Miller Outlines Plans To Beautify City, Pitfield Talks Transit

David Miller and Jane Pitfield were out making campaign announcements Wednesday and so far they’ve outlined two very different visions for the city.

Miller used a campaign stop at a rejuvenated park in the Bathurst and Wilson area Wednesday morning to highlight his continuing effort to beautify badly neglected public spaces and outlined his vision for a cleaner Toronto.

“Before Ian Leventhal and the communities and Home Depot and Benjamin Moore Paints came here, this space was really neglected. Now it’s a beautiful public space,” Miller said. “It’s a little gem in this neighbourhood, and these are the kinds of public spaces we deserve much more of in Toronto.”

The mayoral incumbent wants to invest more than $17 million in similar projects and intends to create a Partnership office to bring communities together with local government and businesses.

Miller also plans to ensure the city’s buildings are beautiful with the new Toronto Design Review Panel; he’s still promising to use that iconic broom he held up when he won the mayor’s seat last time to get litter off the streets; and he plans to give the city’s garbage bins, benches and newspaper boxes a makeover.

Improving the waterfront is also a key priority on Miller’s agenda, which includes cleaning up beaches, creating new park spaces and bike trails, and ending commercial air traffic in the area.

And as Miller was making his clean city promises his main rival Jane Pitfield was also outlining her vision for the TTC and lashed out at her fellow candidate’s inaction on the issue.

“As you know, our transportation system doesn’t work. Twenty years ago, our transit system was a standard against all others were measured . But that was then,” Pitfield said. “Now our transit system has frequent delays, transit cars are littered and crowded, and labour relations are so bad that this past spring we had an illegal strike.”

Pitfield said Miller’s response to the transit strike that stranded some 700,000 people was inadequate.

She’s also a big opponent of Miller’s decision to grant an untendered $700 million contract to build new subway cars to Bombardier and the contentious St. Clair streetcar right-of-way project. If elected mayor, she says she’d stop the project immediately and claims there wasn’t adequate community consultation before the decision was made.

For more information on how Miller stands on the issues, click here. And for more information on Jane Pitfield’s platform, click here.