To Mayor Miller"s Credit

He won't have to go out and buy a new broom.....the one he waved about three years ago has never been used and it makes you wonder why he doesn't excercise the same level of frugality with taxpayer $$$$ as he does with his own campaign expenses. I am assuming of course that he didn't use money from his office budget to buy the broom.

One struggling city, two visions of the future
Nov. 11, 2006. 01:00 AM
MOIRA WELSH
STAFF REPORTER

If mayoral candidate Jane Pitfield has her way, sleek new subway lines will make Toronto's all-day gridlock a foul historical footnote.

If front-runner David Miller's promises hold sway, Toronto's waterfront will be dotted with parks where families stroll along the boardwalk and swim in Lake Ontario's pure water.

The Toronto envisioned by Miller and Pitfield would be two very different places.

Under Pitfield, Toronto will develop a results-driven business approach to governance.

"Toronto will be a city that works," she says.

Pitfield vows that, if elected mayor Monday, panhandlers and the homeless will be off city streets within six months.

If Miller runs the city, it will be a softer, gentler place.

Miller, the incumbent, promises job training and education opportunities for youth in Toronto's poorest, gang-ridden neighbourhoods.

"In my Toronto, no one will be left behind," says Miller.

Says Pitfield: "I will create a warmer, friendlier, cleaner city."

Election campaigns are a time of promise. Not to mention platitudes. For the past month, Toronto has had daily pronouncements from Miller and Pitfield, pledging their visions to create renaissance, not decline.

After Monday's night's election, the new mayor — polls say it will be Miller — has a longer mandate, lasting four years instead of three. That makes this election important. If the next mayor does not keep his or her promises, the city is stuck with their leadership until 2010.

For all its riches, Toronto is struggling, sitting in neutral. The streets are still dirty, panhandlers are entrenched, the homeless live up and down city streets and tourism is in free fall.

The budget is burdened with hundreds of millions of dollars in social service expenditures, downloaded by the province. It is one of the few cities in the world that receives no federal money for the underground subway lines, crucial to removing traffic from the streets.

It takes two hours to drive from Scarborough to Etobicoke on a Friday afternoon. Gridlock is one of the campaign's biggest issues. The city is stressed out.

"Our challenge is to jerk ourselves out of this state we are in," says councillor Brian Ashton.

"To be great, we need a mayor who not only has wisdom, but has political will, advocacy skills and visionary cojones."

At the risk of stating the obvious, politicians don't always keep their promises. But, just imagine Toronto is embarking on a bold new era in which politicians live by their word, the economy is robust and tight-fisted senior governments are feeling generous toward Canada's biggest city.

Pitfield's Toronto will be pristine, sanitized of what some might deem unsightly: Graffiti will be washed away and the sidewalks will be cleaner. By May of 2007, according to her six-month plan, the panhandlers and homeless will be off the streets, in addiction treatment programs or housing.

The Gardiner Expressway will still be standing.

Construction on the York University subway (an existing plan) will have started and city council will vote to build two kilometres of different subway lines every year. Corporate donors will get naming rights for the new subway stations. The transit plan will call for light rail transit and subways, but no expansion of streetcar rights-of-way. Construction of the St. Clair right-of-way will stop.

On the waterfront, Pitfield would push for a greenbelt along the water's edge. By the end of her four-year term, all of the city's 10 Lake Ontario beaches will be clean and open for summer-long swimming. Toronto's garbage will be disposed of through the latest incineration technology.

Violent crime will be down and more officers will walk the beat. Resident and business improvement associations will play a greater role with local community councils.

The city will build 5,000 housing units for low-income residents to buy.

Pitfield will have convinced the provincial government to take back financial responsibility of housing, and treating the mentally ill and substance abusers.

Pitfield will get the province to upload the millions that it placed on Toronto's back.

"I am going to regain their trust," she said. "They don't trust us right now. There has been a lack of transparency with the whole city budget ... It has to be constructive, business-like, just like (Mississauga Mayor) Hazel McCallion."

Miller's Toronto is distinctly different.

He sees the future of Toronto in a little piazza at the corner of Grace and College Sts. Named for Little Italy's famous son, Johnny Lombardi, it is Miller's inspiration to build city neighbourhoods. Start small and get local businesses to chip in.

Miller does not believe in monuments and legacies.

New subway lines, the lofty dreams of urban designers, are not among his campaign promises, but in Miller's Toronto, their affordable little sisters, streetcars and buses, will dominate streets.

Think of the St. Clair streetcar right-of-way and multiply it many times, across the city.

In Miller's Toronto, the waterfront will be cleaner and there will be more swimming days at the downtown beaches. There will be more streetcar right-of-ways in Toronto, the St. Clair line will be complete, and so will the York University subway line.

Playgrounds, parks and basketball courts will be built in Toronto's poorest neighbourhoods and public spaces outside cultural institutions beautified.

Miller says he will continue work with the Canadian mayors' lobby to "build a national consensus" on city-related issues with the federal government so senior governments will give the city more money.

Enough about the future. Let's find out what the new mayor will do to inspire Toronto on the morning after election night.

Pitfield says she would call the councillors to tell them they will spend the next four years tackling crime, gridlock and garbage.

And Miller?

"You'll have to wait until Tuesday morning," he said.

Not even a taste of the mayor's passion for the city?

"It's my choice to tell people on Tuesday morning what I'll do on Tuesday morning and if I tell you now it will lose all its surprise."

The city awaits.