Oddly, only mayor's allies got memo about new garbage plan
By SUE-ANN LEVY, TORONTO SUN
Last Updated: 18th November 2008, 2:25am
Never mind have and have-not provinces.
At Toronto City Hall, it seems Mayor David Miller and his office staff have determined there are have and have-not councillors.
At least that's the implication of a memo obtained by the Sun.
Despite the thousands of problems across Toronto since the new garbage tax kicked in Nov. 3, an e-mail from the mayor's office advising that all garbage would be temporarily collected -- with or without pink tags or grey bins -- was sent late last Thursday. But only to half of council.
The memo from Mae Lee -- the mayor's point person on solid waste issues -- was e-mailed just to those 22 (mostly NDP) politicians known to regularly sing the praises of the mayor's pet projects and to vote with him at council.
Those left off Lee's list, not surprisingly, were councillors who either regularly criticize Miller at council or have not supported his mandate.
In her memo, Lee acknowledges some of the councillors' constituents still "have not received pink tags nor new bins."
She goes on to say that during the "transition" period, Solid Waste officials will continue to collect garbage without tags. Lee ends by advising councillors on her preferred list to record the address of the households in question and send the "list of the day" to four named senior garbage officials.
When I asked the mayor about the memo at a news conference at Exhibition Place yesterday, he asked me to show it to him. He proceeded to fold it in four (before I asked for it back) responding, "I haven't seen the memo ... you're just showing me it for the first time."
When I pressed further, noting that the memo went out last Thursday, he told me angrily: "Oh c'mon. I'm running a city with 40,000 employees and I don't know every piece of paper that goes out ... let's be reasonable."
After I asked him if he would sanction sending such an important memo to only 22 councillors, he said: "I think it's appropriate for my office to tell people who to call ... I really don't see what you're talking about."
OK, fine. The reaction from Miller and his minions got more bizarre as the day wore on.
When I moved away from the Exhibition Place scrum to ask Miller's deputy mayor, Joe Pantalone, about the memo (he also claimed he hadn't seen it), the mayor stopped talking to the media to ask me to "go somewhere else to ask questions."
Back at City Hall, the mayor's spokesman, Stuart Green, told me the communication from Lee was "a standard reply" to a collection of councillors who either e-mailed her with questions or bumped into her in the hall.
"Any councillor who asked got the same response ... there wasn't an exclusive leaving out of people," Green said.
Yet Pantalone, who was on Lee's list, told me he hadn't had any problems and he didn't need a "memo to know who to call."
When Councillor Rob Ford, who has advised the city's solid waste people about hundreds of problems, phoned the mayor's office to blast them about not receiving the memo, Lee sent back a response saying her original memo only went to politicians who requested help/info from either the mayor's office or solid waste officials.
Those on the mayor's so-called B team were not amused.
"All my constituents and half of the city of Toronto aren't getting the same treatment," Ford fumed.
Councillor Cesar Palacio said he's been begging solid waste officials to help him out with the hundreds of calls he's gotten from angry residents yet they never mentioned the new direction, or the memo, from the mayor's office.
Peter Milczyn, who heard about the memo yesterday, said he hoped the memo didn't mean "one level of service" for Toronto residents whose councillors always support the mayor and another for constituents whose councillors don't always support the mayor.
"If staff are going to provide options, that should apply to everyone," he said.
Councillor Case Ootes, who laughed at the silliness of the situation, suggested this is not an isolated case of selective communication from the mayor's office.
"It requires a suspension of disbelief that this is a one-off," he said. "I wonder if there are other communications to the chosen few."
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THEY MADE A LITTLE LIST ...
- THE HAVES (those councillors who got the memo from the mayor's office late last week): Sandra Bussin; Shelley Carroll; Raymond Cho; Janet Davis; Glenn De Baeremaeker; Frank Di Giorgio; John Filion; Paula Fletcher; Adam Giambrone; Suzan Hall; Adrian Heaps; Norm Kelly; Gloria Lindsay Luby; Giorgio Mammoliti; Pam McConnell; Joe Mihevc; Ron Moeser; Howard Moscoe; Joe Pantalone; Gord Perks; Kyle Rae and Adam Vaughan.
- THE HAVE-NOTS (those councillors who were not sent the memo): Paul Ainslie; Brian Ashton; Maria Augimeri; Mike Del Grande; Mike Feldman; Rob Ford; Mark Grimes; Doug Holyday; Cliff Jenkins; Chin Lee; Peter Milczyn; Denzil Minnan-Wong; Frances Nunziata; Case Ootes; Cesar Palacio; John Parker; Anthony Perruzza; Bill Saundercook; David Shiner; Karen Stintz; Michael Thompson and Michael Walker.
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