Is Mr. Orser making a fetish of the label "full-time"?

In the final few days before the election on October 25th, it seems that Mr. Orser is no longer satisfied with only claiming full-time status as a councillor.

I finally received my first piece of campaign literature at the house yesterday and, wouldn’t you know it, it was from Mr. Orser – distributed by mail, of course. Our full time councillor apparently can’t find the time in his busy schedule to canvass in the ward and actually meet with real voters.

What was interesting in the campaign piece, apart from the fact that he hit just about every hot button available and managed to get a “God bless you” in as well, was his crowing about how he was the "only full-time candidate in Ward 4”. It immediately caught my attention.

Speaking literally, I suppose the claim has some "truthiness" to it. Mr. Orser is the only candidate in Ward 4 getting paid to campaign. There’ve been precious few meetings at City Hall over the summer and into the fall and he sits on such a small number of outside boards, agencies and commissions in his role as councillor for Ward 4 that the time available to him for election purposes is limited only by the number of hours in a day.

Having said that, I certainly feel that I’m campaigning full-time. Are actions more important than words? I’ve been knocking on doors every day of the week but Sunday for the past three months. There’s even a chance, thanks to the help I’ve been receiving from a large number of dedicated supporters, that I may get to every door in the ward before election day. If I don’t, it won’t be for lack of trying and, based on the conversations we’re having at the doors, we’re the only ones doing it here in the ward.

I’ve answered a gazillion candidate surveys from a wide range of city organizations. I’ve made myself available for candidate interviews whenever possible.

For someone who claims that "labels are for boxes, not for people" as often as he does, he sure does a lot of labelling himself.

Making the claim that one is the only full time candidate is as silly as claiming to be a full time councillor. It doesn’t mean anything without at least attempting to provide some context. It is a cynical attempt to fool the electorate in the hopes that they are gullible enough, or disengaged enough, to accept the statement as something which is actually important to the decision each of us must make on or before October 25^th.

Civics 2.0 - Engage Citizens

I'm often asked what the biggest issues for Ward 4 are, and what people are saying at the door.

Taxes, a feeling that the ward is falling behind, and concerns about public safety top the list, for sure. Many residents, though, talk about a feeling that City Hall doesn't listen to them. They appear disengaged from municipal politics because it appears to be located in a place "out there" somewhere, decoupled from the places where they live and work and do business.

This disconnect between City Hall and its citizens should be troubling to all of us. If it can't be repaired, we can't develop a "shared" vision of a next London that is safe, affordable, prosperous and healthy. We'll be left with the status quo, and the status quo is simply no longer good enough. The world is changing around us and, if we don't keep up, we'll be left behind.

I don't pretend to have all the answers to this but we must begin a dialogue on how we might rebuild the bonds of public trust between citizens and their municipal government. But let me make a couple of suggestions.

The default position of most citizens in London is that City Hall is wasting the money that taxpayers provide to it. And this doesn't surprise me at all. Look at the way the city reports on its spending - in dense, complicated documents that most of us can't read, even if we wished to. We don't provide financial reporting in a format that is transparent and accountable and able to be read by the average citizen. So, for those who might wish to see for themselves whether they are receiving fair value for their tax dollar, what options do they have? They can listen to the bland assurance of politicians that they are doing everything they can on behalf of their constituents to control spending, or they can listen to the partisan opinions of special-interest groups. Cynicism is the inevitable result.

I think we can begin to address this by regular reporting of the city's financial affairs in a format suited not to accountants but to citizens. Let's provide regular reporting of where tax dollars are being spent in an alternative format easily understood by readers: line items, with year over year comparisons of salaries and benefits by department, consultant fees, debt servicing costs, subsidies to organizations, capital expenditures by project (I once spent a weekend trying to find the total cost of building the Oxford Street bridge, as the costs were spread out across a number of categories), and so on.

The default position of most citizens on matters affecting them in the places where they live and raise their families - in their neighbourhoods - is that the city doesn't do things WITH them but TO them. We simply don't do community consultation very well and the City won't accept the startling notion that the "experts" on matters affecting neighbourhoods are the people who live in them. We need to engage citizens in the planning of their neighbourhoods from the very beginning, even if it does occasionally get messy. Public participation meetings held late in the process to satisfy legislative requirements, when the opportunities for meaningful input to address legitimate neighbourhood concerns has long passed (designs already laid out, recommendations already made, money already spent...) force neighbourhoods to become defensive rather than active participants in the design of infrastructure and developments in their own neighbourhoods. We know what happens then: robbed of the opportunity to participate, we devolve to NIMBYism. For good and perfectly understandable reasons.

