His political honeymoon long over, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has lost the public’s confidence. And now, he’s about to lose council’s as well. The Ford revolution may be aborted before it takes root.
Torontonians are not impressed with Ford’s confrontational style, his lone-wolf approach to leadership and his threats to gut city services after guaranteeing during the election that he’d cut the “gravy” and not cut a single service.
But what may have tipped the balance, fatally, is a waterfront plan he and his councillor brother, Doug, dreamed up in secret to deliver a mega-mall, giant Ferris wheel and monorail to private developers on Toronto’s most valuable real estate asset.
Rookie Councillor Jaye Robinson, a member of the mayor’s hand-picked executive committee, says she can’t in good conscience support the mayor’s plan to displace waterfront plans developed after years of public consultation.
Robinson and other rookie councillors have sought out their own briefings of the existing waterfront plan after the mayor hired consultants to concoct a vastly different scheme than the one city council approved last year.
Countering their move, the Ford administration strong-armed the councillors and failed to heel Robinson. Other non-aligned councillors — part of the so-called “mushy middle” — have become critical of the new plan as public opposition mounts.
Now, there is little hope of the plan fronted by Doug Ford getting council support.
“Yes there is egg on our faces for allowing this,” admitted Councillor Peter Milczyn, a Ford ally who is busy seeking a face-saving compromise before the issue gets to council next Wednesday.
“What blew up in our faces was the distraction of the Toronto Port Lands Company (TPLC) going out and doing a visionary exercise,” he said Wednesday. Now, the Ford administration is trying to craft an innocuous-sounding motion that limits the meddling to a staff “review” of the options presented in the current Waterfront Toronto plan.
Four in 10 citizens think the mayor is doing a good job leading the city. And his support is sinking even among suburbanites who took a chance on him just 11 months ago. In North York, for example, Ford’s support has dropped to 43 per cent, from 69 per cent in June, a new poll shows.
More strikingly, the mayor is angering more and more councillors, as citizen groups mass against his policy pronouncements.
Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam sent him a stinging letter chastising him for ruling “by fiat.” Councillor Josh Matlow distributed a letter to constituents decrying many of the proposed service cuts as unsupportable. Councillors Mary-Margaret McMahon and Ana Bailão, two non-aligned rookie votes the mayor needs, have slammed the waterfront fiasco.
CivicAction, a broad-based citizen action group of bankers, activists, professionals and urbanists, warned Ford against changing the waterfront plans without extensive public consultation. And a group of University of Toronto professors plan to release a harsh letter Thursday, criticizing the proposed changes to the waterfront plan.
Add to that the general chatter and protest of the long list of proposed cuts and there is a sense of trouble in Ford kingdom.
A clear sense of Ford’s vulnerability is this: Premier Dalton McGuinty and the Liberals think they can score political points by cautioning Ontarians to avoid Tory Tim Hudak because he will bring in “Ford-like cuts.”
Ford’s own budget chief, Mike Del Grande, says he won’t back efforts to eliminate snow removal from the front of driveways. Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti opposes cuts to fire service staff. Councillor Karen Stintz rejects cuts to libraries.
They are all slavish Ford allies refusing to drink the Kool-Aid because the mayor’s approval rating is in free-fall.
For Ford, it’s change course and change style, or watch his agenda evaporate.
Origin
Source: Toronto Star
No comments:
Post a Comment