What’s your vision, Mr. Mayor?

LETTER TO CITY HALL

Dear Mr. Mayor:

If an election were held tomorrow, I’d probably vote for you again. Reluctantly. And mainly because it’s hard to give up on the dream.

I’m not alone. Many in this city are still stuck on the promise of a modern, 21st century Toronto we thought you’d usher in following that exultant election night two years ago. The possibilities seemed endless. You’d inherited a city bursting with energy and expectations, a town aching to achieve greatness, a populace willing to be led. From the intelligentsia to the hoi polloi, rarely has Toronto been so ready for a renaissance.

This was our gift to you. The only acknowledgement required was that you lead with boldness. But instead of inspiring us with grand schemes or simple glimpses of what we are about to achieve, you’ve sedated us, preoccupied as you are with being a navel-gazing policy wonk — “ getting it right,” you say.

That’s not why we elected you, sir. We elected you to be mayor, chief magistrate, the repository and reflection of our hurts and our dreams; the one to sing with us, weep with us, pray with us, dream with us.

You’ve spent so much time looking at the entrails of city hall — a landscape we thought you knew from more than a decade in the belly of the beast — that you miss opportunities to be mayor. While the people worried about crime, you worried, too. But they never saw it, never got a glimpse of your heart. Until last week, I’d suggest, when you personally took affront to the Amon Beckles shooting at a fu-

neral.

That’s the David Miller I thought we were getting. It’s the one that must now transcend all other images. When your name is mentioned, sir, people’s eyes don’t light up the way they did a year ago. The flash of delight and anticipation has been replaced by resignation that you just might be a go- easy, status quo kind of guy more suited to a job as an insurance salesman than big-city mayor.

But, oh, how you look the part, and still. And how you sound the part. You’re gifted, smart, articulate. Only, you just aren’t playing the part. And it has deflated our hopes and threatens to eclipse the dream. Why haven’t you outlined your vision of how to meet the city’s great challenges? We must tackle homelessness, gun violence, transit growth, services for children, waste management and ugly, dirty streets. So where are the goals, benchmarks we must reach. Do you want us to join with you in reducing the number of homeless people by 50 per cent in three years? Do you want to see the subway to York University built by 2015 and, concurrently, a station a year to 2020?

Is your goal to have gun murders cut in half by 2010? Streets as clean as they were in the 1980s? A made- in- Toronto garbage solution by 2012? We don’t know. We sit and wait and despair at your inaction and underachievement. You are busy doing important things. But they are not things that capture our imagination or engage us or call us to sacrifice or act for a grand cause.

This sense of unrealized potential explains a recent poll that put your approval rating at only 69 per cent. Sixty- nine per cent, sir! With no opposition, no alternative, just you against yourself. Mel Lastman’s approval was in the mid- 80s at this time in his first term. Many are asking why? And the answer most frequently given is you are poorly advised, have no advice at all, or, worse, ignore the advice you get.

All three are crippling. All three point to your office administration, the men and women who are supposed to do your heavy lifting, build the political alliances, design the policy positions, manage the political minefields, give you savvy advice, watch your back, and communicate your message and vision.

Sir, by all accounts, your office staff is weak and ineffective. Wonderful people, they are too out of their depth to enable the mayor we expect, and too overmatched to deliver the city you must.

You’ll bristle at this. You did exactly so when the Toronto Star presented you with this view on Wednesday. You say your crew is efficient and effective. With respect, sir, you can’t be that deluded. Too many people have told you the opposite — from internal to external sources, from councillors who are your allies to those who are not, from the diligent city builders to those just trying to navigate the system. You need to blow up your office staff and start again. Begin with a chief of staff instead of the chief-by-committee approach that observers say has been disastrous. You are no longer a ward councillor, Mr. Mayor. You are running an $8 billion government more complex than some provinces. And you are supposed to be the one to tend to every emergency and unforeseen crisis — from SARS to legionnaires to gun violence — and still be the symbolic glad- handing, ribboncutting, baby-hugging everyman’s mayor. To play the role, you need a chief of staff, almost a surrogate, backed up by a strong team. You can’t continue to be the smartest person in your office — not if you want to build a great city. You need a peer, someone with the leadership, stature, moxie and savvy to challenge you, advise you and lead in the political management of big-city, toptier government caught in tremendous global and domestic competition.

If you had such a person, he or she would have stopped you from getting in bed with Ralph Lean, the consummate old crony, the symbol of the old boys you excoriated not long ago, the kind of guy you said you’d keep out of city hall by padlocking the back doors. What were you thinking? Did you not have anyone to rescue you from such an illicit relationship. Surely, there are other people who can raise money in this city.

Surely you know Ralph Lean is to the Mel Lastman generation what Jeff Lyons is to yours. You must know that the fundraiser is so enmeshed with the old cronies, the ones you said you’d sweep out of city hall, that to include him on a fundraising team is to signal you are now the establishment candidate. Somehow, that’s not what we thought we were getting. Somehow, we hope you find your way, and soon, before we give up on the dream.

Sincerely, in search of a mayor, not a manager. Royson James usually appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: rjames@thestar.ca