Quit Whining Already!

What's should the normal response be when the federal government hands you over a billion dollars for you transit infrastructure, even if they are doing it as a cheap political ploy to get votes in the GTA? "Thank you, sir! May I please have another!" Instead, the chair of the TTC (among others) is already whining that the billion dollars came with strings attached. It can only be used to extend the subway line from Downsview Station to Vaughan. He argues the money could be better used elsewhere, like to replace the Scarborough LRT.

True, the money could be better used elsewhere, but beggars can't be choosers, and after the release of yesterday's Toronto budget, city council is definitely a group of beggars. So quit whining already, and do your jobs, councillors! Come up with better money management solutions for this city!

I wish I could do that with my tax dollar, tell the city council where I wanted it to go. City council seems to be able to find the taxpayers money to renovate offices and move people around to feed the egos on the executive committee. They can find the taxpayers money to give themselves free meals so that they can leave earlier for work. And yet, every year, there is a huge debt that keeps getting bigger, and no real solutions from David Miller except to point the finger at the provincial and federal governments with one hand and beg for money with the other, and raise the spectre of breaking his promise of capping tax increases to inflation.

Why does David Miller continually refuse to look at money saving solutions that will cost union jobs, but instead pretty much lets them run amok at City Hall. Trust me, $19/hour for a summer student is way, way, way overboard when it comes to spending taxpayers' money, and with a constant (and possibly shrinking) budget, the departments are forced to hire less people at the rate, further eroding city services.

Torontorians are getting less and less value for their money because city council seems to find more and more ways to waste it. No one with any clout seems to have learned anything from the whole MFC fiasco. Instead, they make excuses like, "It keeps jobs in Canada" when single-sourcing TTC vehicles from Bombardier, when they would have saved a lot of money, our money, not their money, going with a non-Canadian solution. So, quit whining about the debt and apply some common sense to it. People shop at Wal-mart and a whole host of other discount stores because it's cheaper. There is no qualm about keeping jobs in Canada when trying to make ends meet, and trust me, Toronto is barely making ends meet.

So, please, please, quit whining already. I mean, in what job can I have the same absymal results year after year, and still be allowed to give myself raises, raise my prices (taxes), shorten my workday at whim, and change my evaluation period from three to four years to give myself an extra year at the trough with no accountability? I suppose if you were self-employed, but any rational self-employed person would take a good hard look at the escalating debt level and put a plan in place to resolve the issue. Besides, you aren't self-employed. You work for us, the taxpayers of Toronto. It's not a cliche. It's a trusim that many at City Hall seems to have forgotten.

Man, Vaughan is looking better and better all the time, especially with that subway going in.