Robbie exercises his rights
Posted on September 17th, 2013 –
It’s rare that is happens, says John Elvidge of the city clerk’s office, but sitting mayors do have the right to poke their noses into the various standing committees at City Hall, including sitting in on and taking part in votes, exactly as Rob Ford did on Monday night. It’s an executive privilege.
It’s the second time Ford has done this in a week, this time on the 2014 Service Level review for the Parks and Environment Committee. The Committee, which meets irregularly once every three months or so, makes decisions on things like spending on public parks, gardens, and outdoor programs.
The vote before the Committee on Monday included a number of potentially sizeable increases which were not spelled out in any detail that I saw, although considering the fact that only existing services were listed, it seems that the numbers should be straightfroward to estimate.
Regardless, Ford declared that the as-yet-unspecified amount was too much, voted the item down, and walked out before another motion was adopted to move everything under the purview of the 2014 city budget process. Dougie was also absent for this follow-up vote.
“We can’t have these lefties spending like drunken sailors,” Ford said after his rare appearance at the parks and environment committee.
Ford says a lot of things about money at City Hall.
Things like swearing that freezing property taxes is “job one” for his administration, a claim which he rescinds drastically and early on after being voted into office (actually defending a hefty property tax increase in the process). Then, after being unable to come up with any alternative ideas to fund various city projects, settling on optimistically championing a property tax increase, then a month later calling for a property tax freeze yet again. And all of it in the unabashed service of business, which Ford says is tantamount to working for the common man.
So when Ford says that he’s getting involved in cherry-picked committee votes to curtail leftie spending, or for the benefits of the taxpayer, or any of his other disproved, divisive, and derisive nonsense, let’s just say I’m very skeptical.
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September 17th, 2013 2:26 pm
Hi again.
Listen, I loathe being the first to comment BUT in this same article Rof (I won’t waste my energy using his actual name… I’m a taxpayer) ROF voted against giving ANY $$ to the Farms to CLEAN and FEED THE ANIMALS. I guess they AREN’T AFFILIATED with the TORONTO TAXPAYERS COALITION so why bother.
I’m going to take my annoyed self to the bathroom to vomit my disgust with the whole situation and with Sir. Fattybrain.
Xo SarahD
September 21st, 2013 5:48 pm
Back in the 1980’s there was a father/daughter pair of Buffalo cut-rate clothing retailers -Cy and Marcie Sims- whose TV tagline was “At Sims an educated consumer is our best customer’. I thought about that this morning when I was reading the comments of Ford Nation acolytes who turned out at the 2014 Campaign Kick-off otherwise known as Ford Fest. The only difference is for the Fords the tagline is ‘At Ford Nation an ignorant voter is our strongest asset.”