First You Say You Do...And Then You Don't...And Then You Say You Do...And Then You Don't...So Whatta Ya Gonna Do?

Once again, Oshawa City Council is demonstrating its grossly misguided, rudderless, and waffling leadership in playing fast and loose with your tax dollars.

That commercial slogan, “You’re in good hands with Allstate,” certainly cannot be applied to our City Council here in Oshawa.

Their self serving moves to wipe out your local neighbourhood political representation and bring us city wide elections for all city politicians, a move only designed to facilitate their own political careers while grossly reducing political accountability, attests to that.

At the March 3, 2008 City Council Meeting, Councillor Mary Anne Sholdra told me as much when she said with the "General Vote", she’d now have a much easier time getting re-elected. Perhaps this is why she voted against every single question designed to provide citizen information about the change and supported every single question to bring about the less democratic general vote.

A less accountable General Vote Council that cannot be defeated at the polls can do anything to you and perhaps this is why this City Council has implemented so many controversial, alarming and costly decisions. An unaccountable politician can bulldoze like a dictator, be damned public opinion or the public good.

Besides the Cullen Miniatures purchase, the UOIT student housing issue, the $12 Million redevelopment of City Hall apparently to provide more palatial office space and more presidential council chambers for city politicians, this post describes another example of the irresponsible actions of an unaccountable City Council which has continued to run up debt despite already being the highest taxed region in the GTA.

At an in-camera meeting on January 24, 2007, Oshawa City Council voted to spend $500,000 to hire a PR firm to promote Federal Government Assistance for the development of our waterfront and marina.

In a time when Mayor John Gray was promoting and supporting a 9% property tax increase and also promoting cutting back of services as well as fee increases for others such as the use of our taxpayer funded recreational facilities to reduce the ability of families to fund their child’s participation in activities like hockey, swimming and soccer, all of which would help decrease the major epidemic of child inactivity and obesity, this half million dollar expenditure is a serious misplacement of priorities.

It is all the more ludicrous when the most efficient promotion of Federal assistance to our waterfront should simply result from the mayor picking up the phone to chat with our three area Government Member Federal MP’s.

Surely as past President of the Oshawa Federal Progressive Conservative Association, you’d think he would get a friendly ear from our Conservative Members including Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty who holds the Federal purse strings, Minister of International Cooperation, Bev Oda, who also holds a seat at cabinet where all important decisions are made, and backbencher Colin Carrie who should be well-positioned to lobby in Oshawa’s interest with his fellow influential Conservative Oshawa area MP’s.

Even Minister Flaherty ridiculed this expenditure stating it was a total waste of public money and he could hear the “flushing” sound of your tax dollars all the way to his office in Ottawa. He stated it would have been far more prudent and more cost-effective for the mayor to pick up the telephone to speak to him and the other Oshawa area MP’s.

Finance Minister Flaherty probably and deservedly felt that the Mayor’s failure to utilize him and the other local Federal government members undermined public confidence in their service to the Oshawa community. End-running our influential Federal Members will do us little good and will probably leave them sitting on their hands when the question of Oshawa’s waterfront comes up. No one would have ever considered this "end run" when Ed Broadbent was our member!

When Oshawa Council came “halfway” to its senses on January 28, 2007 (Page 46), it “tabled” Phase 2 of the PR effort costing $385,325 approving only Phase 1 PR funding of $134,675--still a ludicrous expenditure when one realizes that the Federal Government had hired David Crombie, probably Canada’s greatest advocate for the preservation of waterfronts and the development of eco-friendly waterfront nature trails and bike paths to investigate and report on the matter.

Crombie has submitted his report which we are assured will be relased to the public. Undoubtedly though, Crombie would have supported his waterfront vision for Oshawa, the only residential community on Lake Ontario without a recreational marina.

Compounding the problem, however, City Council advocates of the full half million dollar funding, realizing some opponents of the spending (Councillors Marimpietri, Neal, and Parkes) were absent during the March 3, 2008 city council meeting, slipped in a motion by Councillor Pidwerbecki seconded by Councillor Nicholson to re-introduce re-opening the question and it passed on votes of Councillors Cullen, Henry, Kolodzie, Nicholson, Pidwerbecki, Sholdra and Mayor Gray. Councillor Lutczyk was the only councillor present with the sense to oppose re-opening the question.

Like Finance Minister Flaherty, can you hear the sounds of flushing of your hard earned tax dollars down the toilet? At an average house assessment of about $3000, this expenditure consumes the residential tax of you and about 160 of your neighbours.

Now let me go out and count the houses in my neighbourhood to see if my neighbours and I can cover this expenditure with our house taxes! I don't think we can!

I smell some rot somewhere in this!

Be prepared for more of this Oshawa. The heavy handed and ham fisted council you are now seeing is only a start to worst days ahead under the general vote when guaranteed re-election will make politicians far less accountable to your wishes.

And you, Oshawa, by your inaction in regards to the loss of ward voting, are letting the politicians do this to you.

