Ward cuts Mammoliti supported undid bid
Councillor never shied from controversy, even getting behind Ford’s mid-election surprise
After 23 years, Giorgio Mammoliti lost his spot on Toronto city council this week.
Ironically, Premier Doug Ford’s council-cutting plan, which Mammoliti enthusiastically and unequivocally supported, contributed to his undoing.
He was defeated by rival incumbent Anthony Perruzza, who ran against Mammoliti after their old North York wards were combined under the 25ward system.
One of the longest-serving and most controversial Toronto politicians, Mammoliti has always been one to offer attention-grabbing proposals.
In the early 2000s, he pushed for a street to be named “Mammoliti Way,” a council meeting to be held at the zoo and a curfew to be placed on children. All were unsuccessful. When asked to comment on his loss Monday night, Mammoliti said, “Nah, not to the Toronto Star. You guys have been horrible to me over the last 28 years.
“My quote to the Toronto Star is ‘You should be ashamed of yourselves.’ ”
In years past, Mammoliti successfully got the city to implement a poop patrol that saw special squads catching nonscooping dog owners and slapping them with fines.
He once lent cat traps to constituents and went to Cameroon for a bush meat conference while he was Toronto Zoo board chair.
Animals are a recurring theme in Mammoliti’s long career.
One of his biggest accomplishments was bringing two pandas to the Toronto Zoo, he told the Star in August.
In an impassioned speech in support of Toronto’s 2000 Olympic bid, Mammoliti said: “Stop riding the miserable old donkey of doom and gloom and get on the strong, muscular thoroughbred horse of hope.”
He also voted against banning sharkfin soup.
Consistently inconsistent, the decidedly conservative Mammoliti was a union leader in the 1980s.
And then, he began a political career as an NDP backbencher in 1990.
He was elected as councillor in 1995.
Years later, he said he was “sick and tired of hearing from the communists.”
In 1996, when city hall heard rumours the province was considering forcing amalgamation on Toronto and the neighbouring municipalities, Mammoliti worried change was happening too fast.
“If the premier decides he wants to pull a rabbit out of the hat, then change will come undemocratically without public input.
“That will hurt taxpayers in the long run,” Mammoliti said at the time.
Fast forward more than two decades, and Mammoliti quickly pledged his allegiance to Premier Ford’s surprise council cuts in the middle of the election.
“I think it’s wonderful news,” he said in July.
Mammoliti famously tore off his shirt in council chambers to protest a proposed nude beach in 1999.
He warned councillors of the “bare-breast craze” in 1997.
He claimed a court decision that allowed women to go shirtless in public would lead to men fondling breasts at bus stops and the looming possibility of an “informal kiss on the breast.”
His apparent fear of nudity did not stop him from spending a council lunch break in a dark Etobicoke strip club with councillors Frank Di Giorgio and Cesar Palacio in 2009 for an “industry facility tour.”
(They said they didn’t watch the performances.)
Mammoliti also proposed a regulated brothel-filled red light district for Toronto Islands in 2011.
An ally of mayor Rob Ford, Mammoliti was emboldened in that era, charging taxpayers $25,000 to renovate his constituency office, calling Parkdale a “pedophile district” and claiming his phone was tampered with by former city hall employees.
He also underwent brain surgery in 2013.
In 2014, he pleaded guilty to overspending in the 2010 Toronto election, a violation of the Municipal Elections Act.
Council also stripped him of three months of wages after he made $80,000 from an improper fundraiser.
Twice Mammoliti called for the army to rid Toronto’s neighbourhoods of gangs and drug dealers, most recently in 2015.
He said homeless shelters should be shut down and homeless people should be forced off the street against their will. This election campaign, Mammoliti referred to some residents living in Toronto Community Housing as “cockroaches.”
And, last week, he posted to Facebook that Black candidates would perpetuate poverty and segregation if elected.
From his Twitter account a tweet read, “... Social housing at Jane an Finch has been our incubator for most of our social issues, segregation has made 5 generations of children angry. No wonder they are killing themselves.”