Direction & Planning
Toronto City Council seems to have little understanding of the state of the City.
They do not look at or are incapable of looking at the entire picture: what is essential and needs to be repaired or replaced; what is frivolous and needs to be let go; how well or poorly each of its divisions, agencies, boards, corporations, etc., are functioning; and so on.
City Hall heads are in the sand. They refuse to look up and acknowledge how bad a shape Toronto is in. They cannot or do not see, as Torontonians see every day, how poorly Toronto is governed.
For the City, strategic planning is like saying, “Let’s go on a holiday!” Most Torontonians would then say, “When shall be go? Where shall we go? How much will it cost us? Can we afford it?” For the City of Toronto, it’s just “Let’s go on a holiday!”
The strategy of the City seems to be to keep busy filling in potholes on a bridge that is collapsing. City Hall stutters along, month to month.
No one at City Hall seems to know what will or should happen in one, five, or twenty years, though endless studies, committee reports, and recommendations are received by Council.
If there is a large plan to balance infrastructure spending (repairing and replacing the treatment plants and water mains that deliver our drinking water, the bridges we cross over, the sewers that remove our wastes, the transformers and transmission lines for our electricity, etc.); with services for Torontonians (police, ambulances, firefighting, TTC, garbage pickup, and so on); and with the costs of operating the City (wages, insurance, debt charges, and all the rest), it is well hidden.
The “Toronto Official Plan” and David Miller’s “what makes a city great? TORONTO 2010” are full of platitudes (“Toronto is a great City!” and “Successful cities are key to a healthy future”). They are not coherent plans. They give no details. They do not say where the money will come from.
They are like a Christmas wish list written by a child of poor parents. The parents look forward to sufficient fuel to stay warm until April and a small turkey for the holidays; the child wants a Blackberry and an iPad.
Sources
• www.toronto.ca/planning/official_plan/introduction.htm
• www.toronto.ca/mayor_miller/pdf/miller_platform_webed_screen.pdf