Preville on Politics
Shameless plug
Posted on December 10, 2007 by Philip Preville
The latest print edition of Toronto Life is now on newsstands, featuring a cover story penned by me. I had no say in the cover’s design, but I quite like it. Though City Hall is a stunning and iconic piece of architecture, I have never liked the message it sent: two towers huddling into each other, their backs turned on the city, coddling and protecting the council chamber—it’s all too private and insular for a public institution of any ambition. So the potty, though some might find it harsh, strikes me as apt.
Here’s your executive summary of the cover story. Question: Why is the city in the mess it’s in? There are two correct answers:
1. Because the Harris-era Tories left the city with a structural fiscal shortfall after amalgamation and Queen’s Park must act to restore funding, et cetera.
2. Because the city, faced with years of Harris-imposed fiscal shortfall and knowing that it doesn’t have the money to provide the full slate of services it once did, decided to pretend that it could provide them anyway while trying to wrangle some of the money back from Queen’s Park. Over ten years they stretched resources as thin as possible, starving some departments of staff and resources. The result is low staff morale, poor oversight of outside contractors, question marks about the influence of organized labour and other problems.
The first answer is the standard one. The second answer—about the decisions the city has made to cope with the shortfall, the ill effects of those decisions and the morass in which they have left the city—is the one I’ve tried to provide.
Philip Preville
Veteran freelance writer Philip Preville lived much of his life in Montreal and Edmonton before he was lured, like so many Torontonians before him, by the promise of more work and a better living. A National Magazine Award winner and former Canadian Journalism Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Massey College, Preville writes Toronto Life’s politics column. He lives with his wife and one-year-old son in Riverdale, just close enough to the Don Valley Parkway that he can hear it when he steps outside his house—but just far enough away that it doesn’t keep him awake at night. On his office wall hangs a 1938–39 press pass belonging to his grandfather, Elias Gannon, who wrote for the Montreal Star.
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Comments
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Donald December 10, 2007 at 3:55 p.m.
Here we go again... everything is Mike Harris' fault.
Toronto does no wrong, as per usual.
A December 11, 2007 at 4:02 p.m.
Maybe Donald should read Preville's second point. Just a thought.
ROFL December 18, 2007 at 5:05 p.m.
Donald,
Go apply for a job with the City, try and get one (silly hiring process), then work their for about one year and you'll understand the BS that goes at City Hall along with the other facets of the City (ie TPS, EMS, TFD, and Children's Aid etc).