The Villager

It's oddly appropriate that they should do so at this juncture.

The new garbage collection system - costly to implement, ambitiously progressive in effect and just the tiniest bit irritating and inconvenient - is in many ways emblematic of Miller's first year of this term. The mayor who first took office with not but a broom and a good haircut in 2003, has had a much rougher ride in 2006-2007.

The land transfer tax debate/debacle was surely the roughest patch in the year and as it stretched over so much of it - from July until late October - it really set the tone.

What should have been a debate that started with open consultation, thorough debate and a functional compromise turned into a long summer and fall of cutbacks both threatened and actual that shook Torontonians' confidence in their own city and created fissures on Toronto Council that might take the rest of the term to heal.

While all of council is culpable for this political train wreck (this is after all the council that started off the year unable to agree on a seating plan for their official portrait), Miller must take a mayor's share of the blame.

In a new council structure where the mayor's agenda is at the forefront of everything, Miller ought to have taken more care with what turned into the most controversial element of his agenda. His failure to do so literally brought Toronto to a standstill just half-way through the year.

But lest we forget: that rather large irritant stalled a machine that had until then been moving apace. In the first few months of the year, Miller and council did bring forward an ambitious and appropriate climate change plan; they did finalize the purchase of the Green Lane landfill site, which freed Toronto from dependency on an open U.S./Canadian border to dispose of its trash; and he and the Toronto Transit Commission did both devise and successfully pitch the largest single public transit expansion this city has seen, with the seven-route light rail Transit City plan.

The tax debate may have caused some harm to the city's relationship with the business community, but as it wrapped up Miller did fulfill a promise to establish a new small business tax class, giving both small businesses and high-end office towers a significant long-term break on their property taxes.

And he did, after a time, agree to let an outside panel of experts review the city's finances - something he'd long resisted, in a stance that critics had pointed to as further evidence of the closed mind of a socialist mayor.

That panel won't likely help Miller in his attempts to deal with the business-minded federal Conservative Party of Canada and Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Miller's big push for a penny of the GST, while popular with his mayor pals, has been a flop with the feds.

It might have helped if Miller had taken the campaign to his council before he'd launched it as the right-wing opposition at city hall has suggested, but really, given the barely concealed antipathy between Miller and Harper, the campaign was doomed from the start. At least he's had the grace to be, well, graceful, as Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion takes up the fight.

So where does this leave the mayor?

A little humbled, for one. Miller came into the new term off an easy electoral victory that left him bouyed and perhaps overconfident. The first year showed him exactly where overconfidence gets you in Toronto politics. Hopefully, lessons learned this past year will inform his leadership over the next three, because the other thing this past year leaves him is vulnerable.

And with three years to go before an election, that makes us all vulnerable, to the prospect of living in a city that's effectively rudderless. Hopefully Miller can find his bearings next year and start rebuilding the consensus on council that's necessary for this city to succeed.