Last Friday it was AM640. Yesterday, it was CP24.
The guff the mayor’s been taking over KPMG’s review of city services has final coaxed him out of his cave.
The spinners in the mayor’s office are not so out of touch with the masses that they don’t sense the sentiment turning on the so-called Core Services Review.
Or maybe this PR campaign of one-on-ones with Ford-friendly media (can we call it a blitz?) is meant to send a message to councillors among the mayor’s fraying alliance who are feeling uneasy about closing petting zoos and the like to fill that $774 million budget deficit the mayor keeps holding over their heads.
Did you happen to catch the mayor’s not-so-veiled threat to councillors during his CP24 appearance, that they’re the ones who’ll “have to face their constituents” if the so-called “efficiencies” proposed by KPMG are not acted upon? That Robo, such a sly bugger.
CP24’s Stephen LeDrew didn’t exactly hold the fire to the mayor’s feet, lobbing more batting practice soft balls than curves the mayor’s way. A nice game of inside baseball that was.
Despite some verbal stumbles – par for the course for pathological exaggerator Ford – the mayor was able to turn the interview (mostly) to his advantage, talking up garbage privatization and cleaning up the supposed waste in the civil service. To hear the mayor tell it (yet again), there are more than a few at City Hall hiding behind a desk and collecting $60K for doing nothing.
The mayor offered another one of his guarantees (see his no service cuts promise during the campaign), made no apology for missing the Pride parade, and that was that.
The mainstream media helpfully seized on the mayor’s call to the Vox populi to come on down to City Hall Thursday to voice their opinions on the proposed cuts to his executive, as if the opinions of those who didn’t vote for him will make any difference.
Yup. Ford, who still has some political capital left over from the election campaign to burn, put that campaign to stop the gravy train right back on track. Well, not exactly.
Make no mistake. The mayor’s feeling the heat. There’s some selling to be done on the cuts front, now that the sacred river of gravy promised during the election does not run through City Hall. And the “efficiencies” being contemplated, thanks to KPMG’s review, are not “efficiencies” at all, but cuts to core city services.
The various city committees reviewing KPMG’s reports, even those stacked with Ford symps, have been less than enthusiastic about dealing with KPMG’s findings, offering nothing in the way of specific moves on KPMG’s recommendations – who wants to axe libraries, any takers? – and referring matters to the mayor’s executive instead.
They’re not prepared to do the mayor’s dirty work, it seems.
Part of that reluctance is no doubt calculated, to not spoil our summer and buy the mayor more time to sell his cuts to wary allies. Usually, a well-timed visit to a councillor from a Ford staffer is enough to send a message on which way to vote. But word is, the mayor will be paying some personal visits this summer to those beginning to feel uncomfortable about towing the line on the cuts business.
The fallout from KPMG’s reports is sucking up most of the media spotlight. And will no doubt take up more, but you’ll have to wait for the details on that.
But other bombs were going off last week on another biggie on the mayor’s to-do list – his plans to demolish the TTC and raise private cash to build subways.
Friday’s headlines screaming of a “plot” by the mayor, as the Star put it, to oust TTC general manager Gary Webster, reportedly over his opposition to Ford’s P3 subway dreaming, was an attention-grabber. But it’s not the most interesting bit of news on the TTC front.
Webster’s departure has been rumoured for some weeks now, and has as much to do with the fact he’s not willing to be bullied into cuts like some other city department heads. The subject of Webster’s imminent demise has become a bit of a running joke around TTC headquarters to the point that Webster himself has joined the banter around the water cooler.
More telling on the Ford popularity barometer is that the guy reportedly being tapped to replace Webster is now Case Ootes. That’s a shift.
Gordon Chong, the hired gun to cut that public-private deal to fund Ford’s subway plans, was supposed to be the guy in line to take over from Webster.
But then Chong, who was also a member of the mayor’s transition team, went public with those musings on road tolls – as in, they’ll be needed to fund the mayor’s subway plan, which is a non-starter for the tax fighting Ford. And so it seems that his name has now fallen from the top of the list to replace Webster.
I have no first hand knowledge of this next tidbit, but I’m told by someone close to Ford that the mayor’s head exploded when he read Chong’s comments about road tolls in the Star.
But there’s more to the TTC story, and I’m not just talking about Ford allies antsy about killing late-night bus routes, another KPMG recommendation.
Now, the woman handpicked by the mayor to steer the transit provider toward privatization, one TTC chair Karen Stintz, has her own reservations about the P3 model being touted by Ford to build subways.
Stintz told the Globe she’d prefer to use federal cash for the Sheppard LRT handed over under the now dead Transit City, to extend the existing Sheppard line from Don Mills to Vic Park instead. Yowza.
Stintz’s delicate balancing act on the transit file is beginning to tilt noticeably in the opposite direction of the mayor’s.
Why there she was Thursday, at the official launch of the new Toronto Rocket, sending out props over Twitter to her TTC predecessor, Howard Moscoe, and even the former mayor, David Miller, for helping make the new trains a reality. Egad.
This is the same woman, after all, who opposed the purchase of the trains on the basis that the contract to build them was sole-sourced. Stintz, though, is acquiring a more nuanced understanding of the transit file than the cut and burn Ford is able, or willing, to appreciate, seeing the challenges close up for the last six months.
But she’s not the only Ford ally with reservations about the mayor’s subway plans.
Count Councillor John Parker, who also sits on the TTC, among those not happy to see LRTs proposed under Transit City for Finch West and Don Mills take a backseat to Ford’s subway gambit. On that I do have firsthand knowledge, since Parker told me a few weeks back.
Sometimes, it’s not clear whether the mayor is coming or going on the transit front.
At this month’s session of council, for example, the mayor supported a motion tabled by Raymond Cho and seconded by Shelley Carroll calling on all three provincial parties to commit to the “fair share” funding formula for the TTC cut under the Harris regime.
You read that right. The guy who said he wouldn’t go cap in hand to beg for money from the province, is going cap in hand begging for money from the province.
Ford has shown himself to be a pretty good bully. But we’re entering a different phase in which the more delicate operations of city state will require some nifty play calling on the mayor’s part.
The mayor has some smart people working for him, preparing a script to follow. But does Ford have the smarts to pull it off? It’ll take more than softball interviews with sympathetic journalists to get the job done.
