EDITORIAL: Chow as mayor means more of the same
· Toronto Sun
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While polls during the mayoral race showed most Torontonians believed the city was stuck and headed in the wrong direction, with the re-election of Olivia Chow , we’re headed for four more years of the same.
We respect what voters have decided and we hope to be proven wrong.
But given that the best indicator of future performance is past practice, we expect big annual property tax hikes from an NDP mayor who raised them by almost 20% in her first three years on the job, her idea of a “modest” increase.
That plus a city government focused on programs that should not be paid out of property taxes — for example, free school lunches, in addition to her existing policy of free school breakfasts.
Property taxes are supposed to fund core services such as police, fire and ambulance, public transit, road and bridge maintenance, fixing potholes, garbage collection, street sweeping, grass-cutting and maintaining public parks, snow removal and keeping water and sanitary sewers in a state of good repair.
Chow’s failure to publicly stand with Toronto’s Jewish community when it mattered — during the worst outbreak of antisemitism in Toronto since the 1930s, in the wake of Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel on Oct 7, 2023 — was in our view a failure of leadership.
No easy fixes
None of the concerns Torontonians have — congestion and gridlock, affordability, public safety, including on the TTC and the perception the city is getting dirtier and in decline can be fixed overnight.
We believe Toronto needed a mayor ready to point the city in the right direction, to make tough decisions necessary to fund the core services we must have as opposed to non-essentials we can’t afford.
To make the same tough decisions families make every day.
Former councillor Brad Bradford was our choice for mayor because we believed he was focused on letting property taxpayers keep more of their own money, operate the city more efficiently and focus on priorities.
He ran a solid campaign but the final results were a convincing victory for Chow.
The enormous value of incumbency in city politics proved to be too great to overcome, as indicated by the fact that no incumbent Toronto mayor has ever lost a re-election bid since the city was amalgamated in 1998.