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.