David Miller's Toronto

It's almost as if something comes up each day to expose how Mayor David Miller has been asleep at the mayoral wheel.

I see lots of similarities between Miller and Micheal Brown, head of FEMA during the imfamous Hurricane Katrina fiasco. Both totally out of their element in leadership, vision, and crisis management.

And I knew it was only a matter of time before travel writers began bashing Toronto. www.worldtravelwatch.com , written by esteemed travel writer Larry Habegger, recently posted a travel advisory aimed at Toronto visitors. Although it doesn't say to stay away, no one spending their hard earned recession dollar would think about brining their familiy a place where parks, ferries, recereation and garbage collection programs have been cancelled.

I remember 10 years ago, I'd have to squeeze by throngs of summer tourists walking up and down Yonge and Bay Street. I'd choke on the fumes of back to back double-decker tour buses. It's not like that anymore, despite all the new theatres, restaurants and entertainment areas downtown.

So this is some of the David Miller highlights:

- Got bitch slapped by Fed. Transport Minister John Baird, when he tried to swindle $400 million to build new street cars, as a "stimulus" project.
- Increased Toronto property taxes
- Additional municipal license plate fee
- Garbage Strike
- Three ridiculous garbage bins for each type of household waste
- Additional garbage fees on top of what we already pay for taxes, plus now limiting how many bags per pickup
- News that the organic waste that we've all been diligently sorting is being dumped into landfill anyways, and whatever is composted into "black gold" is actually toxic to plants (due to incomplete composting and sodium content).
- City indoor and outdoor workers on strike. i.e. no social services, permits, park services, etc.
- City programs, including my kid's day camps cancelled
- Bike lanes that no one uses
- Bike racks on buses that no one uses
- A pesticide ban, that has turned once green parks into meadows of dandilions and crabgrass. The pesticides by the way are safe by Federal guidelines. But, ironically it's totally okay to spray toxic poisons on the rotting garbage in makeshift dumpsites located in public parks.

At least FEMA's Michael "Brownie" had the smarts to ask "Can I quit now?" Miller actually think he's cut out of the job.

I just came back from Chicago and gained some perspective. Chicago's Mayor Richard M. Daley faced with a similar defecit and antiquated labour demands did this, threatened to send out 1,500 layoff notices if unions didn't show up at the bargaining table and conceed. Now that's leadership. That's also helps explain what Daley's been mayor since 1989.