These are just two suggestions and I'm sure there are many more. The important point here, I think, is that we need to start a conversation on how we might go about bridging the chasm that divides the citizens of London from their City Hall.

Show me the Money (Trail)!

Several people have asked me where the money is coming from to fund my campaign expenses. There is a good argument to be made for requiring all candidates for public office to disclose the source of their campaign funding in real time – a requirement I would support wholeheartedly. Where the money is coming from can tell you a great deal about a candidate.

Nearly all of the money I have raised has come from private individuals – mostly from a Campaign Fundraiser I held in the early summer at the Aeolian Hall at which there was a silent auction for donated items ( a great evening, by the way, with fantastic food and music). There were a couple of successful bids for items that came in over $100, but the highest individual successful bid was for a city bike at $305. In addition to that I have had several donations by private individuals, none over $100 but two, and those were for $500 and $250.

I have had no donations from corporations, and haven’t solicited any (though I had an offer of funds from one of the Toronto developers here in Old East, which I turned down) and one donation from a union, but the union donation (for the maximum $750) was from my own union (OPSEU), a provincial union of which I have been a member for 25 years, and which doesn’t do “business” with the City of London. [Disclosure: I was retained as a Realtor on land assembly matters, which is my full time job, for both the Medallion Corporation and the Terrasan Group of Companies – the developers of the two largest redevelopment projects here in Old East – but this was some time ago, and it’s what I do to earn a living.]

I suspect that I will also be self-financing some campaign expenses, though I haven’t as yet.

I would support electoral finance reform outlawing any contributions to municipal campaigns other than from private individuals. I think it’s a great idea. We should try it sometime.

As an aside, I would also support changes to the municipal election by-law outlawing the placing of election signs on public lands, as a way to deal with “sign pollution”. Let’s keep signs where they belong – on the properties of people who actually vote. In fact, I will commit to bringing these two changes forward – no donations other than from private individuals, and no signs on public lands – when I am elected on October 25^th. [Disclosure: I have put up signs on public lands in this campaign, not many but a few, but remember who I am running against. The vast majority of my signs are on the front lawns of my supporters.]

I challenge the other candidates in Ward 4 to be equally candid about where their money is coming from, before the election. Let’s give voters all the information they need to make good decisions.

Towards a New Urbanism for the Next London

We desperately need to develop a shared vision of how we are going to build and grow this city of ours over the next generation. This mustn’t be something left to the municipality itself to suss out, or the process will become the captive of entrenched interests, ensuring its failure.

London’s most advanced urbanism, absolutely necessary for moving the city forward, is, and has always been, located in its neighbourhoods. The practice of local urbanism, however, has become “defensive” – more concerned with limiting change than embracing it. And we shouldn’t be surprised by this. When community consultation on planning matters affecting neighbourhoods becomes perfunctory, held late in the planning process and merely to satisfy Municipal Act requirements for public participation, NIMBYism is the logical outcome. This isn’t a reflection on the motives of residents, most of whom understand that neighbourhoods must evolve to remain viable. We need residents to become active participants in the design of their city, and we can only do this by engaging them in the planning of their neighbourhoods from the very beginning – even if it does occasionally get messy.

Let me give a more concrete example. My neighbourhood, Old East Village, is a classic example of an older model of a sustainable neighbourhood termed the industrial city neighbourhood. These types of neighbourhoods are easily identified. There are a number of examples here in London, and hundreds in cities across Ontario. They begin with clusters of manufacturers, such as we had with the oil refineries and railroad car shops here in Old East at the west end of the neighbourhood and the manufacturers located around the McCormick’s factory at the eastern edge. Around these factories develop fairly uniform tracts of standardized houses built for the workers in these factories. And then a commercial avenue is introduced, mixing retail, services and light manufacturing, such as we have with Dundas Street East.

What is interesting in this model is that the patterns that emerged allowed the neighbourhood to evolve into one in which people shared work and private lives, building social and economic capital.

