Thursday 28 July 2011

Rob Ford sleeps through deputations

Just saw this on FB via Mark B "Rob Ford sleeps through ... on Twitpic



On July 28, 2011, The Executive Committee of Toronto City Council, agreed to hear citizen deputations, as invited by the mayor, Rob Ford. 344 people managed to register to speak. Originally, Ford had agreed they could each have 5 minutes to speak. But, come the day, that was changed down to 3 minutes. By evening, only a fraction had been heard, all speaking out against proposed service cuts.

This picture was taken sometime during the day (at least before 9pm) of Rob Ford totally ignoring the people he had invited to speak. Yes, he is sleeping.
Earlier today, one of the speakers told the Toronto Star that councillor Mammoliti said that he was only listening because he had to, and that she saw that the mayor and other members of the committee were not listening.

Ford and his followers on council show nothing but contempt for the city and it's citizens. They put on a show of "listening to the people" and then they don't even listen. Just how blatant does Ford have to be with his contempt for the citizens and taxpayers of this city before his supporters among the public start to admit that he is bad news for Toronto?

Update:
By the end of the meeting, 168 of 344 people managed to speak. 2 or 3 spoke in favour of the proposed cuts, the rest all spoke out strongly against the cuts, even saying they would gladly pay a tax increase to maintain and improve services.
Rob Ford was often not in the room, sleeping or made rude comments about speakers - "I can think of one word that starts with B" - see the video at the Globe & Mail.
At the end of it all, the committee decided to defer any decision about cuts to the next meeting, in Sept. 2011.

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