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City Council Bits and Bites

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Council’s smallest member

This morning, Council’s speaker, Councillor Sandra Bussin, ordered Councillor Rob Ford to retract and apologize for his racist comments regarding people of Asian decent.

Councillor Ford willingly retracted his statements but refused to apologize. In an attempt to get out of apologizing, Councillor Ford challenged the ruling of the speaker that required the apology, forcing a vote on whether or not he should apologize. Councillor Ford lost the vote with eight councillors supporting his protest.

Once Council had voted, Councillor Ford stood and, in barely a whisper, said, “Sorry,” and quickly sat down.

The hollow apology sounded and looked like an unremorseful eight year old in a suit.

City includes cycling in strike contingency plans

Spacing Toronto readers pointed out that the proposed TTC strike contingency plan considered by Council at its special meeting this afternoon didn’t include any mention of an enhanced bicycle network.

Mayor David Miller noted this, too, and said earlier today that during the last TTC strike he was concerned by the thousands of Torontonians cycling in mixed traffic. To right this, the Mayor had staff pull together an amendment to the plan that would assist those cycling into the core.

Cyclists will now be able to rely on Dundas (gaps in the bicycle lanes at the eastern portion of the street will be filled in), Queen’s Quay and Bay.

Ford attempts to filibuster

It used to be that Council would debate every program in the City budget (solid waste, emergency services, culture, etc.). Then, for reasons I still don’t quite understand, during the last Council term, the opposition bloc (led by Councillor David Shiner, if I remember correctly) proposed streamlining the debate process, which the progressives were happy to support. This means that instead of having 5 minutes to ask questions and 5 minutes (plus an extension) to speak to and move motions on each program, councillors would have 5 minutes to question, then up to 5 minutes (plus the extension) to speak to the entire budget.

Basically, this cut 1.5 days of debate and forced councillors to take a more global look at the budget, while only offering a small handful of amendments (instead of a small handful of amendments to each program of the budget). The person this hit the hardest was Councillor Ford, who used to place more than two dozen frivilous motions to cut a few dollars here or there. In the new process, Councillor Ford only has time to get out-voted on half a dozen to a dozen ill-conceived motions. 

This morning, at the beginning of the budget debate, Councillor Ford rose with a procedural amendment. He wanted to unbundled the budget and debate it line by line like they used to.

I guess in his time of crises, Councillor Ford needed to demonstrate that he’s still doing something (anything) to a constituency that must be getting tired of watching the three-term Etobicoke councillor continuously make a fool of himself.

As usual, Ford didn’t find nearly enough support on Council for this, with many of the opposition councillors even going against him on this one.

Pink Flamingos Against Earth Hour

If you were walking on the eastern side of City Hall on Saturday evening during Earth Hour, you may have noticed a fluorescent pink flamingo lighting up the window of a second-floor office.

That office belongs to Councillor Howard Moscoe. While Council’s chief prankster routinely turns off all of his office lights (unlike a few councillors), the pink flamingo stays on.

Councillor Moscoe’s history with the bird dates back to a gift from his grandchildren. Unfortunately, as the Councillor says with his tongue in his cheek, the gift gave others the impression he likes Flamingos. Thus, Councillor Moscoe was ahead of the fashion curve on pink ties.

Photo by jnicholl81.

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9 comments

  1. @ Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler
    —————-

    The text reads “The hallow apology” . . .at the fourth paragraph.

    I believe you mean “hollow apology”.

  2. How would they make temporary bike lanes in such short notice? With chalk?

  3. I was thinking this morning, that it would be quite typical for Caronto to forget about bikes in the event of a TTC strike. But this is pleasant news, though it seems too fricking obvious that maybe if we had a bike route that actually paralleled the Bloor/Danforth subway with its massive ridership, this would actually be of true assistance with complementing existing habits of travel and life.

    But hey, go out of your way by 1.5km for bike safety – that’s how we do it and it’s only possibly a transit strike, and we wouldn’t want much to do with options to lousy service, peak oil or climate change….

    Watch out for the craters on the south side of Bloor starting c. Bedford to east of Sherbourne. Expect to have some near-misses by the cartillery, if it’s not too crowded.

  4. Mr. Ford’s behaviour is gross and embarrassing… so tempting to forget and ignore. But this is what we absolutely must not do.

    When he mucks about the city, targeting ethnic groups with bigoted, racist remarks, when he curses tourists at sporting events, when he muddies factual debates with petty, childish attacks, it’s not just his own goodname that’s drug through the mud.

    In those moments our collective estimation of city council is taken down a notch. We resign ourselves to that classic Toronto mediocrity. We believe councillors can do no more than he, and that we deserve such grossness.

    Enough of this farce, this travesty of uncivil governance!

    It’s time for the City of Toronto act to allow us to put a space on every ballot for an ostracism vote. Each voter may write, if they wish, the name of a councillor they want barred from office for 10 years. If any one councillor gets over 50,000 ostracism votes from around the city, they do not get elected, even if they came first in their ward; the council seat would go to the candidate with the next most votes. Or you could have a run-off vote in that one riding in the event of ostracism.

    If the voters of Mr. Ford’s riding are unfortunate enough to vote him in again next time (which they surely will), at least the rest of the city could veto it. And if 50,000 voters can’t be found who want his farcical tenure ended, then let the matter be put to rest, let him serve on council, and let’s accept him as truly emblematic of our civic culture.

    And then, truly, he need not apologize for his grossness anymore.

  5. “It’s time for the City of Toronto act to allow us to put a space on every ballot for an ostracism vote” . . .

    [comment by Cleisthenes]

    Perhaps, we should have a ballot where we indicate our first, second and third choices for public officers. This is how it’s done in Australia in the federal elections. So, could it be done locally?