by arthur Weinreb,
December 22, 2004
Only God can make a tree. But apparently in the City of Toronto, He can’t make the tree grow without government intervention. That seems to be the view of Toronto City Commissar, Uncle Joe Pantalone.
Pantalone, one of David Miller’s trusty deputy mayors, bills himself as the city’s "tree advocate". Some of the city mothers bill themselves as advocates and by so doing are at least honest enough to declare what their priorities are. They would rather champion their favourite left wing cause than do what they were elected to do — represent their constituents. But in this world of advancing causes rather than fixing potholes, that sees child advocates and homeless advocates it is still a mystery why Toronto, the largest urban area in Toronto, needs a tree advocate.
But that what Uncle Joe is. He is primarily responsible for pushing the bylaw through that makes it illegal to cut down a tree on your own property. and Pantalone has the nerve to say that he can’t figure out why people think that he’s a communist. Under the bylaw, the beleaguered taxpayer has to apply to the politburo for permission to remove a tree from his or her property. The city can then assess a monetary cost for permission to take the tree down that they can then use for planting other trees or, presumably, buy more caviar for the councillors’ frequent shindigs. In the 2005 budget, over $400,000 is committed for this idiotic scheme that includes the hiring of seven tree cops that will go along nicely with the city’s smoke cops, idling car cops and all the other bylaw enforcement flunkies.
all of this is bad enough. But now, city council has budgeted $45,000 for an Urban Tree Project. The Urban Tree Project (inevitably to be known as UTP in bureaucratese) is described in the 2005 Operating Budget as being "part of Council’s ‘Clean and Beautiful’ Initiative". Wow; if anyone could ever be moved to tears while reading an operating budget, this is it. The $45,000 will go towards the production of a video that teaches the viewer how to make trees flourish and prosper in an urban environment. Little Joe says that there are millions and millions of trees in the city, but they are not prospering. Well, there are thousands of streets in Toronto and they’re not prospering either, what with the potholes and the unplowed snow and ice but no one on city council seems to be as interested in them as Little Joe is in trees.
The UTP was never recommended by staff but by an executive committee. That makes sense because no one who really works for a living would recommend spending $45Gs on a video to teach Tree Growing 101 when trees have been growing on the planet long before people and Pantalones have been walking on the face of the earth.
In fairness not all of Toronto’s 44 or 440 or however many money wasters there are on council these days are of the same mind as Joe Pantalone. Some actually have minds, like Councillor Brian ashton. ashton’s comment concerning the video was "They must be out of their tree". He added, "What do you do, put a camera on a tripod and watch a tree grow? What the hell is this?" Well, he’s probably right about the tripod. after all if there was any more to it, the video would cost a lot more than $45,000. Now $45,000 doesn’t sound like much in the general scheme of things, but it illustrates that this council couldn’t care less about how they spend the taxpayers’ hard earned money. In the immortal words of the late U.S. Senator, Everett Dirksen, "a billion here, a billion there; pretty soon you’re talking about real money".
David Miller, Toronto’s mayor and chief panhandler sees his main function in office as begging for money from the federal and provincial governments. Paul and Dalton should think long and hard about handing funds over to a bunch of kiddies who will waste it on such things as tree videos.