municipal election

[spaminator]

http://mississaugavotes.ca/infoforv...nglish Separate&ward=05&orderby=CandidateName

http://mississaugavotes.ca/infoforv... English Public&ward=05&orderby=CandidateName

http://mississaugavotes.ca/infoforvoters/whosrunning?office=Councillor&ward=05&orderby=CandidateName

http://mississaugavotes.ca/infoforvoters/whosrunning?office=Mayor&orderby=CandidateName&lang=

yeah I don't know who these people are either.

 

[MHz]

With politicians isn't hindsight a better way to grade them? I have a hard time deciding who is worse, a bad liar or a polished one.

 

[spaminator]

Technical problems in municipal voting raises questions
Canadian Press
Published:
October 23, 2018
Updated:
October 23, 2018 1:26 PM EDT
A sign points voters towards a polling station at City Hall in London, Ont., on Monday, October 22, 2018. London is the first municipality to adopt a ranked ballot system in Canada. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Geoff Robins
An Ontario municipal candidate forced by major online voting problems to wait another day to find out whether he will be mayor called the process disconcerting on Tuesday and questioned the wisdom of having no paper-ballot backup.
In addition, Chris Peabody called on the provincial government to study internet balloting and to ensure election laws are updated to reflect new reality.
“It makes you really question whether it’s worth putting all the time and effort into it,” Peabody said of his run for mayor of Brockton. “It might be one of the reasons there’s so much cynicism and so many acclamations in municipal politics this year in Ontario.”
Instead of either celebrating a win or drowning a loss in a drink, Peabody and scores of other political hopefuls found themselves grappling with an online voting glitch during Monday’s municipal elections. In all, 51 municipalities using Denver, Colo.-based Dominion Voting Systems had problems. Some opted to extend voting hours into late Monday, but others like Brockton in midwestern Ontario pushed the deadline back for a full 24 hours.
In a statement on Monday, Dominion blamed an unnamed Toronto company for limiting incoming voting traffic. Dominion said the issue was resolved in 90 minutes, but many voters still complained of problems. In a brief response to questions on Tuesday, the company said it would issue a statement later in the day.
“Our priority is ensuring that our Ontario municipal election customers are able to provide their voters with uninterrupted service until the end of voting,” Dominion vice president Kay Stimson said.
Dominion, which bills itself as a leading providing of election counting solutions, charged Brockton about $5 for each of the municipality’s 7,500 eligible voters — about $40,000. In theory, the vote was to have cost roughly 15 per cent less than a traditional paper ballot, which requires staffing and other costs. This year, the Dominion problem may well have increased the cost, which Peabody said the company should cover.
The company was also responsible for voting during the Progressive Conservative leadership race that saw Doug Ford, who went on to become Ontario’s premier, emerge victorious. However, that contest was marked by problems with balloting and it took more than five hours longer than it should have to declare the winner.
In the 2010 election, Brockton ran into similar bandwidth problems with a different company providing online voting services, Halifax-based Intelivote Systems. The municipality got a free online referendum out of it in 2013. However, in 2010 and again in 2014, paper ballots were also available for those who chose to go that route. Not so on Monday, given that council voted narrowly to get rid of paper altogether.
The delays prompted some people to give up on voting altogether, Peabody said.
“Some people phoned me and said, ’I really want to vote for you but I’ve been on there for an hour and a half and now I’m done’,” Peabody said. The candidate said he was working the phones in an effort at getting the vote out on Tuesday.
Peabody said he’s always been suspicious of online voting in light of hacking concerns and technical problems. The Municipal Elections Act needs updating he said. One example involves a ban on candidates helping people vote at polling stations. However, a polling station is “somebody’s front door if they have an iPhone,” Peabody noted.
“The province should look at regulating it,” he said. “They need to study the cybersecurity issues and the bandwidth issues, the foreign ownership issues.”
In all, at least a dozen municipalities extended voting in their local elections by a day. Those municipalities included Pembroke, Waterloo, Greater Sudbury, and several communities in the Muskoka region.
The rest of Ontario’s 417 municipal races went off without technical trouble.
http://torontosun.com/news/provinci...-extend-voting-in-many-ontario-municipalities

