After months of acrimony between the City of Toronto and Islington Avenue business owners, tempers in a bitter parking dispute appear to be easing after a potential compromise was reached Thursday night.
But the deal did not come before Etobicoke North Councillor Rob Ford accused York West Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti of pulling the wool over the business owners's eyes.
"You're going to be scammed," Ford told store owners as he strode from the Etobicoke-York Community Council chambers after the vote to adopt Mammoliti's deal was reached.
Shortly before, Ford ripped up the paper the motion was written on, saying he was dismayed at the hardship Mammoliti had put the business owners through.
"That burns me up. That burns me up inside," said Ford, upset the store owners had to deal with the parking dispute in the middle of a recession where they are fighting to keep their businesses afloat.
"I can't sit here with a comfortable and confident mind and say you (Mammoliti) are going to work with these people. This is paralyzing these people. You don't understand that, councillor.
"This is an embarrassment, this is a shame this has even come this far, putting these people through sleepless nights."
While other councillors criticized Mammoliti for a ham-fisted approach to the parking dispute, they said it is now time to follow his lead in working out a solution.
"Personally, I would have preferred for people to have their say right from the beginning but that has passed. We have to look to the future," Etobicoke North Councillor Suzan Hall said.
Mammoliti refused to apologize for his tactics, saying dealing with the parking issue is part of his overall plan to beautify the plazas and rid them of problems such as crime and garbage,
"We had to do something, folks, and we're doing it and we have to move forward," he said.
The deal will see the city working with the business owners of Italian Gardens Plaza, at 2965 Islington Ave., and other interested plazas to resolve parking problems and find ways of beautifying their shopping centres.
Italian Gardens took the city to court over the parking issue but lost the case last month. It has until Monday to appeal.
However, Italian Gardens store owners have recently approached Mammoliti about resolving the dispute.
Councillors agreed to suspend until Dec. 31 any attempts to reclaim parking spots as long as business owners remain in active negotiations with Mammoliti and the city.
As a show of good faith, parking curbs city workers spiked into the parking lot in the Italian Gardens plaza about three months ago to mark off city property were removed Friday morning.
The dispute began last year when Mammoliti abruptly asked councillors to reclaim parking spaces for the city that the business owners had been using for more than 35 years.
He suddenly raised the issue at a community council meeting last October.
Etobicoke Centre Councillor Doug Holyday said Mammoliti had convinced councillors immediate action to resolve "enormous" problems at the plazas was required and that shop owners were refusing to co-operate.
After the initial decision had been made by community council last October, Holyday was unsuccessful in his attempts to reopen the matter in November.