Karen Stintz is a nice person. She likes grilled cheese sandwiches and she dismissed Rob Ford’s recent pig-like behaviour with the perfect combination of indignity, aplomb and grace.

But she has run her race.

I will not miss her speaking style; she is a machine gun with hiccups mounted on a truck with square wheels. The money she spent on vocal coaching? She ought to get a refund.

Hang on. She used her office budget to pay for the lessons; in other words, she spent my money. I ought to get the refund.

She won her seat on council by defeating Anne Johnston. Anne’s legacy? Toronto’s sidewalks are dished at the corners, and accessible for people who use scooters and wheelchairs.

Stintz’s legacy?

The death of Transit City.

I think of Karen every time I buy TTC tokens. The price was raised on her watch.

And I think of her whenever I take the bus, because I remember attending a meeting a couple of years ago where massive TTC service cuts were unveiled. The meeting was advertised as public, and meant to seek input. I arrived, like many others, to find that the input being sought was not whether there should be cut, but was about which cuts should be made.

That’s the choice you offer a condemned man: Bullet, rope or chair?

I suggested that the meeting was undemocratic. She looked at me as if I’d spit in her purse. I wish her well in her future endeavours.

Of course, I do not wish her very well. If she becomes the new CFL commissioner, we can expect smaller teams, a shorter field, and higher prices.

But let’s continue with transit.

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Like you, I know there are a lot of plans. Thing is, I can’t tell whose plan is which, nor do I know if any plan has a hope in hell of funding, nor am I able to understand if this plan is more efficient or more readily achievable than that one.

All I know for sure is that Rob Ford’s three-stop subway to Scarborough is so dopey as to be metaphysical. Who in Scarborough likes less service? Those same people who would, if Rob Ford told them to, pound nails up their noses. Olivia’s many-more-buses plan is cheaper and quicker.

An aside: A $30 Metrolinx ticket for a train ride to the airport is stupidity on a world-class scale, and it leads to another question: Why do we torture the patrons of Pearson and bend over backwards for Porter?

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Speaking of torture:

Andy Byford may be a smart guy, but it is and always will be the Bloor line and the Yonge-University line; to rename them Line 1 and Line 2, a decision made by fiat, is an insult.

Moving on: Most of the current discussion about transit would be moot if transit were funded in Toronto like it is funded in other major cities: 75 per cent through taxes and 25 per cent through the fare box.

Here, it’s the other way around.

And even that is not as important as what isn’t being talked about: Building transit is cheap compared to the cost of operation and maintenance, a fact forgotten by the mayor.

And now allow me a word about Ms. Chow, who remains a teacup in a tempest after one of her political operatives referred to John Tory’s transit plan as segregationist. Tory, on the advice of his operatives, cried foul.

Ms. Chow ducked and covered. She ought to have said that John Tory is emphatically not a segregationist and then pointed out that his transit plan really does ignore some areas of the city which are now underserved — a fact which has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with Mr. Tory’s feel for poverty in this city.

What’s that noise?

It’s the mayor, stroking his pet raccoon and chuckling about how dirty the race is becoming. He knows dirt. He rolls in it. It was his former chief operative who head-faked John Tory out of the race last time. That same operative is now Tory’s chief operative, a fact that still confuses me.

So, who ya voting for?

Joe Fiorito appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: jfiorito@thestar.ca

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