The editors of Spacing asked our long-time contributor Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler to write a personal column on the motives and reasons why he and Toronto resident Max Reed petitioned the City of Toronto to audit the campaign finances of Mayor Rob Ford. Earlier this month, Max Reed and I successfully petitioned for an audit of Mayor Rob Ford’s election campaign finances. Repeatedly we were asked about our motives, and for good reason. It’s no secret that Rob Ford and I disagree on both the style and substance of his mayoralty to date so the motives may appear to be entirely political. Knowing the reality of word limits, in response to the media questioning our motives, I often responded with a line like, “We want a level playing field for all candidates.” So I’d like to now expand on what I mean by that and why there is a lot more on the line than whether Ford will be prosecuted for what we allege were violations of provincial and municipal election laws. As a starting point, among the general intentions of the Municipal Elections Act (MEA) is to facilitate fair elections that empower citizens to choose their leaders without undue influence by those with the deepest pockets. While it is far from perfect, the MEA largely accomplishes this by placing limits on how much an individual can donate, allowing Toronto to ban donations from corporations and unions, and, though candidates can donate as much as they like to their own campaign, placing a spending limit so no one can pull a Bloomberg. The province even sealed off backdoor contributions through loans by forcing them to be arranged only with recognized financial or lending institutions, and has taken care to ensure in-kind donations are subject to all the same rules as cash contributions. With that in mind, the most important issue we identified in our compliance audit request relates to the financial relationship between Doug Ford Holdings (DFH) and the Rob Ford Campaign (RFC).

Councillor Mike Del Grande broke the law when he arbitrarily shut down a budget consultation meeting that was attended by more than 100 people at the East York Civic Centre, says a report to City Council filed by the City of Toronto’s Closed Meetings Investigator, Lorne Sossin. Sossin’s investigation was triggered when I filed a complaint against Councillor Del Grande the day after the January 19, 2011 incident. Sossin, also the dean of York University’s Osgoode Hall law school, found that while the impact of Del Grande’s poor decision is nebulous it nonetheless violates the rules in place to protect the public’s right to openness, accountability and transparency in decision-making. I will comment on why I filed the complaint but first some background on what took place. A cold winter night brought a standing room-only crowd out to the East York Civic Centre to comment on Mayor Rob Ford’s proposed budget. It was a testy meeting from the get go as Councillor Del Grande grouchily argued with attendees over all sorts of apolitical issues including whether residents could hear the evening’s proceedings. It didn’t help that most people were there to plead for their city services to be saved.

Years from now, David Miller will be remembered for his broadest brush strokes. Transit funding, waterfront revitalization and the land transfer tax among them. These may well be the most important accomplishments for Toronto under Miller but what made Toronto a better place to live during his tenure were the finer brush strokes. Many – I’d even go so far as to say most – decisions a mayor makes are to some degree or another reactionary. For example, no matter who was mayor, Toronto was going to need a solution for its garbage. Miller’s choice was in deciding what the new plan would be. While Toronto’s new mayor is eager to look into incineration, Miller was more comfortable with purchasing a landfill. Either way, a decision had to be made because doing nothing wasn’t an option. Those are the broad strokes. The fine strokes of a mayoralty are about how a mayor chooses to spend their time and which initiatives, causes and people she or he elevates by choice.

I rarely blur the line between my role on the Toronto Public Library Board and my writing for Spacing but today is an exception. On February 25, I attended the Ontario Public Library Awards, which are exactly as billed. Among awards handed out is the Lifetime Achievement Award, this year bestowed upon the recently retired chief librarian of the Woodstock Public Library, Stephen Nelson. While succinct, Nelson beautifully captures the importance of public libraries and highlights the vital role women have played in shaping this particular institution in spite of being noticeably under represented in the ranks of library management. Save some timely off-the-cuff remarks about women's curling and hockey, here is Stephen Nelson's acceptance speech:

This is the second retrospective look at how the new billboard tax and sign by-law were recently won by the Beautiful City Alliance. For some context on my role, see the first post. Artists and public space activists might have put many years worth of work into the new billboard tax and signs by-law but it was the advocates for girls hockey that saved our hide. Heading into the first leg of the billboard debate at City Hall on December 1, Beautiful City thought we had our vote count nailed down tightly. Then Councillor Norm Kelly threw a wrench in our plans. Kelly, chair of the Planning and Growth Management Committee (PGM), moved a lengthy motion that would have permitted about 1,000 video billboards, allowed billboards five times closer to intersections than proposed by staff (and 12 times closer than was allowed in some parts of the city) and cut the tax rates by 40%. Using an incorrect interpretation of Solomon to suggest that 'cutting the baby in half' was the responsible thing for Council to do, Kelly sold his package of cuts and regulatory rollbacks as a "compromise" between the needs of the outdoor advertising industry and residents.

