Today Sun Mon
It is forcast to be Mostly Cloudy at 11:00 PM EDT on May 26, 2012
Mostly Cloudy
27°/16°		 It is forcast to be Chance of Rain at 11:00 PM EDT on May 27, 2012
Chance of Rain
26°/20°		 It is forcast to be Chance of a Thunderstorm at 11:00 PM EDT on May 28, 2012
Chance of a Thunderstorm
36°/22°

15 Comments

news

Duly Quoted: George Smitherman

By Torontoist

“Less Copenhagen, more Scarborough.”
—George Smitherman, who today unveiled a “back to basics” plan that includes a promise of freezing muncipal taxes, hiring, and new spending.

Filed under: , ,

Report error Send a tip

Comments

  • http://undefined mark.

    Weird. That quote comes at the end of the announcement and I don’t see how it relates to cutting spending. Does Copenhagen really spend an inordinate amount of money on its city – or do we just think it does? The money they’ve spent is hardly a ‘waste’ – they’ve completely revitalized their city and ‘Copenhagen’ is now a world-wide euphemism for a type of city many people want (pedestrian and bike friendly). They’ve become a model for other cities.
    And isn’t Scarborough a part of Toronto, part of the so-called “spending problems” Smitherman’s talking about?
    He might as well have said “Less NYC and more Jersey!”

  • http://undefined lunarworks

    No offense to Scarborough, I spend a whole lot of time there, but it is NOT a model to build a major city on, unless you want Toronto to more closely resemble Mississauga.
    Of course, this all comes down to the Downtown/Suburbs divide. He’s clearly trying to appeal to the suburbs now.
    The rest of Canada hates Toronto (the City), and the City hates Toronto (Downtown).

  • http://undefined lunarworks

    He’s trying to distance himself from Miller. Miller has previously said that Copenhagen, which shares a similar climate to Toronto, is a great city to look to for inspiration.

  • http://undefined EricSmith

    The next time Smitherman appears in Duly Quoted, he’ll be saying “Zero means zero.” Unless Ford steals it, having as he does an ear for the sloganeering beloved of his authoritarian followers.

  • rek

    I wonder if there’s one neighbourhood downtown which the rest of downtown hates… and within it, a block or street the neighbourhood hates… and on that street, surely the most hated person in all of Canada.

  • http://www.torontoist.com David Topping

    Gotta be the Entertainment District, no?

  • http://undefined rek

    Smitherman isn’t doing anything to win my vote, and he was going to be my lesser of six evils candidate. Now I might just spoil my ballot instead of throwing in with someone whose vision for the city is suburban sprawl.

  • http://undefined Matthew

    Smitherman’s plan specifically exempts emergency services from the hiring freeze, so I guess we can take that to mean that he has no interest in attempting a fight to cut back the most overfunded budget item, the Toronto Police Service.

  • http://undefined torontothegreat

    That’s where I’m at right now too :(

  • http://bit.ly/accozzaglia accozzaglia

    I vote for the smug West Queen West, since most Canadians can at least sorta relate to drunken ballyhoo for which the ED is best known.

  • http://bit.ly/accozzaglia accozzaglia

    The idea of pre-1990s decentralization is exactly what would appeal to a provincial guy like Smitherman. What with his close ties with the McGuinty government and that of the province administratively, his remark seems more emblematic of someone who wants to endow the city of Toronto with less governance authority over its affairs rather than more so.
    The word that increasingly comes to my mind when someone says “Smitherman” is “putz” (in the “dumb”/”worthless” sense, not the Yiddish etymology).

  • http://undefined mark.

    “Copenhagen” or “Copenhagenize” becoming short-hand for a city that people want to live in has little to with Miller’s one-time utterance.

  • http://undefined McKingford

    Only somebody who has been to neither Copenhagen nor Scarborough would say something like this…

  • http://www.guesswork.ca Patrick Metzger

    I believe the Copenhagen comment referred to cutting down on councillor travel, not governing methodologies – “The city hall frequent flyer club is going out of business. In short, leaders will lead. There will be less Copenhagen, more Scarborough.”

  • http://undefined rek

    In other words, we don’t deserve a city council run by people who’ve seen first-hand what a city like ours could be.