What Is Your Definition Of Clean

Normally clean is a subjective word and this is obvious when you listen to the two top mayorality candidates and the assessment by Sue-Ann Levy but the thing that exemplifies Miller is his response to a question about the homeless and his reply was that he was not there to talk about homelessness. For gawds sake it Miller that stupid that he thinks he can control the questions asked of him by the media and the potential voters. This is an election campaign and not a media love-in controlled by his flacks at city hall.

The mayor comes clean

By SUE-ANN LEVY

The two blondes who would be Toronto's next mayor battled it out on Bathurst St. yesterday.

Leading off the day's duelling media assaults, Mayor David Miller provided his vision for an "even more clean, green and beautiful city" (yes, that's a direct quote) in front of a suspiciously litter-free Bathurst-Wilson parkette.

Framed by a newly painted city-sponsored mural along a Hwy. 401 barrier, His Blondness waxed poetic about how clean (and litter-free!) he's made this city over the past three years -- in addition to the 400,000 trees he's planted -- and how he'll "use the office of mayor" to build on that "excellent foundation."

"Three years ago I asked Toronto city residents to help take our city back ... that we have done, and now we must take our city forward," he said.

He told us if he's returned to office, he'll invest $17.6 million (or $100,000 per year per ward) over four years to beautify neighbourhoods, hire grafitti artists to create murals in areas recommended by businesses or residents and ensure Toronto's "street furniture" (public benches, lamp posts, garbage bins, etc.) is standardized.

Not letting an opportunity to partner with somebody pass by, he said he'd create a "partnerships office" (read: more city staff tripping over each other) that would match up businesses and community groups interested in beautifying their public spaces.

He also informed us of plans to rejeunvenate certain gateways to the city and University Ave., which according to him is experiencing a "cultural renaissance."

When I asked him whether his rejeuvenation efforts will include removing the homeless who seemed to have taken up residence on the island off of Elm St. as of late, he retorted he wasn't there to talk about homelessness.

But the best part was his plan -- announced with a straight face -- to create a Litter Action Team that will "quickly clean up" (i.e., within 48 hours) serious litter and dumping problems. Not that Miller thinks there's much of a litter problem in this city, mind you.

He said the city is "much cleaner than it was" three years ago, the cleanliness enhanced by those 400,000 new trees.

"There is absolutely no doubt about that," he said, his words delivered at the precise moment an errant skunk told us what it thought of the mayor's bluff and bluster.

It was all too, too much. I'd argue most people would say otherwise: That the clean-up efforts are hit-and-miss, that often garbage cans are left filled to overflowing and only pockets of the city are cleaner.

Still, the mayor need not have worried. In typical fashion, several of my left-wing media collegues ate up his every word.

Which is why I was pleased to see Pitfield so unflappable when she delivered her transportation platform in the midst of the grimy dedicated streetcar line construction at the corner of Bathurst and St. Clair, some two hours after we'd heard from Miller.

In fact, try as my left-wing media colleagues might to badger her, the only mud that managed to land anywhere was on my brand-new loafers.

Pitfield's transportation ideas will be the subject of a subsequent column. Meanwhile, she had some strong criticism for the mayor's "clean and beautiful" efforts.

She suggested the $5.7 million Miller spent on planting flowers and gardening didn't make the city any cleaner. And she noted her platform will address specifics like graffiti and postering, gum and cigarette butts on the sidewalk, proper street cleaning and sidewalk cleaning.

"My standard of cleanliness is a lot higher than David Miller's," she said. "Look around you ... the city is not clean."