City Staff Will Not Be Promoting Miller's $150K Ad Campaign

It seems that a complaint by ONE citizen stopped city staff from promoting it over the phone........

Goodbye to city's 1¢ hello
March 02, 2007
Jim Byers
CITY HALL BUREAU CHIEF

"One cent now" may be Mayor David Miller's slogan but you won't be hearing it any more when you phone city hall.

Callers to Toronto City Hall earlier this week were being greeted by the phrase coined by Miller in his campaign to get Ottawa to give Canadian cities one cent of every six cents of GST revenue.

At the request of senior staff, operators on Monday started answering calls with the line, "Access Toronto, one cent now" to publicize the mayor's penny plan.

By Wednesday, however, they had stopped, apparently because some of them felt uncomfortable delivering the political message.

Kevin Sack, the city's communications officer, said he told workers to stop using the tag because he had a complaint from a citizen.

He said the city will continue to run a separate information line dedicated to the one-cent campaign.