LILLEY: City's sloppy response to snow storm cold comfort to taxpayers

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What on earth are the giant tax increases paying for?

I’ve been asked that question several times over the last few days by Toronto residents across the political spectrum fed up with sloppy services from city hall.

We all get that Sunday was a big snowstorm, but this is still winter in Canada, so we should be coping better.

It is crazy that Line 1 of the TTC subway system was shut down between Bloor and Eglinton for about 24 hours due to the storm. There have been off and on delays since then, including trouble getting trains out of the Wilson Yard on Wednesday morning.

Side streets are nearly impassible for cars, never mind vehicles like school buses, and major intersections were still a disaster for drivers on Wednesday afternoon. If you think driving in the city is bad now, try being a pedestrian or a bus rider.

Late Wednesday, buses were still stopping more than half a block from the bus stop at Yonge and Lawrence because the snowbanks at the intersection made it impossible to drop off passengers. This is a major intersection in our city, a bus route that takes people to the subway. It should be a priority, but it clearly has not been.

Even worse, passengers dropped off at the southwest corner need to walk single file through a trench of snow that has never been properly cleared. On Wednesday afternoon, I watched a woman with her left leg in an air cast attempt to hobble through, while another woman struggled through the snow-covered intersection with a walker.

“At least I didn’t call the army,” Mayor Olivia Chow said when asked about the storm response. Her lame joke clearly didn’t go over well because she cleared her throat and started giggling to show that she was joking.

Here’s a message, mayor: This is no joke, this isn’t funny.

City staff are saying it will take up to three weeks to clear the snow. One friend joked that Chow’s snow-removal plan was to wait for spring, but it appears that is the case because when city staff gave an update they blamed the lack of sunshine and warm weather for the slow pace.

Again, this is winter in Canada. We should be doing better.

Councillor Brad Bradford agreed, saying this is no laughing matter despite Chow’s bad joke. He said three weeks for clearing snow is unacceptable in a winter city like Toronto.

“When you put it in the context of a 25% tax increase over the last three years, residents aren’t seeing value for their tax dollars,” Bradford said.

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This has been the big problem in Toronto going back several years. It predates a pandemic that they all want to blame the decay on, but the simple truth is core services aren’t delivered and city hall keeps charging more.

This wasn’t some once-in-a-century storm; we had a similar storm with much faster cleanup in 2022. We may not be Ottawa, Edmonton or Montreal, but Toronto is still a winter city and basic snow-clearing and removal has to be part of the core city services.

Yet like keeping streets clean, parks kept up to standard and garbage cans on the street corners empty, Toronto can’t deliver anymore. It’s a failure of leadership and that starts at the top with our disappearing mayor.

Where has Chow been the last few days as the city has struggled to provide basic services due to the storm? She’s been absent and basically invisible until she showed up at her event for Artscape on Wednesday morning, when she made the bad joke.

She was at a closed-door cocktail soiree on Tuesday night, but she hasn’t been out explaining to residents why the city she leads is failing them.

Provide basic services, provide some leadership. If you can’t do either of those, mayor, then get out of the way so someone else can.