Breakdown Of Ford’s Four Key Priorities
Posted December 1, 2010 4:36 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Rob Ford got right down to business during his first official day as mayor of Toronto on Wednesday.
Addressing the media from City Hall, Ford outlined four key priorities under his leadership.
1.) Customer Service Excellence:
“We will work closely with the City Manager and his staff to build a strong culture of customer service across every city department and agency. Customer service will be job one, every phone call, every email will be responded to. All it takes is leadership and ladies and gentlemen leadership starts at the top. This process will be led by my Executive Committee through a special task force formed for this purpose.”
2.) Make Government Transparent And Accountable To Every Tax Payer:
“This will include many of the features of my Tax Payers Protection Plan and it will led by the Chair of the Government Management Committee.”
3.) Reduce The Size And Cost Of Government:
“I met Monday with the City Manager and Chief Financial Officer, my transition team has been working very closely with them over the past month. I have given them a very clear direction. Toronto tax payers expect the wasteful spending and the annual tax increases to come to an end. They do not want a larger budget and more spending. There will be no tax increases next year. There will be no major service cuts next year. We are going to keep the budget the exact same as this year. Tax payers want city managers to find ways to deliver city services more efficiently and effectively, that’s what the tax payers of this great city voted for and that’s what I’m going to deliver.”
4.) Create A Transportation City Plan:
“Ladies and gentlemen the war on the car stops today. We will move to eliminate the $60 car registration tax at the first cancel meeting of December to take effect on Jan 1st 2011. We will refocus our public transit plans on subways, not streetcars, and we will not build any more rail tracks down the middle of our streets.”
“On December 8th our new transit commission members will be appointed, their first task will be to formally stop spending on a project we do not need anymore, Transit City is over ladies and gentlemen. There second task will be to develop a plan to move forward with subway construction. I suspect they will report back on options by the end of January.”
Other Key Plans:
- Begin the process of declaring the TTC an essential service.
- Reduce Councillor expense accounts from $50,000 – $30,000
