Toronto Mayor David Miller recently initiated a series of cuts to city services, including delaying the opening of outdoor rinks until January. That meant our outdoor public skating rinks would be closed during the Christmas season. MasterCard has fixed that by donating $160,000 to make sure city ice rinks stay open in December.MasterCard Canada offered to cover the 160 thousand dollars necessary to get the rinks up and running in December and David Miller “had” to agree.
He was backed right into a corner. Miller had removed funding a few weeks ago as a response to his not getting his way with a whack of new taxes and decided to make his point by taking away some so-called fringe services.
Meanwhile, within the past several days a few councilors who don’t list heavily to the left had proposed approaching corporate sponsors to support some of the services Miller claimed had to go, but the mayor said no way.
Miller didn’t want corporate people to step in with funding because it might damage his argument for needing to tax anything and everything that moves in the city of Toronto.
But then along came MasterCard with money in hand, 160 thousand dollars as a gift to the citizens of Toronto and the mayor was pinned.
How could he say no to such a nice gesture if it meant that kids and families could use Toronto’s ice rinks to their full capacity this winter?
He didn’t want to say yes, but he had to. How twisted is that?
He was backed right into a corner. Miller had removed funding a few weeks ago as a response to his not getting his way with a whack of new taxes and decided to make his point by taking away some so-called fringe services.
Meanwhile, within the past several days a few councilors who don’t list heavily to the left had proposed approaching corporate sponsors to support some of the services Miller claimed had to go, but the mayor said no way.
Miller didn’t want corporate people to step in with funding because it might damage his argument for needing to tax anything and everything that moves in the city of Toronto.
But then along came MasterCard with money in hand, 160 thousand dollars as a gift to the citizens of Toronto and the mayor was pinned.
How could he say no to such a nice gesture if it meant that kids and families could use Toronto’s ice rinks to their full capacity this winter?
He didn’t want to say yes, but he had to. How twisted is that?
And the kicker? MasterCard is not asking for any advertising at the rinks or anywhere else, but they know they'll get their $160,000 worth and more. Every Toronto newspaper, radio station, television news show and blogger is telling this story today and it's custom made to give you the warm fuzzies for MasterCard just ahead of the busiest shopping period of the year. Good on MasterCard. Hopefully more corporations will secure similar good vibes in the coming months while we wrestle with a $575-million shortfall at City Hall.
courtesy of http://www.freddiep.ca/ and http://www.mikeboon.com/links.html
courtesy of http://www.freddiep.ca/ and http://www.mikeboon.com/links.html
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