Getting set for Monday’s city council meeting – possibly his last as Toronto’s mayor – Rob Ford chose motions that, for him, fit familiar themes.
As councillors make their final speeches before turning all attention to the municipal campaign, Ford will be trying to keep street traffic moving, hold people accountable for overspending on city projects, and help underprivileged youth at the Aug. 25 meeting.
All are topics he’s returned to many times since his election victory in 2010.
Ford has had many of his mayoral powers stripped from him, but in one of the many member motions slated for the upcoming meeting, he proposes to include the re-timing of 500 more traffic signals in the city’s "congestion management plan."
The plan already aims to adjust 1,000 sets of signals to improve traffic flow, and Ford said 200 to 300 have already been reviewed.
"It is working," he said.
The mayor, in a scrum outside his office Friday, also said he’d ask for a report on "what tools are in place" to stop cost overruns on city projects.
He recounted several he had criticized during his four-year term, or even before it started: the Peter Street homeless shelter, the Nathan Phillips Square renovations, the St. Clair Avenue West dedicated streetcar lanes, the BMX track in Etobicoke’s Centennial Park.
Ford also called for significant consequences, "a price to pay," whenever those unexpected cost increases happen, remarking that in the private sector, "nobody gets away with this."
He added it’s been "extremely frustrating" as mayor and as a councillor for 10 years before that, to have made no real progress on the issue.
Ford said he’ll bring a third motion forward to help youth in Toronto Community Housing use the Toronto Raptor’s proposed $30-million practice facility, which the city’s executive committee approved Wednesday.
The mayor welcomed the facility, which Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment says it would pay for at Exhibition Place, making it available to amateur basketball and community use most of the time.
But Ford said teams from underprivileged areas – he specified youth living in Toronto Community Housing – won’t be able to pay standard city rates to use it.
"They can’t afford it," said the mayor, who will be proposing such youth be given some form of discount. "It’s only fair."
In a summing up, Ford told reporters he’s satisfied with his four-year record, arguing that – apart from on Toronto’s Land Transfer Tax, which he would try again to eliminate – he’s been a success.
"I’ve run the city better than any mayor ever has," Ford said, before stepping back into his office to greet a visiting hip hop artist from Ethiopia and the latest Miss Teenage Toronto.
Anyone can read Conversations, but to contribute, you should be a registered Torstar account holder. If you do not yet have a Torstar account, you can create one now (it is free).
To join the conversation set a first and last name in your user profile.
Sign in or register for free to join the Conversation