Dear Toronto Mayor Candidates:

I am writing you today because I feel you are not addressing my concerns as a resident of this city.

1. Eliminate parking offices. The workers there only offer you 2 options: pay or appeal your ticket. You can easily do that online. If they aren't willing to employ common sense when someone comes in with a ticket and a receipt (someone in front of me) or someone with a ticket for a car that does not belong to them (me), then they shouldn't be paid to sit there. A machine can do their job. (Side note: to become a world class city, they should also recognize when out of towners, including international ones, get tickets - I have seen them tell visitors to our city that they will send them a summons for court.)

2. Privatize waste management. We spent so much money putting in new programs (green bin, new sized garbage bins) but then the workers go around throwing the bins around and not actually separating garbage from green bin waste. How does that promote not producing excess waste or saving our city money? They are beyond hope.

3. Your first day in office (if you really are concerned about public transit) should be to go into the TTC tunnels at 12:31am and ask the workers why they have not finished the project to update the tracks and signals that was supposed to be finished more than 2 years ago? I believe this problem has to do with the fact that none of the current mayoral candidates have taken the TTC in the past 2 years.

4. City workers need to be more accountable. This includes everyone from desk clerks to police officers to random workers driving around the city. I believe you could solve a lot of this by doing 2 things. First, eliminate police officers at construction sites. Instead, anyone who is on welfare should have to go to a construction site and help direct traffic to earn that welfare check (the frequency can be decided based on number of welfare applicants and number of construction sites). This will cut down on police overtime costs (where many just stand there and text on their phones anyways...the one time I did see a guy directing traffic, he was signaling pedestrians instead of cars and was mad that he confused me by holding out his hand to stop and then sighing when I did stop) and make people do something for the money they get from our city. You can't tell me that someone can't sit or stand and direct traffic for a couple of hours for their monthly check. This will also give the police more time to actually enforce the law - like ticketing people who are speeding or talking on their cell phones - even when they're not actually doing a ticketing blitz. I have been a pedestrian who almost got hit by a driver on her cell phone. In front of the courthouse and two policemen in a police car (why they didn't do anything is beyond me). I have also been a driver behind a city worker who has been on his cell phone without a hands free device for 2 km. Thanks to David Miller for labeling city cars with a "greening our fleet" motto.

5. Saving money really should be your number one concern. Our city is almost expensive to live in even if you make a decent amount of money. Since I have moved to Toronto 8 years ago, the TTC individual fare has increased by a dollar and the TTC metropass fare has increased by more than $10. However, the service has decreased in efficiency. I used to be able to get around Toronto in an hour or less. Now it's only under and hour if there are no delays, which are becoming an everyday occurrence. Since I have entered the workforce, gotten married, and bought a home, taxes and fees have increased by more than 5% every year. That's more than my wages have increased each year.