Are we getting straight talk from city staff?
The question is more frequently asked as Toronto council grapples with polarizing issues.

thestar.com
Sept. 18, 2015
By Royson James

Do we get the straight goods when city staff craft recommendations to city council in the voluminous weekly reports? Or are the findings tainted by political interference, real or imagined?

The question is more frequently asked as Toronto City Council grapples with hot-button issues that polarize constituents:

Uber versus the taxi industry. The impact of expansion of the island airport to accommodate jets. Proposed privatization of garbage collection east of Yonge St. to match west of Yonge. Tear down the Gardiner Expressway or remediate it?

Then there is an impressive lineup of outstanding transit studies and reports whose findings will have tremendous fiscal and political implications. Consider:

• What is the real ridership potential of the corridor from the Bloor-Danforth subway terminus at Kennedy station at Eglinton Ave., to the Scarborough Town Centre at McCowan Rd. and Highway 401 and up to Sheppard Ave? Is it 9,500 per hour in the peak direction, enough for an LRT; or 14,000 per hour, barely enough to consider a subway?

• A staff report, due this fall, is supposed to fix that little mess created when two city reports gave seemingly conflicting numbers. The higher ridership number used assumptions that, when examined, might justify the results, but critics cry foul.

• Is the proposed Scarborough subway extension too close to Mayor John Tory’s proposed SmartTrack line, a project planning staff at the city and at the TTC and at the province did not contemplate? And will one cannibalize the other?

• What is the financial and practical transit impact of increasing the distance between the subway and SmartTrack, as some in the mayor’s office have suggested? What is the benefit, the business case, for moving the subway farther east into single-family neighbourhoods, when the cost could jump by $1 billion or more while per-kilometre ridership numbers drop because the route travels through lower density corridors?

• How about reducing the number of SmartTrack stations to one from the proposed six in the Scarborough sections where it aligns near the subway route, so as not to compete with the subway? And, if you gerrymander the project in that way, why would Toronto taxpayers pay billions of dollars for a line that is not serving its residents but is primarily aimed at shuttling commuters from Unionville to Union Station? And why take on the extra costs when you have just taken on extra costs to put a subway in the same corridor, even though an LRT might satisfy ridership demands for decades to come?

• Can staff produce a report that analyzes the alignment options for the Downtown Relief Line and do so in a political environment where the mayor’s office is focused on the efficacy of the DRL’s competitor, SmartTrack?

Such is the world of city staff - buffeted by winds of political ambitions that ride on their recommendations.

It has ever been such. Staff propose; politicians dispose. Staff advise; councillors vote.

Democracy demands a consideration of competing options, an accommodation of minority views to avoid the tyranny of the majority. It’s never pretty. The best outcomes arrive when staff, politicians and the public wrestle over ideas and recommended solutions to settle on what’s doable.

As such, the issue is not the essential grappling of competing ideas on the council floor - the challenging of staff to support and justify their recommendations; the jaundiced eye with which citizens view a bureaucracy that’s inclined to the status quo. The fear is that if staff reports are not unvarnished, professional advice - politics be damned - then we might as well let issues be decided by political might, not reason and analysis.

The system is set up to work like this: city staff give professional advice and politicians consider the advice and vote for what’s best for their constituents.

Politics is a blood sport, so when tough issues arrive in the council chamber, tempers will rise, rhetoric will fly. But intimidation should remain a tactic of street thugs, not politicians.

Citizens, politicians and civic staff must insist on an unbiased, unaligned, professional civic staff untainted by partisan politics that must wrestle for primacy.

That’s needed now, especially with these huge issues pending - billions of public dollars hanging in the balance and civic projects waiting to advance or languish, to our civic pride or shame.

To wit, city staff should heed a letter sent by Councillor Josh Matlow that reminds staff of the problems that are created by conflicting data from staff reports. It also reminds them of the imperative that “Toronto residents and council are provided with accurate, reliable information with which to assess these transit projects.”

Ditto for all the other reports. The very credibility of the system hangs on every word.