Of even more interest, perhaps, is that this type of neighbourhood is nearly identical to the intent of new planning perspectives favouring mixed-use, mixed-income development, such as the city is putting in place for the redevelopment of the London Psychiatric Hospital Lands.

Here, in my neighbourhood, many of us hope to recapture some of this through the careful and strategic redevelopment of the McCormick Lands, currently subject to an Area Planning Review, with the ongoing participation of several dozen local residents. We believe that we can address the legitimate concerns of nearby residents around noise and smells and views through thoughtful and effective buffering while targeting “clean” industry, with substantially lower immediate impacts – perhaps IT/media clusters, but also green technology clusters and, perhaps, small-scale artisanal food production facilities. Many of the buildings are eminently suited for adaptive re-use, as has been done so successfully in cities such as Toronto and Waterloo.

There are real opportunities with this to provide good jobs for local people.

Mr. Orser’s claims that he “believe[s] in bulldozing old buildings and building new ones” is not particularly helpful in this regard. Nor is his characterization of the McCormick Lands as “starting to look like a little Detroit. It is time to start demolishing these old run down fire traps...”. Both of these opinions betray a lack of understanding (which he might have addressed had he bothered to show up to any of the community meetings held on this issue) on how we can create prosperity in our city and good jobs for residents in an economy that is rapidly changing.

To create a new urbanism for London we need to recognize that our urbanist practices must contain within it clear and compelling economic propositions. It is the private sector that builds the vast majority of buildings in this city, and provides the clear majority of jobs. As we go forward with building a city that works for this generation, and for the ones that follow, we must create economic opportunities for the private sector that are so predictable that they encourage it to climb on board – fewer layers of regulations, streamlined development policies and procedures, incentive packages that are formalized early enough in the development pre-planning stage so as to provide cost-certainty to the developer as s/he goes forward, a lighter touch on the wheel. For any chance of success, we need a stable alliance of political, civic, and business interests, such as we can see in Toronto’s City Summit Alliance, to give just one example.

It also requires that we all become much more literate about the details of our city-building efforts. Doing away with the shifting ground upon which the private sector must operate, together with engaging citizens in the planning of their city at the very beginning of the process, would be a very good start. I’m looking forward to participating in the conversation.......

Why Mr. Orser’s Proposal for a “Voting Block” is the Wrong Idea

Anyone who has watched the Rogers TV debate for Ward 4 will be familiar with Mr. Orser’s proposal that he create, and presumably lead, a voting block of 8 as yet unidentified ward councilors to accomplish some as yet unidentified goal. From my side of the camera, looking out into the audience comprised mostly candidates from Ward 1 – 4, having finished the taping of their ward “debate” and hanging around, the looks of astonishment on their faces was instructive.

That Mr. Orser, who has a history of doing end runs around the very body on which he was elected to serve and trying to make “policy” in the pages of the local paper instead, thinks he could build the consensus required to accomplish such an audacious goal is incredible to behold. Whether it rises to the level of hubris, or is simply gratuitous electioneering, is a decision that the voters of Ward 4 will have to make before October 25^th. I’ve been a constituent of his for four years now: he has given me no indication that consensus-building, or even playing nicely in the sandbox, is one of the tools in his belt.

Apart from all that, though, this is the wrong idea at exactly the wrong time. With the abolition of Board of Control, and its city-wide mandate, the newly-minted councilors from the fourteen wards of the city will be required to come together and step past parochialism to true city-building. There are serious challenges facing us, and a new governance model that will require of us much more than aping a party line.

Voting blocks are a step backwards, not forward. Like ideologies, they represent a failure of imagination. They relieve elected officials of the responsibility to engage in dialogue, to think, deeply and often laterally, about a range of policy options, to weigh the merits of each, and to come to a conclusion on the best way forward. Participants in a voting block don’t own the results of their deliberations. It is exactly what we don’t need in the coming term of council.

On October 25^th, vote Greg Thompson for councilor in Ward 4. It’s past time for sensible, serious and pragmatic representation for this great ward of ours. The people of Ward 4 needs someone in their corner to make sure we are treated fairly – a builder, not a meddler; experienced, passionate about our prospects, committed to helping to build a Next London that is safe, affordable, prosperous and healthy.