City
TTC board votes to terminate GM Gary Webster
In the least surprising news of the day, the TTC board voted 5-4 to terminate General Manager Gary Webster shortly after 5 p.m. this afternoon. The board deliberated in-camera (i.e. privately) for approximately three hours before returning to the public eye to proceed with the vote. As expected, the same councillors who signed the petition to call the special meeting of the board made up the majority needed to fire Webster without just cause: Norm Kelly, Cesar Palacio, Vince Crisanti, Frank DiGiorgio and Denzil Minnan-Wong.
TTC Chair Karen Stintz and Commissioners Maria Augimeri, Peter Milczyn, and John Parker voted against the proposal to terminate the GM, who has served the TTC for 35 years. That this move is political goes without saying, but the big question is where the TTC goes from here. Along with the severance that Webster is due — estimated at $500,000 — it may prove a challenge to replace him with a qualified candidate. Not only that, some are calling for city council to disband the TTC board, which is within its rights to do.
Stay tuned, the fireworks may be just beginning.
Photo by Mariam Matti
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They neeed to stop drinking Ford's Kool-aid.
it IS poison/toxic.
Time to recall Rob Ford - what an embarrassment to Toronto.
councillor_kelly@toronto.ca, councillor_palacio@toronto.ca, councillor_digiorgio@toronto.ca, councillor_minnan-wong@toronto.ca, councillor_crisanti@toronto.ca
Ask them what justification they have for spending half a million dollars in taxpayer money to terminate the contract of a man who had 10 months left on his current contract. Ask them what they plan to do if Webster decides to file a wrongful dismissal suit against them. Ask them on what grounds he was terminated, other than DoGiorgio's assinine comments that he didn't want to play along with the Mayor's plans.
Webster presented the facts. He did his job as a professional engineer, relying on the data that he had in front of him. The Mayor's vision for Subways was not supported by the facts, plain and simple.
This may well be the tipping point of this administration. Bombard the councillors who voted to oust Webster. Email them, call them, demand an explanation. Tell them to stop delaying and bickering about transit plans that don't have any funding attached to them, and tell them to get on with building SOMETHING, preferably the system that a majority of council approved.
Just for some context on the man. http://www.ryanosullivan.ca/?p=15551
- Dalton McGuinty
[not really]
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/ttcboard/
1.Email Councillors Kelly, Palacio, Crisanti, DiGiorgio and Minnan-Wong have made their decisions. Let them know how you feel about it.
councillor_kelly@toronto.ca, councillor_palacio@toronto.ca, councillor_digiorgio@toronto.ca, councillor_minnan-wong@toronto.ca, councillor_crisanti@toronto.ca
2. Sign this epetition to have council removeCouncillors Minnan-Wong, Di Giorgio, Kelly, Palacio, and Crisanti from the TTC board. http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/ttcboard/
"As for Webster, he’s not the first city bureaucrat to be pushed out of office and won’t be the last.
His predecessor, Rick Ducharme, quit because he said he couldn’t function with the constant meddling of then mayor David Miller’s TTC chairman, Howard Moscoe.
Indeed, during the Miller era, at least 10 senior City Hall bureaucrats were shown the door or left before it was slammed on them."
If you're serious about getting rid of Ford, or any Councillor for that matter, it is very important that you VOTE in the next election. Better yet, begin to think about your willingness to run yourself, or support someone who's willing. If that's not soon enough, get involved in your local planning committee, write letters, attend a Council meeting, etc, etc. It is so important that the people we elect bring forth ideas, a willingness to listen to others, an ability to compromise and make decisions that are in the best interests of Toronto citizens.
I know it's very typical for lefties to be blatant hypocrites so please prove me wrong and post the links to where you vented your outrage at Miller in the past?
If you are referring to Rick Ducharme, he quit. He wasn't fired by David Miller or via proxy through 5 douchebag councillors.
Have a feeling you won't concede this (very typical of "righties"), but that's the fact of the matter.
Transit policy is engineering, not politics, at least when you are talking about the GM position. Engineers don't lie and they don't bow down to blowhards with a high school education.
You know, if Ford had come into office and said on Day 1 "I want a clean sweep of the TTC, a fresh start, new names and new ideas", people would have had no problem with replacing Webster (contract buyout issues aside). But this could not have been handled in a worse manner coming after the LRT truth-to-power.
It makes me wonder. What action could Ford take to make Sue Ann and the Sun editors turn on him? Hold a BBQ where he burns money? Shoot someone? He ignores gay pride, he ignores the media, he ignores democracy, he wastes money... and Sue Ann still loves him. Why?
It a paper that's expresses outrage that people are getting $110 tickets for illegally parking, but is cheering on $500,000 payout for personal vendetta.
That's all you need to know about that.
If the last GM quit because of political meddling (which should have been evidence enough to remove politicians from major TTC planning), and the current one was fired for telling the truth, then we definitely need to look at the root cause of all this, which is people with no experience or relevant skills trying to run something they are simply not competent enough to be involved in.