Ford: a fool with momentum

[masterchief]

I wouldn't blame Miller for any financial mess the city is in. That blame still falls on Mike Harris with his amalgamation and offloading of services.

Sorry to go off topic, or to seem to be defending Mike Harris, but every time somone comes out to blame the City of Toronto's woes on the Harris governement downloading the fiscal reponsibility of social services costs to the city, my mind hurts.

People tend to forget that at that time in 1998 the provinical government also uploaded (what at the time was the single biggest social expenditure for the City of Toronto) the cost of providing education services to all the municialites of Metro Toronto.

In reality the province fiscally helped the city with swaping out a lower cost burden to the City; but true to form Toronto went on its usual spending spree and is now paying the price.

I mean in 2010 the city of Toronto will spend at least $161 Million dollars on the homeless, where as the province will spend $2.61 Billion on the Toronto District School Board.

So truly the blame lies in the seats of 100 Queen Street West, ad many of those people are still in office happy to keep spending like crazy.

 

[themexi]

Sorry to go off topic, or to seem to be defending Mike Harris, but every time somone comes out to blame the City of Toronto's woes on the Harris governement downloading the fiscal reponsibility of social services costs to the city, my mind hurts.

People tend to forget that at that time in 1998 the provinical government also uploaded (what at the time was the single biggest social expenditure for the City of Toronto) the cost of providing education services to all the municialites of Metro Toronto.

In reality the province fiscally helped the city with swaping out a lower cost burden to the City; but true to form Toronto went on its usual spending spree and is now paying the price.

I mean in 2010 the city of Toronto will spend at least $161 Million dollars on the homeless, where as the province will spend $2.61 Billion on the Toronto District School Board.

So truly the blame lies in the seats of 100 Queen Street West, ad many of those people are still in office happy to keep spending like crazy.

Too true... If Toronto had been run by sane administrators instead of clueless idealists Toronto would never hav problems of this magnitude...

As for the homeless... I wonder how much their expenditures break down per homeless person?? or per troubled urban youth... etc etc.... I'll bet that it is an insane per person amount on account of inefficiency & pissing away $$ of feelgood pet projects...

Wouldn't be too hard to have several downtown shelters with beds, bathrooms & food.. Like the capsule hotels in Japan... Somewhere safe, warm & clean with enough food.
Enough to house a reasonable amount of homeless at a bargain cost... No cigarettes... no tv... no nothing except for shelter, cleanliness & enough calories to live on... Humane warehousing. Anyone incapable of following the basic rules or who is a danger to the others is banned...

At all of them have some method of communicating betterment programs to the people... Those that take advantage are moved to the state of self sufficiency that their abilities will allow... From cleaning a section of city street for tv privileges & a wider food menu to their own room with a few amenities to a subsidized apartment & then onto independence.. At any stage they are treated with dignity & respect but their expectations are firmly set to match their ability & accomplishments. As long as someone is truly doing the best with what they have... They should be able to enjoy what they earn with pride..

A figure should be set as to the maximum sustainable # of homeless the City can financially provide for & then make a crime to habitually sleep on the streets or squat. Anyone in excess of the maximum # of beds or those that aren't civilized enough to use them are either referred to institutions, given tickets out of town or punished by jailtime or fines to be paid off by forced labour... Then they are banished. permanently with harsh punishments meted out to those who trespass again.

Homeless come here because there are too many incentives & not enough deterrents. Catering to them only pads social services payrolls & makes libtards Feel like they've done something...

 

[bigtimedude]

Master \chief, please stop telling the truth and using facts in your debate, the other side simply does not know how to play by those rules.

 

[landscaper]

Too true... If Toronto had been run by sane administrators instead of clueless idealists Toronto would never hav problems of this magnitude...

As for the homeless... I wonder how much their expenditures break down per homeless person?? or per troubled urban youth... etc etc.... I'll bet that it is an insane per person amount on account of inefficiency & pissing away $$ of feelgood pet projects...

Wouldn't be too hard to have several downtown shelters with beds, bathrooms & food.. Like the capsule hotels in Japan... Somewhere safe, warm & clean with enough food.
Enough to house a reasonable amount of homeless at a bargain cost... No cigarettes... no tv... no nothing except for shelter, cleanliness & enough calories to live on... Humane warehousing. Anyone incapable of following the basic rules or who is a danger to the others is banned...

At all of them have some method of communicating betterment programs to the people... Those that take advantage are moved to the state of self sufficiency that their abilities will allow... From cleaning a section of city street for tv privileges & a wider food menu to their own room with a few amenities to a subsidized apartment & then onto independence.. At any stage they are treated with dignity & respect but their expectations are firmly set to match their ability & accomplishments. As long as someone is truly doing the best with what they have... They should be able to enjoy what they earn with pride..

