Water’s Edge

“Water’s Edge” (2008), acrylics, plastic shoe, on canvas, 18” x 36”

Where’s The Money?

One of the facts of life of community activism is that City Hall will always have more money and resources than you.  It is an immoral asymetrical warfare that is fought between innumerable City staff with the full panoply of tax-paid weapons against a handful of activated citizens armed only with concern and common sense.

We know this to be true, see it in action every day, but rarely do we get to see the mechanics and numbers and scale involved.  We have one of those rare opportunities in the case of the additional budget approved by City Council for the Grandview-Woodland Community Plan.

One of the recommendations of the Jackson Report (on the then-four Community Plans) approved by City Council on 25th September 2013, was the provision of an additional $275,000 to complete the Grandview-Woodland process which was extended for twelve-months by the same Council resolution.  Appendix 6 of the Jackson Report provides a line-item budget for the $275,000:

• Progress and Feedback Events (venues, food, supplies) ……………………………………………….. $  20,000
• Sub Area & Site Specific Workshops (venue, food, supplies, consultants) …………………………  $ 110,000
• Focus Group (Aboriginals, Chinese, Youth, Seniors etc) ……………………………………………….  $  12,000
• Communications, Outreach, Engagement (mailouts, posters, engagement tools) ………………  $  48,000
• Consulting (economic analysis, heritage SOS, modelling, rendering) ………………………………………………  $  50,000
• Action While Planning (placemaking and related activities) …………………………………………………..  $  35,000

Seems not unreasonable, I guess.  The local Ad-Hoc Committee on Citizens’ Assembly has on a number of occasions suggested that some of that money should come to the residents, to help them prepare and research the issues that have arisen over 18 months of “consultation” so far.  This idea was rejected outright without explanation.

The Ad-Hoc Committee’s successor, Our Community, Our Plan! formally suggested that some of this money should go to multi-lingual services and honoraria for the poor taking part.  These proposals too were rejected out of hand.

But then the City go and hire a company, with a computer in Toronto, that claims to have “citizens’ assembly expertise.”  This is MASS Lrb.  I have attended a couple of meetings where their principals have performed their stuff.  Generally quite polished, but also clearly and obviously on one side (the side of the people who hired them) in what has been an adversarial engagement.

After some prodding, planner Andrew Pask admitted that MASS Lrb were being paid $150,000.  After even more prodding, he was reluctantly obliged to admit that the $150,000 consulting fee was to come out of the $275,000 previously approved.  He was unwilling to say which items of the approved budget had been cut out to feed the $150,000.

♦   How can bureaucrats simply gut and amend a budget approved by elected Council?

♦   What items that were considered important enough to appear on a budget last year are no longer considered necessary?

But now, step back, and look at the broader picture of unequal forces.  The Planners have $275,000 plus full-time staff salaries plus City resources plus full-time pro-density development companies and their minions to present their plan. To analyze the proposal and to challenge any items of the proposal that seem to oppose community sense, the residents have only limited voluntary hours, tiny resources, and intermittent access to a free press.

Why should taxpayers continue to pay bureaucrats who use their positions and tax-payer dollars opposing genuine resident concerns in matter such as neighbourhood planning?   But so long as they do, is it any wonder that community activists (and distinctive neighbourhoods) are an endangered species?