"I will never take a donation from a developer!"--John Henry

Such was the exclamation from Councillor John Henry in a “holier than thou” statement he made in an August 1, 2007, Page 1 Oshawa This Week Story. By making the statement, Councillor Henry impugns the integrity of every incumbent Oshawa politician all of whom took money from the development industry.

Impugning the integrity of his fellow politicians though is not such a far-fetched action. But by doing so, he is certainly implying that his fellow politicians trade their votes for election funding.

Perhaps Councillor Henry’s utterances were the first shot across the bow of his fellow councillors in what is sure to become a very fractious and unproductive council as members grow their political recognition for a general vote council where all members start competing for the same citywide votes.

Henry’s assertion will prove to be a gross misrepresentation in fund raising for the next election where he will certainly want development industry support. Perhaps he hopes the short term platitudes from the non-analytical will be forgotten by the time of their next vote.

Councillor Henry must not confuse his ability to raise funds from the development industry and his inability to do so.

The article stated that Councillors Henry and Mary Ann Sholdra were the only Oshawa politicians not to benefit from the largesse of the Development Industry. Both will readily accept the largesse of the Development Industry come the next election.

The Development Industry is not in the business of funding a “pig in a poke” and didn’t expect Councillor Henry to defeat incumbent Cathy Clarke and thus wouldn’t fund his campaign. Instead, they funded the campaign of the defeated incumbent!

Councillor Henry was no different in this regard than any other non-incumbent candidate in not receiving development industry political contributions.

The only non-incumbent receiving some Development Industry funding was the spouse of an incumbent councilor. Perhaps this is the reason she received Development funding.

To establish the honesty of Councillor Henry’s dogmatic comments about accepting Development Funding, we will have to wait to see his listing of donations received that must be filed after the next election.

I have annotated my computer calendar to check this issue following the next election and will publicize the result contrasting it with Councillor Henry’s assertions now.

It is hard to believe that he would want to expend $35,000 or so of his own money to self-finance his next “General Vote” campaign.

For him, ward campaigning was cheap, only costing $14239.43. He won’t get by on this slim budget campaigning city wide under the general vote.

Same is true for Mary Anne Sholdra, the other Oshawa Councillor not receiving any donations. Her complete campaign costs had to be borne by herself, despite her past seat on council.

Non-incumbents don’t get development funds…only incumbents get these funds.

Typically non-incumbents have to fund their own campaign and the $35,000 or so necessary to run a viable campaign in the general vote that Oshawa politicians have brought to the city will make it virtually impossible for them to compete. Only incumbent politicians will get donations from the Development Industry and other businesses and individuals that want their votes.

Virtually the only donors to non-incumbents was from trade unions. And you guessed it—they donated to union members…chiefly to members of the UAW retirees who were candidates in the last election.

The donors to all candidates can be surveyed yourself. You can check out who received union donations, who received development industry donations, and who received no donations.

The union movement is a great beneficiary of the general vote. They hope to influence their city-wide membership to vote for their union candidates. The union movement did not have the degree of influence under ward voting as they will have under the general vote.

The union movement has always been supportive of the general vote in Oshawa and labour leaders along with incumbent politicians were the outspoken leaders for retaining the general vote when we last had it prior to 1985. In the days leading up to Ward Voting for Oshawa, the union movement and its leaders like OFL President, Cliff Pilkey, expended huge advertising budgets to try to influence public opinion to retain the general vote.

Even the greatest preponderance of those speaking in favour of the general vote at the April 19, 2007 Sikorski Hall Public Meeting were retired CAW members and virtually all sat together as a group at this meeting. All of these individuals certainly hope to garner the support of city-wide unionists in their next municipal campaign for the $500,000 council seat prize.

We would hope that Oshawa This Week's objectivity is not clouded by the $120,000 annual Oshawa City Hall advertising budget as the public media has a responsibility not to mislead the public when they choose to write “puff stories” to promote city politicians.

Perhaps famed newscaster, Walter Cronkite, was right on in when he stated, “Pressures to go along, to get along, or to place the needs of advertisers or companies above the public’s need for reliable information distort a free press and threaten democracy itself.”

I often wonder if that is why Oshawa This Week refuses to print letters to the editor regarding Oshawa’s change to the general vote that I submit. Perhaps they got the word from City Hall---“Be good or lose our advertising dollar!”

Oshawa’s Self-Serving Politicians

Your Oshawa City Council has voted to implement the general vote for the election of members of Oshawa City Council. This means that all members of city council will be elected city-wide the same way mayors are across the country.

There are serious implications of this to you as a citizen. You will no longer vote for ward politicians to look after the interests of your community. If you have a community problem that you want addressed, there are no specific politicians accountable to you and your neighbors.

In the past, if you became dissatisfied with your ward politicians, this dissatisfaction is something probably shared with your community, and the politician would be replaced.

For example, the residents of North Simcoe Street became dissatisfied with politicians’ moves to “protect” the street from any development or changes to existing residential architecture there. Residents saw this as interference with their property interests which would affect their property values. They also saw it as interference in their right to modify their residences. Thus they defeated Councilor Cathy Clarke and replaced her with Councilor John Henry. Under the general vote, this would not be possible as politicians are elected city-wide.

