Greg Thompson For Ward 4

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

2010-10-14T10:18:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-08T06:07:00.000-07:00

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)!

2010-10-01T16:35:00.001-07:00

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

2010-09-22T11:30:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-15T10:22:00.000-07:00

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.

The Incumbent’s Take on the Re-purposing of the McCormick Lands

2010-09-14T14:43:00.000-07:00

Councilor Orser’s campaign website came up recently and, like all such websites, is a must read for all voters looking for information on candidates for council.

What I found of particular interest is the section on the McCormick Lands. I reproduce it below:

McCormick's Building

As you are aware, I promise nothing other than being a full time Councillor.

I feel this area McCormick's is starting to look like a little Detroit. It is time to start demolishing these old run down fire traps and building homes for families and maybe a seniors high-rise. I feel getting this next job done would greatly improve the area, home values. It would help keep Lorne Ave school open and improve the outlook for Ward 4, so I have been bringing major developers down to look at these properties with the hopes of starting something soon. As a full time Councillor I'm able to do this for you.

The McCormick Lands are an 87 acre parcel of land north of Dundas Street between Burbrook Place and Ashland Avenue. The properties making up this parcel are all in private ownership and the land is zoned General Industrial.

It is unusual for a parcel of land of this size to be subjected to an Area Planning process, but sorting out the challenges and opportunities for these underutilized lands is considered to be of such importance to the neighbourhood that the city has agreed to do exactly that.

Mr. Orser has the same right as any other citizen to express an opinion on the future of these lands. As the sitting councilor for the ward that contains the lands, however, his opinions must meet a higher standard. On to problem one:

The lands are all in private ownership. Would the incumbent have us believe that the City of London is interested in expropriating these lands from their owners so that these “old run down fire traps” can be demolished? If not expropriation, then he must be saying that potential buyers would be interested in purchasing these properties at their speculative value for redevelopment as residential lands. On to problem two:

If one reads the Phase 1 Report, as any full-time councilor must certainly have done, residential redevelopment of this site is complicated by two factors. – the potential for environmental contamination from a century of industrial use, requiring brownfield remediation, which seldom makes residential redevelopment economically feasible, even with the incentive programs available to developers; and, the proximity of the London Psychiatric Hospital Lands, currently in the process of redevelopment as an infill residential mixed-use neighbourhood and containing much more easily-developed land for residential uses. Which property developer is going to get involved in residential infill development on brownfield lands when greenfield opportunities exist but a few blocks away? On to problem three, and this is the big one, in my view:

The area planning process is a public process. In this particular case, the city has gone to great lengths to consult often and in detail with residents. There have been a number of public participation meetings at which several dozen of the incumbent’s constituents have come together with city planners to work their way through creating a vision for the area. The work is ongoing. There have been differences of opinion. But a consensus seems to be emerging. A full-time councilor would have found the time to participate in this planning process. The incumbent hasn’t. Not a single one of our public meetings.

Not that this is unusual. I have attended most of the public meetings held in the neighbourhood, and we hold a lot of them. I don’t remember ever seeing the incumbent at any of them.

Not the McCormick Area Study public participation meetings.

Not any of the Open Houses held by the community to introduce designs for the various redevelopment projects.

Not the Community Associations AGMs.

I also attend a lot of public participation meetings in this city, most recently on the city’s Affordable Housing Strategy, the Downtown Master Plan, the SoHo public meetings, the Transportation Master Plan, the Southwest Area Plan, and so on. I’m constantly amazed by the number of local politicians who are in attendance. I think I’ve seen almost every councilor or controller at least once, several on many occasions, and a few at every meeting. But never the incumbent in Ward 4. None of these people prattle on about their “full-time” status, yet they are there. Councilor Orser has made a fetish of his full-time work, but he is never there.

Our local councilor appears to be “missing in action”. Ward 4 deserves real representation, and I intend to deliver just this over the next four years.

Towards Responsible City Spending

2010-08-12T19:32:00.000-07:00

As I was completing the required London Free Press election questionnaire this evening, it occurred to me that I ought to take a few moments and spell out some of my thoughts on how the city should look at the spending of its tax dollars. All-candidates meetings, awkwardly-worded questionnaires from a variety of interest groups, all anxious to promote a particular point of view, and campaign literature, with its horizontal targeting, seldom give one the opportunity to speak in depth about such an important issue.

I think that the City has developed careless habits in its spending and that these habits pose a fundamental threat to its fiscal sustainability over the short-, medium-, and long-term. I want to participate in the creation of a city that is healthy, safe, prosperous and affordable because it’s the right thing to do and because the generations that follow us expect us to do it. To do otherwise is to leave as a legacy to our children a city that is “broke” – fiscally, physically, and morally.

Everything must be on the table: alternate ways of doing business, the best practices of other cities, new budgeting models, changes in organizational structure, and so on....

Having said that, I’ve followed Council as closely as an outsider can in this day and age (and, more particularly, in this city) over the past two-and-a-half terms. I think that city departments have done a good job, generally, in controlling core operating expenses. Most departments routinely meet their annual spending caps.

I’m unconvinced that the same can be said for its agencies, boards, and commissions.

Of course, the majority of spending the city does is non-discretionary – Ontario Works, debt servicing, protective services core budgets, and a long list of other mandated spending requirements. Only about one dollar in three (or perhaps even four) is actually under the control of Council – a reality that’s overlooked by those advocating long-term tax freezes (well, characterizing this as “overlooked” might be my act of charity for the day).

I’m sure that many special interest groups, anxious to advance their own agendas by trying to put candidates in “boxes”, will characterize me as a “progressive”. I am. And I’m proud of it. I want our city to get better and do better.

But let me spell out, in clear and certain terms, how I view responsible city spending: each and every tax expenditure must pass a “smell” test. If the expenditure doesn’t improve our quality of life, contribute to our economic well-being, or renew our infrastructure, in the most efficient and measurable way possible, I’m going to be all over it. And I'm good at getting all over an issue - I've had to be to lead the positive changes underway in my neighbourhood. Nothing has been given to us. We've had to fight for just about every single thing we've accomplished.

All spending, not just year-over-year increases, must be justified on the basis of demonstrated VALUE FOR MONEY.

So, I view the path towards sensible city spending as a being a dual track really: firstly, elected officials need to be seriously diligent in their oversight of all spending. Each tax dollar must be treated as a scarce resource. The current tax load is a real and legitimate concern to large numbers of our fellow citizens, especially (but not only) those living on a fixed income or without permanent employment. Secondly, elected officials need to get to a place where they are seen to be diligent and conscientious guardians of the public purse by the people who are filling this purse for them. This will take the cultivation of habits that are generally difficult for politicians – consistency, respect for one other, thinking outside the box, looking past one’s ideological blinders, and so on. We won’t get there so long as, for example, the orgy of public spending of the year end surplus (which really isn’t a “surplus” at all, but an accounting miscalculation) on pet projects is allowed to continue unchallenged. These funds should always be applied to tax relief or debt repayment, as a matter of policy, because if the annual assessment growth – where the majority of this “surplus” comes from - is underestimated, and at the year end the city is in deficit, we all know who will be footing the bill for this miscalculation.

Anyone who watches the antics at Council knows that many spending decisions are “political”. Put a few people in the gallery. Have the right people whisper a few words in the ears of the right councilors. Claim that a particular expenditure is necessary to advance a public policy goal or legislative requirement, without really showing why.

There is a good reason why, to observers casual and otherwise, many spending decisions appear to be ad hoc. It’s because they are. And they shouldn’t be.