Preville on Politics
Shirley Hoy’s small potatoes
Posted on December 13, 2007 by Philip Preville
That’s one hum-dinger of a memo City Manager Shirley Hoy sent to city staff in response to my January toilet-bowl cover story. It paints a far bleaker picture of what’s going on inside city hall than anything I wrote. The cupboard has to be pretty bare if the greatest success she can point to is amalgamation, which everyone else agrees was a scorched-earth disaster, and which lies at the heart of everything that’s gone wrong since.
To an outsider’s eye, the memo reads like the opposite of faint praise—it’s high praise for faint accomplishment, casting the delivery of basic city services as an against-all-odds victory. There’s lots of this sort of talk in the clamshell these days. This past year, many councillors have complained to me how complicated it is to manage a big city like Toronto. They say that new developments get stalled because planners get bogged down co-ordinating with multiple city departments—waste, water, emergency services, etc. To resurface a road you must factor in storm drainage, transit and the like. This may be true, and it may even be trying in current circumstances, but it’s not lamentable. Managing this complexity is city hall’s basic job description.
Indeed, the most striking aspect of Hoy’s memo is its utter lack of ambition. The heroic efforts she speaks of don’t produce grand new civic initiatives. They just get the trash off the curb before nightfall. This, surely, is the root of the morale problem, not just within the public service but across this entire disaffected city: people with ambition for themselves and for Toronto who are tired of the sinking feeling that they’ve got little to show for all the hard work.
Epilogue: In council chambers yesterday, Mayor David Miller and Budget Chief Shelley Carroll spoke eloquently and passionately about the plan to revitalize Union Station. They cast it as a symbol of civic ambition, defying everything I’ve just written above. But it’s going to take money from other governments and private sector partners and coordination with a wide range of city services to make it happen. Hope it doesn’t get too complicated.
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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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Joe December 13, 2007 at 2:50 p.m.
I think the biggest difference between the viewpoints of yourself and Hoy is that hers is cautiously positive while yours is overwhelmingly negative.
Seeing something different when looking at the same thing says a lot about how each of you look at the operation of the city and the world in general.
GS December 14, 2007 at 12:08 a.m.
Did Shirley Hoy run over your dog? That's a pretty unfair synopsis of her memo. It wasn't intended for Torontonians or to be an ambitious strategy. It was meant to express the top bureaucrat's confidence in her staff after you went to painstaking lengths to rip it to shreds in a most unproductive manner.
Since the tax issue moved off the agenda, you've become a repository of pessimism and outright contempt for just about everything that happens at City Hall. Might as well just call you Royson.
MCD December 14, 2007 at 11:13 p.m.
Anyone who deals with Toronto administration on a commercial level knows that Preville is correct.
City staff are more interested in butt protection and political obsequiousness than finding savings because the Mayor does not want anyone finding out how bad it is at City Hall.
DR December 15, 2007 at 1:09 p.m.
If Toronto has wasteful spending, what does that make soon to have the highest taxes in the GTA Hazel-ville?
MCD December 15, 2007 at 2:22 p.m.
The answer is simple. Toronto has a a much higher taxes on a much larger commercial tax base in rental and business property that drives jobs out of Toronto to Hazel.
GS December 15, 2007 at 7:21 p.m.
But MCD would be remiss if they forgot to add that the Miller Administration is the only administration to have taken specific steps toward creating a fairer municipal tax climate for those in the commercial tax bracket. First, Miller implemented a 15 (then shortened to 10) year plan to make the residential payers take on a more equal share of the tax burden. And, second, Miller, just last week, had Council unanimously support a plan to provide tax incentives to businesses that create new jobs through developing non-employment lands.
DR December 16, 2007 at 10:33 p.m.
I find it unlikely that Toronto still has a proportionally large commercial tax base. It was mostly driven away before Miller came and implemented the fix GS mentioned.
IIRC, about 2/3rd's of Toronto's municipal property taxes are residential.
Philip Preville December 17, 2007 at 7:11 a.m.
Good digression. Miller's commercial tax plan is a good one. As for Mississauga, I don't know its books or its situation as well as I know Toronto's, but my intuition on the matter suggests two reasons. One: I believe Mississauga finances nothing through debt; if more roads need fixing, Hazel raises taxes. (This is why she's so angry with the federal Tories right now: her commitment to a balanced budget is reaching the limits of taxpayer tolerance.) Two: perhaps she keeps all her departments adequately staffed.
In any event, DR's original point is a logical fallacy: there's nothing to stop any institution from a) keeping tax revenues low, and then b) throwing those revenues away.
Anonymous December 18, 2007 at 9:53 a.m.
I would hope that Shirley worked a day in the life of her fellow co-workers at different levels and see who really are productive and who is just taking home a fat paycheck gossiping with their fellow co-workers.
The budget cutting and monday cancellation created such a big commotion for nothing, they did not think for a second the impact of the cancellation, they(Miller and Hoy) didn't not research that they did not only cancelled "monday" classes,but also twice a week classes landing on a monday. They cut out their main source of revenue from the Parks and Rec which are the permits, and doing such a horrible job in "freaking" torontotnians out like that just to implement higher taxes is very unethical and just stupid. If any of you have kids who take part in these programs you would understand my concern and iritation in this matter.
TS December 19, 2007 at 12:08 a.m.
Atleast the City's agencies are getting some good things done for Torontonians: TCHC (Regent Park revitalization); Enwave (Deep Lake Cooling); TWRC (Parks and waterfront slips); TEDCO (Film studio, Scarborough green houses, waterfront office buildings); Toronto Hydro (Smart Meters and City WiFi); CNE (Soccer stadium).
Mark Dowling December 20, 2007 at 11:41 a.m.
TS -
CNE: the soccer stadium was a giveaway to MLSE. (See also Ricoh Coliseum, Lakeshore Lions)
TEDCO: the City's answer to the TPA in terms of being an agency working to god-knows-what mandate is putting up incredibly ugly buildings on the waterfront to benefit the likes of Corus.
TCHC: won't sell houses in high value neighbourhoods so they can fix up some of the 50 boarded up houses they own which in some cases are causing damage to their privately owned neighbours through maintenance neglect.
Let's add TTC, which is yet again managing to screw up St Clair's retailers right before Christmas.
The rest I'll give you, but there are some people in the city doing a FEMA-style "heckuva job".
JM March 3, 2008 at 10:08 p.m.
Twelve years ago (1996), prior to amalgamation Shirley Hoy was the Commissioner of Community Services earning $119,857 for Metro Toronto. Two years later (1998) when the city was amalgamated her salary was increased to $151,991. Two years later (2000), they gave her a fancier title, and to go with it, a fancier salary $192,649. One year later (2001) she became the Chief Administrative Officer, earning $207,607. In 2002 someone decided that her salary was too low, so it was increased to $264,499 rising to $297,277.85 in 2006.
It took her decades to get to her position 10 years ago & now she's responsible for managing the city. Does she have the right mix of skills, business savy to fill this position, and have the know-how to even go about solving some of this city's problems?