Dufferin Grove Park Newsletter insert September, 2007

Where the money goes – and maybe shouldn’t

When city staff say they can’t open the rinks because they have no money, CELOS researchers say: we have some suggestions. Redirect your spending. This little research group has been looking into where the Parks, Forestry and Recreation funds go (they have an annual budget of over $220 million). Doing this research is like pulling teeth, there are so many secrets. Here are some examples of what CELOS researchers have learned.

$600 goes for each for playground tested for arsenic – a test that takes 20 minutes of pre-lab labour (i.e. put some sand in three test tubes), and for which the lab charges $18 per sample.

$2000 goes to pay a consultant (an architect) to help pick out the new rubber flooring for Dufferin Rink House, and then to design a pattern of laying the tiles.
''CELOS asked why this was so expensive: no answer yet.''

'''$0.5 million goes for 8 new Parks By-law Enforce- ment Officers:''' But there doesn’t seem to be quite enough for the officers to do. So the by-law officers visited the park farmers’ market and told the farmers they’d all get tickets for parking at the market, and said the campfires are illegal too, and so is the cob wall. Dealing with crises generated by the bylaw-officers can be a labour-intensive activity. And at the end of the day there are eight new City jobs but less money to run the rinks and rec centres.

$392,448 went to WGA Wong Gregerson Architects in 2001 to tell the city what needs to be fixed in “recreational and cultural facilities.” Then:
$803,000 went to Accent Building Sciences in 2004 to give more city-wide advice on the same issue. Examples of their advice: At Dufferin Rink, the consultant recommended, for this year, fixing broken hockey boards ($19,000 for twenty or so new pieces of plywood and a paint job, routinely done every year anyway), putting in the new rubber changeroom tiles (we noticed ourselves that the old ones were in shreds; new tiles $15,000), replacing a compressor in the mechanical room ($105,000, but a visit from the compressor company established that our existing compressor is still fine), and fixing a gate that was twisted by a zamboni bang (the zamboni operator and the rink guards had reported it since it was obvious that the gate was hard to close). Along with several other assorted items including a $13,000 “contingency” amount (?), those jobs are listed at $190,000 in the budget. Question: which of these problems could have been addressed by city staff without the consultants?
CELOS asked for details: no answer yet.

$1.1 million goes for new youth workers: Parks, Forestry and Recreation are hiring 19 new youth workers, at a salary beginning at $46,000 a year. The job includes: “agency referrals, harassment/racism support, outreach to sexually diverse and gender diverse communities…employment counseling, and youth council/crew facilitation.” The qualifications are vague, including the ability to “deal with issues as they arise” e.g. “anti-oppression framework, racism and harassment” etc. The new workers will do no direct recreation work, but their wages mean there’s less money to operate Parks and Recreation facilities.

$5.9 million goes for tearing down and rebuilding City playgrounds: but the non-governmental safety standards that caused this change were issued by a manufacturers’ association. We tried to find out how that money was spent. The City sent two lawyers and three senior staff to a provincial Freedom of Information hearing to prove that no records of $4,941,590 of that project spending exist, so the City can’t be made to produce them.

We tried to find out why that money was spent. Were there a lot of lawsuits for playground injuries? The City refused to answer until forced by the provincial information and privacy commissioner. Then it turned out that the City’s Claims Division could find only seven playground injury claims in twenty-five years, costing the City of Toronto a total of $35,033.

So if it wasn’t a lawsuit problem, was it the threat of rising insurance premiums that made the City tear down all those playgrounds? It doesn’t sound like it, but it’s hard to tell – the City’s insurance arrangements are very hard to understand. We found out that the City paid out total insurance premiums of $10.06 million from 1998 to 2003 to cover third party liability legal claims. But the City’s deductible is so high (now $5 million) that while the City itself paid out $44.9 million in third party liability claims and lawsuits from 1998 to 2003, the insurance company was on the hook for only $210,450 of that. In recent years, the premium for third-party liability claims cost the City around $1.8 million a year, but the insurers ended up paying out NIL.

$10.3 million goes to a very large American company, Cinergy Solutions, to help “retrofit” all the rinks and arenas so they will be more energy-efficient. This is all borrowed money. Two years from now, Parks and Recreation will have to begin paying back this loan, with interest, from its operating funds (operating funds are the money for staff, zambonis, etc.). Over $1 million a year must come from Park (and rink) operating funds. The contract says that no money will really be lost because the company guarantees that the city will be saving an equal or greater amount from its reduced energy costs. But the baseline energy cost chart, for comparison after the retrofit work is done, seems very dubious. And so far the actual methods of the energy retrofit are a mystery, i.e. the company says that actual descriptions of the work are a trade secret, and so the City’s Freedom of Information office wrote to us: “access denied.” Question: Can rink staff and rink users work together with city technical staff and help to meet Kyoto targets without $10 million of mystery engineering? CELOS asked the City to explain what is being done and to show the baseline energy costs – no answer yet.

$60 million a year (much of it borrowed) goes to Parks, Forestry and Recreation capital expenses: fixing things, buying new vehicles and parkland and building new buildings. The staff in charge of allocating this money are not paid from the operating budget (as the Municipal Act requires they should be) but from a percentage of the money the city borrows for its capital projects. That means that the more capital projects the staff line up, and the more money the City borrows, the better they can meet their payroll. That seems to be a serious conflict of interest.
CELOS has asked about this. No answer so far.

