TheStar.com | GTA | Nothing ‘off limits’ to spending panel

On the one hand, Mayor David Miller is finally listening to the people; on the other, he still wants to get his way.

Miller has set up a panel comprising five people from business tycoons and labour apparatchiks, only one woman I have to point out. (At least she’s the woman who said no to buses into York U in order to ensure that that long-promised subway would get built.) The first question that came to my mind is just how independent is this panel? Have they been told, consider everything but not what is ideologically anathema to Miller? Miller’s reply last night to the reporter is that you don’t know Blake Hutcheson, no one tells him what to do.

In the Toronto Star today, Paul Massara muses that they’ll look at union wages and see if they’re competitive with third-party wages, stuff like that. He goes on to say that they’re independent and come sans bias.

This sounds hopeful. I hope this bunch also come with knowledge. It seems to me that the city and pundits consistently overlook some things, especially in the garbage area, due to lack of knowledge and a lack of a desire to learn. This seriously cripples the effectiveness with which alternatives are devised and considered. If you don’t know about x, then x can never be considered, and the final decision is flawed. Or if you know of x, but in an old-knowledge way, then you cannot know how x has developed and morphed into something useful and therefore cannot consider it properly. This results in an ineffective process and poor decisions.

However, the panel is a good idea. And it’s about time Miller listened to the people, just like he finally got his butt in gear and started attending those citizen meetings about taxes. He should have done that last spring; it was rude and contemptuous of him towards the citizenry that he attended not a one. It’s karma that the citizens forced him into doing what leadership ought to have told him what to do. But he still isn’t quite learning his lesson.

He still wants to have his taxes, his sweet goodies, the ones that will pack on the spending pounds and allow him to once again avoid doing the hard work of running this city well. He does not want to wait for next February to hear back from the panel. I hope Council forces him to wait. If he gets his taxes, there is no way on hell or earth that he will reverse them, even if the panel finds budget savings that negates the need for the taxes. He’ll come up with an excuse to keep them. Only Torontonians keeping their thumbs on their Councillors, and the Councillors saying no to new taxes, and the panel coming up with some good ideas, will force Miller to do what he ought to have done at least two budget times ago and during this past Ontario election: force Ontario to take back their fiscal responsibilities and bring sanity back to Toronto’s policies and budgets.

Related posts:

1. Miller Caves, or Does He?
2. Why the Sudden Spate of Cost Cutting at City Hall?
3. Miller @ LuminaTO?
4. Miller minus NDP
5. The Miller Pout