Councilor Henry benefitted from this “power” of ward voting but he has since been a strident supporter of the General Vote which means that he no longer is responsible for any neighborhood and cannot be defeated in the same way that he was able to defeat his predecessor.

It is interesting that Councilor Henry has turned his back on the system that gave him political success in favor of one that assures his continued seat on council. By supporting the change, he is also turning his back on the voters of his community who placed their trust in him.

Councilor Henry was joined by Mayor John Gray and Councilors Parkes, Pidwerbecki, Kolodzie, Sholdra, and Marimpietri in voting to take away your local community political representation. They have adopted a system virtually unused in Canada which will make Oshawa the largest city in Canada using the General Vote without also the use of political parties.

As citizens, we have to work to defeat these politicians who have proven that they are more interested in their own interests rather than the interests of the citizens of Oshawa.

If the general vote made sense, wouldn’t it be widely used across the country?

While Municipal Government is supposed to be the government closest to the people, Oshawa politicians have taken our local government farther away than either the Provincial or Federal governments since our local politicians will have constituencies almost twice the size of those of our Provincial or Federal Members.

Politicians like the General Vote because it provides them far more protection from political defeat even though they may support very unpopular positions.

Because politicians are no longer responsible to the individual citizens and individual neighborhoods whose voting power is insufficient to remove them, politicians start to serve “new masters” who can deliver more votes to allow significant growth toward the 25,000 votes or so they require for election.

So what do they do? Their “masters” now become the large organizations and groups who can influence their city-wide members to support the politicians who “are friends of the group”.

Politicians can also support development proposals of those who would donate to their campaigns with far more immunity than they had under ward elections.

In all ways, the change to the general vote is self-serving for the politicians.

And all of this time, we thought politicians were supposed to serve us!

Wake up Oshawa! Get active and do something about this!

We have to start now to defeat the politicians who have voted to serve themselves rather than serve us.

What are you going to do to help bring “responsible” politicians to our city council?

Bill Longworth's Council Presentation on April 30, 2007

City council was scheduled to pass a city bylaw implementing the General Vote at their regular council meeting on April 30, 2007.

Bill Longworth's 30 minute presentation on the ward/general vote issue to council at this meeting appears in the four video clips below.

PART 1 - Bill Longworth's presentation to April 30, 2007 Oshawa City Council Meeting



PART 2 - Bill Longworth answers questions from Councillors John Neal and Robt. Lutczyk, both of whom support retaining ward elections



PART 3 - Bill Longworth answers questions from Councillor Louise Parkes who supports change to the general vote and thus poses hostile questions to Mr. Longworth



PART 4 - Bill Longworth answers questions from Councillor Mary Anne Sholdra who supports change to the general vote and thus poses hostile questions to Mr. Longworth



While Council invited written citizen submissions up to noon hour on this meeting date, these citizen submissions were not copied to the politicians for their deliberations, nor were the minutes of the April 19th public meeting held at Sikorski Hall to hear public input to council on this matter. All of this proves beyond a doubt what I have been saying all along...all invitations for public input was just a sham and a waste of taxpayer time in preparing such input.

Council knew what the end result of all of this was going to be from the November 2006 municipal elections and they were unwilling to seriously listen to any constituent input solicited as a result of their invitations for public submissions.

They continued to try to avoid controversy by denying citizen delegations at their April 30th Council meeting where they were to pass the permitting bylaw for the general vote.

Mr. Longworth was scheduled as a delegation at this meeting because council denied his organization a "Partnership Grant" so that he could provide an information brochure on the ward/general vote issue to all Oshawa residences. Democracy cannot exist without an informed public and council has continually voted to deny citizen's the needed information.

Mr. Longworth stepped into the breach to do the job that council refused to do and was seeking city funding to do so.

Council's refusal to provide citizen information shows profound disrespect for the citizens.

Mr. Longworth used his speaking opportunity to address the ward/general vote issue which is the subject of the videos associated with this post.

Citizens have to know how the general vote alters their interaction with city politicians, why the politicians felt it necessary to hold the plebiscite despite no public displeasure ever being expressed with the ward system, what was wrong with the ward system such that politicians felt a change was needed, and what benefits politicians expect to accrue from the general vote. They further need to explain why the system they want for Oshawa is not being used in any city in Canada the size of Oshawa without the use of political parties.

Experts at The Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing suggest that a population of about 20,000 is the upper limit for the use of the general vote and Oshawa is about eight times that size. The wards formerly used in Oshawa were about this optimum size.

The VOTES group will continue to communicate to the public throughout this term of council with the objective of defeating Mayor Gray and Councillors Pidwerbecki, Kolodzie, Sholdra, Parkes, Marimpietri, and Henry at the next election as these individuals have continually supported change to the general vote thus reducing democracy and political accountability in Oshawa. Their votes will result in the loss of politicians elected specifically by your community to represent your interests at city hall.