ TTC fare increase by coming up with a magical $16M and the transit commission with another $8M to make up the $24M the fare increase would have raised. Now I wonder whether this magically found $16M came out of the fat and waste that was built into the city budget through the use of incremental tax increases which pad all built up fat and waste yearly by the incremental increase applying to every aspect of the budget including fat and waste. Even city officials have not been able to report where the extra $16 mill came from....Guess it's tough for them to say, "It's just part of the fat!" It is clear though that the $8M the TTC is expected to save does come from their padded fat and waste.

In any case, Politicians neither have the time, education, expertise, or knowledge of the many specialized functions within city hall to micromanage. The only effective thing they can do is cut funding which the city manager in turn would direct all his subordinate managers to do.

It’s only the Department Managers, who know where the fat and wastage is within their departments, but heretofore Public service bureaucrats have only been interested in growing the size of their departments since bottom line profitability or efficiency never enters the equation.

That is an aspect of government budget setting that has to change as we drag the bureaucrats kicking and screaming from their gold plated latté cups.

Toronto Mayor, Rob Ford, campaigned on the theme, "Stop the Gravy Train." With the points made above, Ford’s idea is meaningless unless he can demonstrate that he is extracting reduced revenues from the public and reducing the costs of government.

Announcing major tax cuts like the $60M auto registration tax is meaningless if the equivalent $60M is then extracted from the public by increasing user fees or saving the money through reducing staff and services.

The only way for Ford to stop the gravy train is to cut departmental budgets with the directive that there are no service cuts and no user fee increases.

Cutting costs by cutting service and staffing is easy and is what made then famous "Chainsaw" Jack Welch, former GE CEO a darling of the investment world. He forgot about improving profitability by increasing efficiencies, productivity, customer service, and new products and markets. Those keys to profitability are worshipped by the best CEO's just as improving efficiency and service should be hallmarks of excellent public administration.

Ford knows this, and it is only with reduced Toronto city overall expenditures without service cuts that Ford can demonstrate that he is bringing increased efficiency and productivity to civic administration by cutting out fat and waste.

The tax revolt in underway everywhere in North America and the people are demanding nothing less.

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

Attracting industrial commercial development and jobs to Oshawa

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
October 11, 2010

This is a question that comes up in every mayoral debate and is one that Mayor John Gray gloats over in mentioning the courthouse and university and their location here in attracting high level employment to this area.

Neither, of course, have anything to do with his efforts or city council policies. City policies neither encourage nor discourage government or educational facilities from locating here since city tax policy does not apply to such buildings which, along with churches and government buildings, are property tax exempt.

City policy, under John Gray’s leadership, does provide active discouragement for the location of industrial/commercial businesses with its job growth here.

Besides having the highest residential tax rates in the GTA, Oshawa also has the highest commercial/industrial tax rate in the GTA. In 2010, Oshawa’s Industrial tax rate was 5.144417. Throughout the GTA these rates were as low as 2.14 in Markham, to 2.49 in Whitchurch Stouffville, to 2.46 in Vaughn, to 2.46 in Richmond Hill, to 2.64 in Newmarket, to 2.75 in Mississauga, to 2.53 in King, to 2.92 in Georgina, and to 2.66 in Caledon. Industrial concerns would pay only half the property taxes in any of these cities mentioned than they would in Oshawa….so why locate in Oshawa?

The tax rate means big dollars to the location of an industrial plant. A plant costing $25M would be taxed at $1.361M in Oshawa and at $535,000 in Markham in 2010….If you were a businessman with $25M to spend, why would you bring your plant and your jobs to Oshawa when a Markham location would save you $826,000 in taxes every year? Oshawa high taxes actively discourage industrial concerns to locate here.

The only jobs growth we can attract are government and university jobs, which because of their tax exempt status are not discouraged from locating here, by the high Oshawa industrial/commercial tax rates.

Both the courthouse and the university are great for the city, but neither pays property taxes to assist with the costs of administering this city, and so neither contributes to providing any tax relief for residents.

In driving into Oshawa along the baseline, the 401, or Taunton Road, you can see loads of commercial development right up through Whitby until the Oshawa border, and then the commercial development stops to be replaced by vacant fields, due to the abrupt increase in commercial rates once you hit the Oshawa boundary.

Commercial establishments like the OC shopping centre and the big box stores along Taunton just have to grin and bear our high taxes for the sake of having Oshawa outlets. The high Oshawa taxes would, however, make these stores less profitable than their neighbouring stores in Whitby, Scugog, or Clarington. Perhaps that is why outlets like Home Depot located in Whitby first, and Oshawa customers had to trek over there to the baseline store for a number of years to make their purchases.