A figure should be set as to the maximum sustainable # of homeless the City can financially provide for & then make a crime to habitually sleep on the streets or squat. Anyone in excess of the maximum # of beds or those that aren't civilized enough to use them are either referred to institutions, given tickets out of town or punished by jailtime or fines to be paid off by forced labour... Then they are banished. permanently with harsh punishments meted out to those who trespass again.

Homeless come here because there are too many incentives & not enough deterrents. Catering to them only pads social services payrolls & makes libtards Feel like they've done something...

Wouldn't be too hard to have several downtown shelters with beds, bathrooms & food.. Like the capsule hotels in Japan... Somewhere safe, warm & clean with enough food.
There are any number of shelters in Toronto , all are relatively safe, provide food and a rack ofr the night. They are available and are very poorly run, just as a for instance there is no central intake area ie., the shelters don't report open beds daily they do it on a weekly basis so beds go unused. There is also no identification process so the people who need the help ie., medical mental etc can be asured of getting it.

They are currently trying to get a shelter opened on George street , they overpaid for the site the construction is 2 years and 100% over budget.

Shelter services runs a cencus of homeless people every second year last year they banned media from walking along because they did not like the coverage from the last one. THe homeless industry is just that an industry it really needs the auditor general to have a good look at its books in a value for money audit , the results will shock anybody which is why it has never been done

 

[Rockslinger]

Too bad we can't get a mayor like the mayor of Windsor (or can we?) who took on the garbage collector union.

 

[landscaper]

the problem in toronto is that all the unions will go berserk as soon as you take on one of them. They will figure correctly that their turn is next. So you will have to deal with , Inside, Outside workers, TTC , and get all essential services on side. A tough task and one that will likely be near impossible.

 

[masterchief]

Shelter services runs a cencus of homeless people every second year last year they banned media from walking along because they did not like the coverage from the last one. THe homeless industry is just that an industry it really needs the auditor general to have a good look at its books in a value for money audit , the results will shock anybody which is why it has never been done

Sure after the first Street Needs Assemement in 2006 came up with a total of 5,052 people, which means that the city was spending $31,000 per person; the real kicker was that out of that only 818 were estimated to actually be living on the street.

 

[themexi]

Wouldn't be too hard to have several downtown shelters with beds, bathrooms & food.. Like the capsule hotels in Japan... Somewhere safe, warm & clean with enough food.
There are any number of shelters in Toronto , all are relatively safe, provide food and a rack ofr the night. They are available and are very poorly run, just as a for instance there is no central intake area ie., the shelters don't report open beds daily they do it on a weekly basis so beds go unused. There is also no identification process so the people who need the help ie., medical mental etc can be asured of getting it.

They are currently trying to get a shelter opened on George street , they overpaid for the site the construction is 2 years and 100% over budget.

Shelter services runs a cencus of homeless people every second year last year they banned media from walking along because they did not like the coverage from the last one. THe homeless industry is just that an industry it really needs the auditor general to have a good look at its books in a value for money audit , the results will shock anybody which is why it has never been done

Sure after the first Street Needs Assemement in 2006 came up with a total of 5,052 people, which means that the city was spending $31,000 per person; the real kicker was that out of that only 818 were estimated to actually be living on the street.

Should be run like any business... communication, proper inventory, economy in consumption & staffing.

The Japanese Pod hotels take up very little space & could be put in almost Any vacant area... In fact I'm sure if they were managed as well as they could be almost any property owner in Toronto would llocate enough space for one in exchange for a healthy tax break & an extral police patrol in the general area...

As for staffing... the requirements would be minimal... a couple people to administer (& work) the facilities... Security could be done either by a PSC for a tax break for example.... shit... the staffing could be filled by all of these liberal do gooders. If they want to save the world... let them donate their own time instead of money from my wallet...

No reason why a lot of these initiatives couldn't be done so inexpensively that they were nearly free...

Same goes for the unions... Jesus are people really trying to tell me that with all the excess police out there NO ONE can get or manufacture enough dirt on these union fucks that they could be brought to heel???? I mean Really bad shit... Career, lifestyle & cornholed in prison type of shit..... arrest their fucking kids with a pound of crack... They play dirty & basically hold the whole city hostage with extortion... What's a couple of union bosses & their families to put an end to the ruination of a whole city???? Turnabout's fair play... The Mayor & city governments jobe is to protect the citizens... GET IT DONE already...

 

[flubadub]

Sorry to go off topic, or to seem to be defending Mike Harris, but every time somone comes out to blame the City of Toronto's woes on the Harris governement downloading the fiscal reponsibility of social services costs to the city, my mind hurts.

People tend to forget that at that time in 1998 the provinical government also uploaded (what at the time was the single biggest social expenditure for the City of Toronto) the cost of providing education services to all the municialites of Metro Toronto.

In reality the province fiscally helped the city with swaping out a lower cost burden to the City; but true to form Toronto went on its usual spending spree and is now paying the price.

