Choose the next mayor carefully

To the editor:

This year Torontonians must grasp that the great city of unfettered opportunity that I was born in over four decades ago, I would argue, has been commandeered by what I would discern as a horde of Marxist-like, commerce and enterprise-massacring, taxpayer-pocketbook-pillaging, responsibility and accountability deficient, entrenched buffoons devoid of any foresight that are single-handedly proliferating the "misery index" in Toronto to an all-time-high.

The socialists have rubber-stamped tax-hikes and fees like never before, including driver's permit renewals courtesy of Liberal Dalton McGuinty's extra-taxation powers uniquely granted to his pals on Toronto's City Council who have sent water, electricity, and property taxes along with TTC, disposal, fire, and police compensation transcending the Statistics Canada inflation rate at an unsustainable magnitude propelling the Operating Budget's "debt servicing interest" into the stratosphere. Simply put, Mayor Miller emboldened by the NDP-aligned councillors with their vast-scale Capital Budget projects are hijacking the standard of living of future generations and hindering the capabilities of future city councils.

We can no longer afford any union-lapdog councillors who tirelessly search to locate a municipality in Canada where fire, EMS, police, or transit employees somehow, someway, managed to trump the generous compensation levels here in Toronto; therein, pleading for more excesses from the city's number one budget allotment: salaries.

Miller's record is marked by his paramount failure being the preposterous gross outstanding debt which has soared under his tenure from 2003 - 2009 by a whopping 62.5 per cent from $2.12 billion to $3.39 billion; and therefore, is it any surprise why he's not running for a third term? I would caution against the present front-runner George Smitherman for he is moulded in the Liberal McGuinty cast that siphoned $900 from the average family's paycheques only to add insult to injury by removing eyeglass exams from OHIP coverage.

The former deputy premier may be projected as the leader for Toronto's salvation, however, rather than standing-up to the union leaders as his 'tough rhetoric' would lead many to presume, I suspect he will yield to them again just as the McGuinty government has, mimicking the Cowardly Lion of the Wizard of Oz.

David C. Searle.