Comment 5768

By Rusty (registered) - website | Posted March 08, 2007 at 17:31:17

Ford is an idiot, there's no defending that, but he highlights a common problem among City Councilors:

a. he does a great job at meeting his constituent's needs. A recent Star article highlighted a day with Councilor Ford which found him working 12 hours, and visiting constituent's homes personally, along with various city staffers, to address their complaints directly. Now that's service. He is also ethically astute and regularly files the lowest expense reports of all Toronto Councilors. But: b. he has a complete lack of understanding of how to build and manage a livable city. His ignorance is truly astounding.

All this brings to mind a sort of Vancouver model of local government whereby the City staffers and councilor assistants take on the lion share of the constituency work, and the councilors concentrate on making decisions that affect the city as a whole.

I have always felt that the job description requirements of our city councilors are too broad. We should have reps who attend to constituents needs, and reps who are dedicated to (and understand how to cater for) the good of the city as a whole. It seems it is too much to ask our city councilors to be good at both.

Ben

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