 

[Twin_Moose]

Toronto has room to hike property taxes by 20% to fund city services, researchers say

Toronto has room to hike average property taxes on homes by around 20 per cent, according to a new report from Ryerson University.
The research provides a stark contrast to the city's latest budget — which ties property taxes to the rate of inflation, a move critics say hinders the city's ability to deliver crucial services, from snow clearing to public housing repairs.
Across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, more than 20 municipalities "recorded higher average property taxes than Toronto," wrote the report's author, Frank Clayton, a senior research fellow at Ryerson University's Centre for Urban Research and Land Development.
"Only homeowners in Milton, New Tecumseth, Georgina, Hamilton and Burlington paid less," he continued.
The report, published on Thursday, is based on an analysis of unpublished data from the 2016 census.
It found average property taxes paid within the region ranged between roughly $3,400 and nearly $7,000 for each home, with Toronto at around $4,000.
In a comparison of property taxes as a percentage of household income, Toronto dropped even further on the list — ranking second-lowest, only above Milton.
'There's room if we want to invest'
"This report mostly confirms what many of us have been saying for a long time," said Coun. Gord Perks, who called for property taxes above the rate of inflation in this year's budget.
"The property tax burden Torontonians carry is well below what people in the Greater Toronto Area carry, and there's room if we want to invest in the city to make it a better place to live."
Around 20 per cent of room exists to comfortably hike rates, according to Clayton, who wrote that increase would still put Toronto in the "middle of the range of taxes" levied by other municipalities in the region.
In contrast, Toronto's latest budget contains an overall property tax increase of 1.8 per cent and a 2.55 per cent increase for residential homes, tied to the rate of inflation — fulfilling a vow Mayor John Tory made during both the 2014 and 2018 municipal elections.
"In order to balance the budget, the mayor and his allies are sacrificing the work to keep our assets in a state of good repair ... It's a budget that means more potholes, more buildings crumbling in Toronto Community Housing, less investments in our parks and public spaces, libraries not getting necessary upgrades," Perks said.
"This means, right across the board, we're falling behind. What we saw in this report is there's room to solve those problems."
City staff, in a recent briefing note, highlighted the growing "state of good repair" backlog Toronto faces in the years ahead.
Despite nearly $20 billion in investments in the 2019 budget, the backlog estimate — which is tied to maintenance of roads, TTC vehicles, parkland, and more than 58,000 public housing units — is projected to increase from $7.5 billion at the end of 2018 to $9.5 billion by 2028.
There are also unfunded areas, such as a plan approved by the Toronto Public Library Board to standardize open hours across the system to boost access to services.
Slated to be phased in starting this year, the plan was not included in the 2019 budget due to "fiscal challenges," city staff wrote in a recent budget note.
'Short-term gains, long-term pains'
In a statement, Tory's communications head, Don Peat, defended the mayor's stance on property taxes, saying voters "across Toronto in every ward" overwhelmingly voted in favour of his campaign promise.
"Despite a tough budget year, the proposed budget includes no service cuts, makes additional investments in many areas — including transit, policing, housing, and libraries — and delivers again on the Mayor's promise to keep tax increases at the rate of inflation," Peat wrote.
But that mindset offers "short-term gains, long-term pains," Coun. Mike Layton said.
"What we're doing now, year over year with these austerity budgets and inflationary increases, is putting us further and further behind," he added.
The last few weeks of winter, Layton noted, show the depth of the problems facing the city if more investments aren't made in one crucial area: snow clearing.
"When it takes a week to even get a response on when [the city will] check to see when neighbours can have snow removed or a street cleared, and when people are stuck in their homes because they use mobility devices, that's not the level of service we should be delivering," he said.
Perks acknowledged a sudden, major tax hike of up to 20 per cent would cause another type of challenge for residents, but said incremental increases beyond inflation, over a number of years, would help the city "catch up."
"Then we're in a place to have the city Torontonians want," he said.

 

[Twin_Moose]

Here's how much more you could pay in property taxes in 2019 — and where that money might go

Arguments going on over rate hikes in Toronto