I mean in 2010 the city of Toronto will spend at least $161 Million dollars on the homeless, where as the province will spend $2.61 Billion on the Toronto District School Board.

So truly the blame lies in the seats of 100 Queen Street West, ad many of those people are still in office happy to keep spending like crazy.

$3.3 billion

Let me say that again.

$3.3 billion dollars difference in the cost to municipalities from Harris' offloading according to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. And that's $3.3 billion that can't be raised in any way other than property taxes. And yes, that $3.3 billion would include your TDSB numbers as well as any homeless costs.

That's $3 billion dollars that Harris put on the municipalities so lets guess that's probably close to a billion in costs to the GTA (don't have the figure handy, but I expect its really about half the 3 billion). That's why Toronto's finances are a mess and that's why the cities infrastructure has been getting worse since Harris did his deed.

 

[masterchief]

That's $3 billion dollars that Harris put on the municipalities so lets guess that's probably close to a billion in costs to the GTA (don't have the figure handy, but I expect its really about half the 3 billion). That's why Toronto's finances are a mess and that's why the cities infrastructure has been getting worse since Harris did his deed.

\
You make it seem like it’s no taxpayers money being spend either way. What you think that the province’s revenue isn’t from the same pool as the municipalities. So 1 Billion “downloaded” but 2.1 Billion “uploaded” we should be better off than we are.

I think it’s time to stop complaining about something that happened in 1996, I think that it’s time that our municipal politicians stop relying on the boogey-man and own up to the mess they’ve themselves caused. Maybe if they spent their money wisely and on the right things , we wouldn’t be in this mess.

It all comes down to the fact that Toronto finances are a mess because we’ve allowed out politicians to spend like crazy. We spend $31,000 per person on homeless initiatives, while there are hard working people supporting themselves on less than that. How is that not just an example of spending gone mad.

For the last 8 years we’ve had a mayor who refused to switch to a zero-based budgeting model. Even though he was an Economics student, he’d still rather spend is his way into a deficit, and put his head in the sand to the reality of a budgeting process that has repeatedly failed; as long as he gets his green initiatives and his picture in all the right magazines.

 

[Dream_State]

Breaking News!

Rob Ford busted at Motel with 2 chicks and a dude!

 

[K Douglas]

$3.3 billion

Let me say that again.

$3.3 billion dollars difference in the cost to municipalities from Harris' offloading according to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. And that's $3.3 billion that can't be raised in any way other than property taxes. And yes, that $3.3 billion would include your TDSB numbers as well as any homeless costs.

That's $3 billion dollars that Harris put on the municipalities so lets guess that's probably close to a billion in costs to the GTA (don't have the figure handy, but I expect its really about half the 3 billion). That's why Toronto's finances are a mess and that's why the cities infrastructure has been getting worse since Harris did his deed.

I'm not so sure that number is accurate but let's say it is. One thing people forget is the higher revenue source that was brought to Toronto which was MVA for determining residential property taxes. That gave the amalgamated city a huge opportunity to collect higher tax revenue, change the mill rate (tax rate) to be more inline with suburban municipalities but what did they do under Lastman........they froze property taxes for 3 years!! This mismanagement at the local level led to budgetary shortfalls, not the downloading. In the end it was more of Toronto City Council's ineptness that caused the problem.

 

[Mr. Lucky]

I wish a former Toronto SP was running for Mayor

 

[landscaper]

It is interesting to note that a large number of the Ford is an idiot and should not be mayor, are running around blaming everybody but the current council and mayor for the problems. Not sure what that says but it says something.

Just a foot note, the executive council of city council met last week amoung other things they order the city to find a way to purchase a building for 1.6 million (apx) even though there is no money they were told to find the money apparantly the building , which the city will not have the time to asses for usability in the week before council meets next week will be used for a starving artists shelter. According to McConnel and other NDP members the artists are in the lower to bottom wage areas and need help to make ends meet . This was just before they apprpriated more money for another starving artist colony that has been in construction for 10 years and is somewhere over 500% over budget.

And the city voters wonder about council

 

[duang]

Breaking News!

Rob Ford busted at Motel with 2 chicks and a dude!

Good for him. I bet he paid out of his own pocket though [Giabrone would have expensed it].

D.

 

[duang]

That's $3 billion dollars that Harris put on the municipalities so lets guess that's probably close to a billion in costs to the GTA (don't have the figure handy, but I expect its really about half the 3 billion). That's why Toronto's finances are a mess and that's why the cities infrastructure has been getting worse since Harris did his deed.

Flash forward to 2069, Flubby is on his deathbed at the tender age of 96 and his final plaintive croak "If Harris hadn't downloaded all those expense back in '96 I wouldn't have to pay for sex that gave me the STD and I would have lived another twenty years. It's all Harris' fault, all his fault, all his fault...". Fade to black.

F'n get over it already. We know all the world's wrongs are Harris's fault [in your little mind].

Why don't you look at your buddy David Miller for the city's problems?

D.