Shit, she's serious. Mississauga already has a page running on the city's website.
I recommend the "Federal Government's Priorities Are Wrong" slide presentation! Hot stuff!
http://www.mississauga.ca/file/COM/Cities_now_presentation.pdf
Louroz
The reality is that NO ONE knows anything about Hazel McCallion's Mississauga. It is a secretive, duplistic political landscape that emphasizes CONTROL.
This GO HAZEL -- how much do any of you know about how Mississauga is governed?
Remember Harris and the Common Sense Revolution. He won by a landslide because people were fed up with big government and above all wasteful spending. They saw governments (both provincial and municipal) out of control.
So let's focus on cities here. There was no accountability in 1995 when Harris took over and there's LESS NOW, not more.
Mississauga senior staff wouldn't even go on record to define "accountable" for me. I sit in on Audit Committee meetings and hokey smoke. HOKEY SMOKE. There's plenty of reason to believe Mississauga is leaking money all over the place. Their record keeping is all over the map. The last Audit Committee revealed money records from "adequate to non-existent".
Mississauga has a Communications Department second-to-none. It's brilliant at manipulating the media. Or maybe we're just condemned around here to a loopy stunned media that happily swallows the Mississauga line.
People forget the fat cats municipalities were back in the early-mid 90's and people's frustrations at the municipal perks.
I know why the Province and the Feds don't want to open that spigot. They know that municipalities will take far greater care spending money that they themselves collect through property taxes than Prov and Fed dollars that can potentially get re-pissed away.
Yeah, "re-pissed".
No one bothers to question that McCallion's popularity came about in a uniquely prosperous and growing area (Peel), with a Communications Department trumpeting Trust Quality Excellence and stifling (through bylaws) any potential opposition.
She's backed by security guards that have no complaints procedures and the fact is, there's no complaints procedure at all in Mississauga. No record of any complaint ever for Parks and Rec --ever, all the way back to 1974. That's a HUGE department.
McCallion's idea of public input is to invite the public to comment on Gypsy Moth and then be totally secretive about the installation of 300 CCTV cameras.
Since my observation time (June 2006), McCallion has expended considerable energy in proclaiming Mississauga the best managed, best governed city in Canada. A global leader. And at every opportunity, crapped on the city of Toronto. Eager to leave Peel Region.
Mississauga uber alles. Yet she's touted as The Great Unifier?
The Ontario Ombudsman has a chart that shows that Ontario is DEAD LAST in accountability in the MUSH sector. Municipalities have an inpenetrable zone of immunity around them.
It's not possible to prove that they're spending their money as they claim.
The Harris years were painful but it brought municipal spending under control.
And now you-all want to turn the $$$$-spigot back on to municipalities that not only still aren't accountable they are less so. Elections four years now rather than three.
Then there's the 2001 Municipal Act (that McCallion had considerable voice in) that bestows municipalities "natural person" status. That provides municipalties with the chilling effect of the power to sue. Sue citizen-critics. Sue newspapers. And they have.
Now we've got the latest Municipal amendments where there's a provision for faux-accountabiilty. And "virtually everyone" (exact words from Peel Regional Council on Thursday) --that is, virtually all municipalities will be hiring a subsidiary corporation called Local Authority Services (a corporation they control) to hire "investigators" to investigate themselves.
Like seriously. Seriously.
Yes! Help the cities. But this CITIES NOW stuff sure ain't helping citizens. NOT when Ontario municipalities have no accountability other than one day every four years when the voting booths are open.
Good Lord, I hope that McGuinty and Harper hold the line on these people.
Remember too that McCallion's Mississauga has the highest paid elected officials around. And staff are paid handsomely with salary AND perks. And if memory serves from that June Budget meeting, employee contracts were coming up as well. And I remember a pie chart that showed just how much of the Mississauga budget went into employee salaries.
One example. The Director of the Mississauga Crime Prevention Association --from a recent job posting, will be getting $75,000. The MCPA if you recall is the group that hires its own research-group (Intercon) to do the annual Mississauga is the Safest City in Canada study.
I can't recall how much $$$$ just goes into Mississauga proclaiming itself the Safest City in Canada through its own study but I can check.
I don't get it. How come it takes a citizen to discover all this? Where's the freaking MEDIA? The only way cities will be saved is when they're accountable for the money they spend. When there is oversight to ensure that the misinformation from their Comm...Spin Department isn't funnelled directly into the Media and then interpreted as fact by citizens.
Seriously. What's it say about Ontario cities when the sorry lot of them hide behind some Local Authority Services to avoid the Ontario Ombudsman. On a teeny issue such as closed meetings.
We got a bigger problem than closed meetings in our cities when they're ducking potential investigations and attention from the Ombudsman on something THAT teeny.
Also. Just me. Funny how the CITIES NOW campaign is on at the very same time municipalities all over Ontario are discussing and announcing which way their investigator-process will happen.
CITIES NOW CITIES NOW --all over the media.
And all the while the reason why it SHOULDN'T BE CITIES NOW is drowned out by the snow. And who's directing that Blizzard?...
Seriously. Who hands over money to someone they don't know? And I'm tellin' you. You don't know Hazel McCallion. Or any other Ontario city.
CITIES NOW now ensures that money from the Feds and Province will be pissed away --think pre-Harris times. And you'll all be told how you're getting value for the money at the same time.
And in the case of Mississauga, complete with inspirational pics on glossy paper.
Ha ha, too funny.