Having worked with the Beautiful City alliance to win the billboard tax and signs by-law [PDF] that was adopted by City Council yesterday, I've got a few stories from that experience that I want to share with Spacing readers in the coming days. To contextualize my vantage point in this process, I worked to bridge the interests of the artists and public space activists within the Beautiful City alliance, which included a variety of arts and public space advocates, as well as allies in the community and small business sectors (including Spacing). I also steered communication and the political-level work. My efforts would have meant nothing without the capability of the arts community to mobilize thousands of people and the public space activists' capacity to understand and manipulate the sign-related legal framework the City operates within. Though I suppose it's easy to say now, even if the vote hadn't gone our way yesterday, I would have been much better off for having had the opportunity to work with so many talented and passionate activists. Going through the campaign chronologically is probably best left to Devon Ostrom's inevitable doctoral thesis (disclaimer: some history is necessary for this article) so I wanted to start with something a bit more topical given today's coverage of yesterday's decision: the issues surrounding arts funding. The arts funding component of the Beautiful City campaign, while consistently popular [PDF] in the public opinion polls we commissioned, took a bit of a beating on the blogs and was used as a wedge by a few city councillors (the same few that don't see the merit in arts funding generally). Though you can be sure that Beautiful City will assert its voice during the operating budget process when it kicks off early next year, I'm not going to make the pitch here for the money; you can see that in the background information provided at BeautifulCity.ca. Instead, I'll tell the story of why and how the arts piece made it into the recommendations City staff made to Council and what was in fact recommended to Council, what Council's decision means and where it leaves the arts funding issue going forward.

Almost one month ago, Councillor Gord Perks commented on a Spacing Toronto article that speculated about which progressive candidates might run for mayor next year. Perks's insight was essentially: worry not about the candidate but about the issues; the right candidate will become clear when the issues have been defined. Today, Councillor Joe Mihevc launched Setting the Agenda 2010, a process to identify the policies that Torontonians want to see mayoral candidates adopt as part of their campaign. Mihevc's recipe for an agenda goes something like this: -Start with one pre-fab web ...

A campaign called Fair Student Fares is about to get what it wants out of the TTC and Metropasses won't be increasing in price by quite as much as expected. TTC chairman Adam Giambrone has informed Spacing that he will be introducing a motion at the November 17 TTC meeting calling for post-secondary education students to receive the same discount that high school students receive. Giambrone also told Spacing that he will propose the TTC staff report recommending the price of a regular adult Metropass increase to $126 be reduced to $121, thereby maintaining the ...

Toronto lawyer Patrick Brown sent out a mass e-mail this evening warning of troubling developments for non-drivers (people without auto insurance) in new regulations being proposed for the insurance industry by Ontario's minister of finance, Dwight Duncan. I haven't had the opportunity to do research on the new regulations beyond reading what's in today's newspaper, which brands the regulation as financial relief for motorists. I'm providing the e-mail here for your information and discussion. This morning I attended a stakeholders meeting with the Ministry of Finance regarding the new changes to auto insurance. It is now on the news. The present law reform is not fair to cyclists, public transit users or pedestrians. Today I specially asked whether the reduce benefits being proposed will apply to innocently injured cyclists, pedestrians and transit users. The answer was "yes". The system here in Ontario is complex to say the least, but I will try to simplify as best I can the issue below. When anyone (including cyclist, pedestrian car driver) is injured or killed by a bad driver (even a drunk driver), they will have various benefits available to them.  These include various things to help them get better. Medical benefits, rehab benefits, attendant care etc. With the new changes introduced today, many benefits are being drastically reduced.  However, the justification for such a reduction is "consumer choice".

After the St. Clair Right of Way was approved, Toronto Environmental Alliance activist Gord Perks told me that nothing worth doing at City Hall takes less than five years. In light of that wisdom, the seven years it has taken to get a billboard tax into City Council's committee process seems about right. On Wednesday, Planning and Growth Management committee will finally consider a tax on billboards and a new signs by-law that makes it harder to get a new billboard approved in most neighbourhoods while ramping up the fines on illegal billboards to make them unprofitable. The tax and by-law are being advocated for by the umbrella group Beautiful City Alliance, which includes artists and public space activists that range from the Scarborough Arts Council and the Art Gallery of Ontario to IllegalSigns.ca and Toronto Public Space Committee. (Spacing is also an endorser of Beautiful City, and I am personally involved in the campaign.) While the by-law and tax provisions are good but not great, there are some important changes that need to be made by the Planning and Growth Management committee when it considers the issue at its meeting this Wednesday. While John Lorinc made some suggestions on Spacing Toronto this morning, the Beautiful City Alliance disagrees with them because his main proposal (BMX/skateboard infrastructure) could, in fact, be accommodated in Beautiful City's proposal without limiting access to arts funding for youth, if that's what youth prefer. Plus, there are two vital issues that need to be addressed to ensure any new programs or infrastructure are funded.