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For the left-of-centre city politicians who started the first year of the new term with a sense of optimism and purpose, the intervening months between then and now have been quite a slog.

Mayor David Miller and his team started off with a bang - launching a shiny campaign for a cent of the GST, a big new public transit expansion plan and an overall green plan. Since then, it's been one thing after another: the debacle of the land transfer tax debate, federal indifference bordering on contempt to the GST campaign; and finally, the public embarrassment experienced by many of those councillors who had their spotty office spending exposed.

Certainly, there was an air of that wintery despair around the council chambers this week as horrified executive committee members watched Rob Ford, their much-reviled colleague from Ward 2 (Etobicoke North), rise to the level of folk hero for disregarding council policy and paying his office budget out-of-pocket.

Yes, these are dark days for progressives at city hall. It's tempting to just let them sink into a seasonal depression and write Toronto's government off as a lost cause until 2010, the next time Torontonians go to the polls.

But just because the days are getting shorter doesn't mean anyone should get down in the mouth.

They may be scant, but there are some signals for optimism for Mayor David Miller and crew; and in the spirit of the coming Yule, it's appropriate to point some of them out.

First and foremost, the province's new finance minister Dwight Duncan opened the vaults to what turns out to be a very healthy provincial surplus - from which $400 million to $500 million will go toward public transit projects. That keeps Toronto's ambitious Transit City plan on track at the very least.

Will that still-enormous surplus translate to a quick reversal of the downloading that has crippled Toronto financially over the last decade? One might hope.

On the subject of public transit, Toronto Council managed to reach a rare consensus on what is one of the city's greatest assets and is turning into one of the city's greatest embarrassments - the aging Union Station.

After a dismal failure at bringing in a private sector consortium, the Union Pearson group, to refurbish and revitalize the train station, the city is embarking on another attempt to make something of the structure. Council overwhelmingly voted in favour of the $388-million plan to repair the station and dig out a $137 million retail mall under it.

The new project will involve private sector investment - yet to be determined - and money from the federal and provincial government. Will this one work any better than the last attempt? One might hope.

And the city's capital budget, which was approved at the very beginning of the December meeting, holds all sorts of promise for the beleaguered left on council. There will be bike lanes and transit improvements and other green initiatives aplenty. Whether they'll prove affordable, well, once again ... one might hope.

Bottom line is that however it may seem, the Miller progressivist mayoralty hasn't come anywhere near to expending itself. The left can take comfort in that. And the right-wing opposition?

Well it can take comfort in the fact that it won't be out of work to do in the new year.

~ Read David Nickle's blog: http://www.blogs.insidetoronto.com/cityhall/