OUR TAXES: Parks and Recreation staff will often say that the millions spent on major projects (and the consultants hired to carry them out) come from a different pocket than operating funds that are used, for instance, to run the rinks. In the end, though, all the money the city takes in taxes comes from the same pocket – ours. Taxes are a pool of money intended for the good of us all. City staff are there to help us make the most of this pool – that’s their job, even if they don’t always remember it. In this huge city, their days are often chaotic and it’s hard to for them to keep their focus. Park friends can help remind city staff of what’s needed – we need to remind them to
1. talk to us
2. Collaborate!

From the September, 2007, Dufferin Grove Park newsletter

GOOD PARK STAFF ARE NOT “DISPOSABLE”

Mayor Miller’s directive to cut $100 million from the city’s operating budget this year, in preparation for even harsher cuts next year, resulted in staff cuts affecting the lowest-paid and most vulnerable staff at Parks and Recreation. There’s quite a range of pay in this department: 25 of its 200-plus management staff make over $100,000 a year, with additional 24% benefits on top of that. At the other extreme are the many recreation-program casual staff, who earn $20,000 if they’re lucky enough to get close to full-time hours. It’s those staff who have been told that their hours have been radically cut (especially if they work in the 50 outdoor rinks). This includes students working for their tuition, and much of the “new blood” in the department, young people willing to put up with the wages for now in order to get established.

The mayor’s cuts have not touched management nor full-time union positions. Their wages are secure even if the rinks and community centres are locked and the parks are full of litter. But because the casual staff run most of the programs, shrinking their hours also affects park and community centre users the most. Treating these staff as “disposable” is a very bad idea. The best of them are increasingly forced to abandon their interest in public spaces and take up other work. In that way, cuts made like this are worse for public space than vandalism. The mayor’s plan need re-working.

PROGRAM CUTS FOR PARKS AND RECREATION

Newsletter- | Dufferin Rink

In August City Manager Shirley Hoy announced major cuts to city services that would affect most people in Toronto. The most immediate effect on Dufferin Grove is that the rink is supposed to stay shut for the busiest part of its season (the month of December). Mayor David Miller says that this is necessary because his new taxes on house sales and car registration were defeated by City Council.

From the CEntre for LOcal Research into Public Space (CELOS):

BETTER BUDGET CUTS FOR PARKS AND RECREATION

1. Cut one day a month for each of the 226 (or so) management staff. Save $1.5 million in a year. Right now the City is only cutting the hours of their lowest-paid staff. Those cuts add up much more slowly (except in the eyes of the lowest-paid staff whose small wages go down even lower). Interestingly, it seems that lots of management staff are willing to take these days off, and even those few days yield an impressive saving at their rate of pay.

2. Cut one director and his/her staff, maybe the folks whose main job it is to “evaluate, recommend and initiate innovative advancements in regard to service integration trends.” There are now 7 directors plus one new “acting director” whose job it is to connect silos built by the other 7. Some of the directors make nearly the same salary as the mayor – that adds up. Save $1.62 million.

Some of the staff can be moved out into the field, they can help run the rink programs. The casual staff program wages are about $20,000 a year if they get near-full-time hours.

3. Reduce the number of Parks trash police (and their supervisor) by half. They don’t keep track of how many people they catch (Freedom of Information says there is no report on their output), so it’s hard to know how many officers to cut, or even how many there are. But cutting four could be a good start, which leaves at least four more to do dog enforcement in their spare time. Save $400,000 (counting benefits and new trucks).

4. Move one-third of the Parks and Rec Youth Outreach Workers (called “yow’s), over to public health. One-third of 21 means seven YOWs, those ones whose job is to “provide general information and referral services to the designated youth groups, on recreation, housing, employment, education, health, other services and establish positive relationships with youth, agencies, police, schools and the broader community.” Public health has lots of new funding from the Province. This staff transfer would give them new, suitable youth staff without the necessity of interview or orientation. Save $490,000 for Parks and Rec to put toward opening the City's 12 double-pad outdoor artificial ice rinks in mid-November – using the formula that one good pleasure-skating and shinny-hockey rink equals 10 good YOWs-worth of youth work.

5. Cut out the Parks, Forestry and Recreation Divisional Safety and Security Plan officers. They’re an expensive way to do evening washroom lockup in parks and an inefficient way to relate to troublemakers. Save $350,000 (or maybe more, the project is partly confidential). Restore the recreation staff to their former role of fostering security: long-term work with youth and communities. (Instead of what they have become now: book-keepers for shrinking program revenues.) Leave the crisis work to real police officers. Parks and recreation centres were safer (and cheaper) when recreationists were still allowed to use their skills. (See by-law story "New By-law Officers"?.)

That’s $4.36 million saved for starters. It’s only a drop in the bucket of the 2007 PFR operating budget of $303 million. The CELOS research group has more good suggestions, and so do some of the City workers. This list is just for the short term, to prevent the Mayor’s cuts from punishing citizens and front-line program workers.