Similarly, Oshawa’s 2010 residential tax rate at 1.704499 was highest in the GTA. GTA residential tax rates ranged from Oshawa’s highs down to Toronto’s lows of .0831, to Vaughn’s .977, to Richmond Hill’s .979, to Oakville’s .983, to Mississauga’s .982, to Milton’s .878, to Markham’s .963, to Halton’s .995, to Aurora’s 1.077.

So a $350,000 Oshawa house in 2010 would be taxed at $5966 and $2901 in Toronto, $3419 in Vaughn, $3490 in Richmond Hill, $3441 in Oakville, $3437 in Mississauga, $3073 in Milton, $3335 in Markham, $3500 in Halton and $3770 in Aurora. The second highest taxed place in the GTA is Brock at 1.530 which would result in a tax of $5355 on that $350,000 house, still $611 less than Oshawa’s sky high taxes.

No wonder we have a tax revolt underway in Oshawa. One homeowner told me his city taxes were like a mortgage he could never pay off!

Like the high industrial/commercial tax rates that make Oshawa a less attractive place to do business, our high residential tax rates make Oshawa a less attractive place to live. This is why Oshawa has the lowest priced housing in the GTA.

High taxes depress house values robbing homeowners of tens of thousands of dollars of home equity. Lower taxes, after an adjustment period, would see a rise in housing values and a lowering of the tax rates to produce the same city revenues.

As we continue to be unable to attract industry, and are only able to attract tax exempt institutional uses like the university, a higher proportion of the costs of administering the city will be transferred to the residential tax rate, causing even higher taxes into the future unless we take the bull by the horns and cut our industrial commercial taxes.

If we don’t do so, any high tech job spinoffs from UOIT will locate in Whitby, Ajax, or Pickering where a $30 million factory investment would generate an annual real estate tax of $1,543,325 in Oshawa but would save the investor $226,060 annually if built in Pickering, $219,577 annually if built in Ajax, and $206,480 annually if built in Whitby.

So if you were an industrial investor, why would you pay from $17,207 to $18,838 more monthly to locate farther from Toronto in Oshawa than the lower taxed, and closer to Toronto, Ajax, Pickering, or Whitby?

The city is going to take a revenue hit when it does significantly cut taxes to attract industry and all those millions spent on the needless city hall reconstruction and the $40M spent on the GM Centre to increase the value of the Oshawa Generals, so they could be sold by their owner for a considerably improved price based on the taxpayer arena investment, might well have been spent in transition spending subsidizing the city’s reduced industrial/commercial tax rates to attract industrial/commercial jobs investment in this community.

Attracting industrial/commercial development is crucial to Oshawa’s future. We have to not only get our residential tax house in order, but we have to start lowering our industrial/commercial tax rates if we are going to attract industry and jobs to the city.

The costs of doing business is everything! If we don’t lower the industrial/commercial tax rates, Oshawa will become more of a bedroom community with more mass outflows of residents, along packed highways every morning, crawling into Toronto, and Oshawa shall continue as the lowest priced housing but highest taxed place in the GTA.

The Mayor and council with their rose coloured glasses which block them from seeing the serious consequences of the high tax rates facing this city have to be replaced before more damage is done to this city.

High taxation levels are resulting from a city council that believes in spending our way to prosperity. This is a pipe dream that has driven many into uncontrollable debt and bankruptcy…something this city council with its high taxation levels seems intent on doing to our citizens. City hall spending reminds me of the “big-time” spender with the high life style struggling behind the scenes to pay the bills to keep up the appearances. Diamonds bought with borrowed money soon lose their gloss!

This city council is one that believes if you zone for industrial parks, etc., industry and jobs will come. On the contrary, the high taxes “smell” from a mile away and scare industry away just as effectively as a cornered skunk. Without lowering industrial/commercial tax rates, industry would not locate here even if the land was free. Industrialists know that you can pay off construction costs of new plants, and that a skilled workforce is mobile, but that taxes go on forever.

Oshawa's sky-high industrial/commercial tax rates not only rebuff business from locating here, they act as an "eviction notice" for companies already here.

But hey, what kind of economic understanding do you expect from a Mayor whose “real job” was as a part time bookkeeper and who has council members like Brian Nicholson chairing economics committees because he claimed to have a degree in economics and political science only to recently come clean admitting that he is a high school graduate with some economics courses, and Louise Parkes who claims an honours degree with her 4th year incomplete which means she doesn’t have the degree claimed.

Let’s get some bright and honest people on council before these incompetents destroy this city beyond repair.

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

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/

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/