City Council Bits and Bites

 

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.