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Rob Ford's Toronto

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Don't forget the Jarvis bike lanes. Undoing something that made commuting safer for a large number of people for about 10x its original cost, just to save drivers a couple of minutes. Way to cut the gravy, Rob.
 
doug said:
LOL, don't hurt yourself twisting like that.


We don't know how much private gasrbage collection is going to cost us....you're a little premature on that one.
Abolishing a much needed tax is questionable....but you'll vote for him no mater what.

How much will it cost us to make TTC an essential service?

Ford nation would do better if you actually thought about the ramifications...but you won't, you'll vote for ford no matter what.
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To be fair - those *were* a list of pledges he came through on.

The fact that they were all penny-wise/pound-foolish type pledges (with the possible exception of garbage collection) is beside the point for Red Mars....
 
I don't think it makes sense to rename the thread. He was mayor for 2 years and this is a thread about his journey, with all the associated ups and downs.
 
bobbob911 said:
To be fair - those *were* a list of pledges he came through on.

The fact that they were all penny-wise/pound-foolish type pledges (with the possible exception of garbage collection) is beside the point for Red Mars....
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That was him 'cutting gravy'...that is what ford nation wanted, it's not what they got though...we don't know how much more this will all cost us yet.
 
CDL.TO said:
I don't think it makes sense to rename the thread. He was mayor for 2 years and this is a thread about his journey, with all the associated ups and downs.
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Put it to a POLL is the best answer. My vote will be to change the name though.
 
Making the TTC an essential service is not cutting gravy - it will mean *more* cost to the city, not less.
Cancelling the VRT is not cutting gravy - it is removing a much-needed revenue source (even Rob Ford has now agreed the city badly needs revenue) and therefore implicitly added more costs to the city balance book, not less.
 
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nfitz said:
TTC route cuts. Increase of TTC loading standards, meaning more people stuffed on few vehicles. Reduced library hours. Swimming pool closures. Reduced programs at community centres. Funding cuts to homeless problems (which will eventually revert one of Millers major successes ... far less visible homeless people on the streets).

And those are just the ones he managed to get through. The list of what he was trying to get was huge!
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These are all good points.

I'll add:

I'd like to eliminate streetcars. There is either none of them or they travel in packs of three or more then get short-turned. Give us more subways. Be prepared for the next 50 years.

Combine libraries and community centres.

Encourage corporate sponsorships at these centres and pools/rinks.

Homelessness costs should be shared over more government agencies. It didn't help to see mental health centres turn out their patients to the streets over these past years. Why should it only be the city's burden.

What Ford did achieve while in office is enough for me to return him. Sounds like this isn't the case for you and others and a suitable candidate needs to be sought out.
 
I'd like to eliminate streetcars. There is either none of them or they travel in packs of three or more then get short-turned. Give us more subways. Be prepared for the next 50 years.
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The first is an operation issue - the second is a funding issue. Neither of which Rob Ford addressed in the last two years, other than a) repeating subways, subways, subways and b) became mumb on the issue of streetcars after the election. I suppose the latter has to do with the question of what do you replace them with?

Combine libraries and community centres.
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A lot of the new ones are already combined (e.g. St. Jamestown) - and rebuilding the old in such a format will require capital budgeting.

Encourage corporate sponsorships at these centres and pools/rinks.
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FYI corporations already sponsor some library programs (e.g. TD)

Homelessness costs should be shared over more government agencies. It didn't help to see mental health centres turn out their patients to the streets over these past years. Why should it only be the city's burden.
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Homelessness cost is shared over different levels of government - such as the whole Streets to Home program. It's never a "city only" burden.

AoD
 
nfitz said:
TTC route cuts. Increase of TTC loading standards, meaning more people stuffed on few vehicles. Reduced library hours. Swimming pool closures. Reduced programs at community centres. Funding cuts to homeless problems (which will eventually revert one of Millers major successes ... far less visible homeless people on the streets).

And those are just the ones he managed to get through. The list of what he was trying to get was huge!
Click to expand...

PinkLucy said:
Don't forget the Jarvis bike lanes. Undoing something that made commuting safer for a large number of people for about 10x its original cost, just to save drivers a couple of minutes. Way to cut the gravy, Rob.
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Not to forget instilling a workplace culture of fear at City Hall.
 
I sampled a few posts done at the start of this thread. It's amazing how many people predicted that Ford would not finish his term for one reason or another. Many also were of the opinion (myself included) that Ford himself would craft his own undoing, and that ultimately happened.

