TheBulletin.ca Journal of Downtown Toronto
Yes, we’re talking Toronto city council
By Frank Touby –
These dysfunctional bozos now want to waste scarce transit funds to decorate subway stations. Their monumental stupidity in pushing for outrageously pricey and inefficient streetcars—a boon only to the concrete industry which gets to endlessly replace the crumbling stuff that holds the tracks in place—is being trumped by artsy-fartsy types like Sandra Bussin who waxed poetic about the glories of art and design for subway stations. How about the glories of clean washrooms and accessible entrances to all subways? How about getting the buses to run on time? How about getting control of the Aggravating Transit Workers union that too-often holds the city to ransom for benefits normal working stiffs would drool after?
Part of the problem is that council listens to city staff. Rather than commanding the bureaucrats who run our lives, council pays them heed. Our weakfish mayor, who needs only personal strength, know-how and intelligence— not provincially mandated powers— takes no lead. That’s because he doesn’t know how. He sat on old Metro Council, then city council, having fine lunches and schmoozing with his Ukrainian constituency he nurtured to great political effect. The rest was a mystery that swivel service staff were happy to solve for him and the rest. Miller bought into staff-initiated idiocy like selling off our streets to an ad company for 20 years so we can have all the same “street furniture” with billboards. Brilliant.
He bought into the lunacy of monster plastic garbage bins that might work in parts of Etobicoke and Scarberia where folks have big garages, but otherwise are a sign of incompetence by a major city department that ought to know better. Where do they live, anyhow? Now Miller wants the province to fulfill his lust for a star chamber of anointed minions on council. Secret “executive committee” meetings are just the style of this doddering mayor who has curtailed freedom of information at city hall. It’s bad enough that the city staff can meet and plot in secret. Politicians at city level never should.
