Does It Really Make Any Difference Sue-Ann

The mayor doesn't have to be at any meetings as long as the strings on his puppets are long enough but everyone of the "fiscal conservatives" on council should have been at the meeting raising as much hell as possible whether they were out of order or not. People Need To Take Note Of Your Footnote

Miller is missing in action
By SUE-ANN LEVY

At 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, Mayor David Miller's all-powerful executive committee sat down to approve this year's $1.4-billion capital budget.

By 11 a.m., they'd sent the pre-ordained mismash of capital funding priorities to council next week -- where at least 30 of the mayor's trained seals will ensure the package gets final approval.

When I happened upon the scene at 10 a.m., His Blondness was nowhere to be seen. I'm told he'd scurried off to play "rock star" with a group of "Big City" mayors to whom he wanted to pitch his One Cent Now (GST grab) campaign.

Not one of council's fiscal conservatives was in the committee room that morning either. Who can blame them when debate is suppressed and the mayor does what he pleases, without getting council approval first?

This, folks, is democracy at its finest. And it's how, I fear, Miller will drive Toronto into bankruptcy.

Never mind the irony of a mayor running off to promote a PR campaign for even more public money than the bailouts he now gets, instead of sitting through an important budget meeting to defend his capital spending decisions. Or to explain why he still needs to spend $2.9 million to expand his office.

Maybe he's saving that speech for council. But he is a "CEO" -- to use his own words -- and I can't think of a bigger priority for a CEO than the scrupulous handling of the corporation's finances.

Unlike deputy city manager and CFO Joe Pennachetti, I do not think the capital plan is "a very sound investment" for the city. "It meets as much as we can afford in terms of state of good repair, combined with some service improvement and growth," he said. "It does increase our debt, but I believe it's a manageable level of debt."

That "sound" capital plan will add about $308 million in new debt this year, bringing the total to about $2.1 billion. Over the next five years, he says, the city will add another $1 billion in new debt.

That's despite a "significant increase" in funding from the two senior governments. According to Pennachetti's charts, nearly $500 million is expected to come from federal and provincial sources this year, including the gas tax. Even with that, he says, they'll desperately need new "sustainable" sources of funding -- like the one-cent GST grab -- by 2011, to keep the debt levels from rising further.

In other words, to feed the Miller and Co. monster.

Some 50% of every capital dollar this year will be swallowed up by the TTC -- for 100 new buses, new subway cars and to complete the St. Clair dedicated streetcar line. Expansion of the TTC would be a good thing if the Commission wasn't such a black hole for spending and if council hadn't pushed through the controversial $710-million, sole-source contract with Bombardier for those subway cars.

The city will barely scratch the surface when it comes to tackling the hundreds of millions of dollars in backlogged road, bridge, building and park repairs. Yet at least $27 million will be found for "green" initiatives including more traffic calming, bike lanes and controversial large recycling carts.

Some $44 million is targeted towards another of Robert Kennedy Jr.'s ... er ... the mayor's priorities -- the Waterfront.

Coun. Doug Holyday likens the mayor's approach to a family that takes vacations all over the world and buys big cars while the roof on their house is shot and they need a new furnace.

"They haven't saved the money because they've been spending on other things ... so they run off to their parents to bail them out," he said. "That's what's happening here."

TUNED OUT: Just ask the Canadian Federation of Independent Business how difficult it is to meet with the mayor if you're not marching to his drumbeat. Judith Andrew, VP Ontario, requested a meeting in December, has followed up three times and has yet to get a call back. "I think they're ducking us," she says, attributing the silence to the CFIB's opposition to the City of Toronto Act.