So, next order of business: we need a new mayor, and I believe it should be up to council to appoint one from the current, sitting, elected councillors. It would be wise to avoid an election at this point in time. My understanding is that it really is up to council.
 
I totally agree with Gurney, surprisingly.

Matt Gurney: Politically motivated ousting or not, Rob Ford did himself no favours

Matt Gurney | Nov 26, 2012 2:18 PM ET | Last Updated: Nov 26, 2012 2:29 PM ET
More from Matt Gurney | @mattgurney
November 26, 2012


Monday after next, Rob Ford may no longer be the Mayor of Toronto.

Found guilty by an Ontario judge of conflict of interest, relating to the mayor’s decision to vote on an issue in which he had a direct financial stake (whether he had to refund roughly $3,000 in charitable donations he had improperly solicited on city letterhead), Ford may not be permitted to run again for office until 2014. Legal opinion is split on whether he could run in a byelection, if one were held to fill his office.

Ford’s suspension from office will take effect 14 days after it was handed down. That gives him time to appeal, and he has already said he will. Monday’s verdict may therefore be far from the end of this drama. It would be, as a wise man once said, merely the end of the beginning.

But whatever the ultimate outcome, it is still a stunning slap to the face of Toronto’s mayor. In the minutes after the verdict, even Ford’s allies on council sounded defeated and subdued. Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday, who may soon find his title chopped in half to just “Mayor,†perhaps said it best when he told NewsTalk 1010 host Jerry Agar that while the case against Ford may have been politically motivated, Ford didn’t help his cause much.

No. He certainly didn’t. The facts of the accusation against him were clear — he did vote in a matter in which he had a financial stake. That wasn’t disputed. It was, in fact, a matter of public record. His only escape hatch was a tiny bit of wiggle room built into the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act that permits judges to avoid vacating a seat of an individual found guilty if the judge believes the conflict was inadvertent or minor.

Instead, Ford, when testifying in court, essentially said he didn’t think he was in a conflict of interest because … he didn’t think he was in a conflict of interest. Did he actually know what the definition of a conflict of interest was? He did not, the mayor conceded. Had he read the handbook that Toronto gives all its elected officials and that would have explained it all to him? Nope. Why not? Ford didn’t think he needed to learn anything more about government. His daddy had been a one-term MPP, elected when Ford was 26.

And that’s all the education any of us need in anything, right?

In his ruling ordering Ford from office, Justice Charles Hackland wrote that Ford showed a “stubborn sense of entitlement.†That’s strong stuff from a judge, but it’s completely true. Ford’s foes would call it his pigheadedness. Friends called it his bull-in-the-china-shop routine. Ford was someone entirely without pretense, and a lot of voters liked that. He was different than the rest at city council. He was out to protect the little guy, and he didn’t care who he pissed off along the way.

God knows Toronto needed some of that. There’s a reason why Ford, a candidate with a lot of very public failings, resonated with Toronto voters. They were craving someone with a little more authenticity, a willingness to get something done because it needed doing, even if it bent a few noses out of shape.

But Ford’s problem was that his, uh … let’s call it directness … wasn’t part of his political persona. It was the totality of his being. The nitty gritty details of how a city runs — including, vitally, its legal codes — didn’t interest him. He was comfortable with big themes and grand ideas, the boring little details of that thing we call “reality†be damned.

That’s why he didn’t care that there wasn’t the money to pay for the Sheppard subway. He wanted it built and the rest didn’t matter. That’s why he didn’t care about the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act. He didn’t think he’d done anything wrong, and who is some uppity lawyer and an integrity commissioner to say otherwise? Stubborn sense of entitlement? Check and check.

Rob Ford has had a few victories during his two years in office. He tried to do good, and sometimes succeeded. But as it became clearer that while he knew how a city ought to be run, he had no idea how to run one, Ford became increasingly disengaged. Accusations that Ford was an absentee mayor stuck for a reason. It was like he gave up on reality and retreated as much as possible to the slogans and unrealistic boasts that he’d campaigned on.

Toronto deserves a mayor who wants the things that Rob Ford wanted. Toronto needs someone who’s not afraid of ruffle feathers. But it also needs a mayor smart enough to only pick the fights that need fighting, and to know when not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If this is the end of Ford’s time in office, and if another, more sensible right-winger succeeds him, Toronto may just get the mayor it wanted in Ford, but that he simply wasn’t able to be.

And if someone who doesn’t agree with Ford’s vision takes over, that will be Ford’s legacy. That’s a reality he may find harder to acknowledge than most.

National Post
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http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/1...sting-or-not-rob-ford-did-himself-no-favours/
 
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