The case for more city councillors
Instead of worrying about ward boundaries, worry about equal and effective representation
There may have been no more persuasive argument put forward yet for the 44-ward plan to revise electoral ward boundaries than the one on the front page of Tuesday’s paper. “Some residents of The Beach are aghast at the notion that a redrawing of Toronto’s political boundaries could suddenly thrust them into Scarborough,” the story read.
Across the city you could hear the cry ring out: “Make it so! Make! It! So!” If the topic of ward boundaries seems like a snooze (and judging by the dismal turnout at public hearings on the topic, the Zzzzzzz’s have it), you can still count on the petty neighbourhood snobberies and gross stereotypes of this great city to act as smelling salts.
“No one wants to live in Scarborough,” one Beach resident, apparently called down from central casting, was reported to say, explaining she feared that being lumped in with part of the eastern area would somehow threaten the “village within the city feel” of her “quaint area” and its “unique businesses.”
It was as if she thought the plan would see her neighbourhood physically transported to Morningside and Finch, or perhaps that her famous WASP ethnic neighbourhood would be forcibly integrated through busing or housing swaps with residents of Scarborough’s famously different ethnic neighbourhoods.
We are talking, of course, not about those things, fun as they are to imagine, but about simply sharing a representative at City Hall with some neighbours near the Hunt Club and Birch Cliff — an area whose geography and population actually have much in common with The Beach.
But such is the phobia against the word “Scarborough” among some of those who live along its border that some Beachers likely fear simple association with the name would threaten their property values.
And such is the perception in the rest of the city of intolerably precious, privileged Beach residents that there are few more unifying emotions than schadenfreude at the boardwalkers’ reaction. If it makes the snobs snivel, it can’t be all bad, right?
Breaking up a tight-knit neighbourhood community into two separate wards doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you’re looking to water down its influence
Mayor John Tory and many of his allies support the 44-ward plan for different reasons, of course. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say they support it for one different reason. It keeps the same number of city councillors as there are now. This may be a popular idea.
To paraphrase H. L. Mencken, no one ever lost public office by underestimating the regard of people for elected officials.
“The last thing we need is more politicians,” the mayor says, and the heads start a-nodding.
But popular as it is on its face, this is an even worse argument than the one put forward by the Scarborophobic Beacherites.
At least the snobs have a point, even if you have to look sideways to see it: breaking up a tight-knit neighbourhood community (such as the Beach) into two separate wards, splitting its political decision-making and representation, doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you’re looking to water down its influence.
And putting an urban ward (full of cyclists and streetcars) under the auspices of a suburban Community Council (full of multiple-car garages) for local decisions such as speed bumps and zoning may not make a lot of sense.
The “fewer politicians” thing, however, is misplaced hostility. Because what drives most of us batty is not too many politicians, but too many bad ones, who give us too little representation. It’s hard to remedy the first complaint — everywhere people are elected, there are grandstanding bozos who constantly get re-elected. But at the risk of sounding like the old joke about the bad restaurant that serves terrible food, and in such small portions, part of what makes our representation bad may be that we have too little of it. It is actually a hobby horse of the smaller-government Ford family that too many people have a hard time getting their councillor on the phone to give them attention for their local constituency concerns.
It should seem obvious enough that it becomes harder and harder to give good, responsive representation to a constituency the larger that constituency becomes. It is self-evident that the more people my councillor has to represent and serve, the less effectively she can represent and serve me.
Lest we think we are lousy with elected officials in Toronto, consider that the job our 44 councillors do is done by many more people in some other large cities.
In London, England, there are 33 elected borough and city councils, many of which have more than 50 members. In addition to its 51 city councillors, New York City has 59 community boards and five borough presidents involved in its governance. Montreal and Chicago, both smaller cities than Toronto, have more city councillors than we do. Right after amalgamation, Toronto had 56 councillors (and before that, many more at two levels of government) — as the city has grown, the representation of it has shrunk.
The competing proposal, which would add three new councillors (bringing the total number to 47) would better address the problem ward-boundary changes are meant to resolve: right now some wards have twice as many people in them as in others, literally meaning one person’s vote for council is twice as valuable as someone else’s.
The 44-member revision proposal still leaves, urban planner Gil Meslin has pointed out, six wards significantly underrepresented, five of them clustered together downtown. This fact was not made clear in city presentations on this due to an apparent math error (the city spokesperson was not able to address it with me before deadline.)
The 47-member council with new boundaries would give more equal representation and keep the average number of people each councillor represents closer to what it is today as the population grows over the next decade or two.
The 47-member proposal was the one recommended by experts. The truth is, it wouldn’t be a radical change; it would neither fix nor ruin our democracy. Most people wouldn’t notice it at all. It wouldn’t lump the Beach in with Scarborough, perhaps to the relief of those on both sides of Victoria Park, and the disappointment of the rest of us. It wouldn’t give us a chance to indulge our love of complaining about politicians.
But it would provide somewhat more equal representation and possibly the hope of somewhat more effective representation, too. And isn’t that what this is supposed to be all about? Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca. Follow: @thekeenanwire