On the 3^rd day of Christmas if you find there’s not a chicken small enough to complete your holiday turducken, use a French hen instead. It’ll give the dish a certain je ne sais quoi.

Councillor Janet Davis, Ward 31 Beaches-East York

There’s nothing more deliciously delightful and despairing at City Hall than watching Councillor Davis drop her head back with an audible groan of frustration at what latest idiocy has issued forth from the mouth of a Team Ford member. It is both comforting to know you’re not alone in disbelieving what you’ve just seen or witnessed as well as entirely dispiriting that such folly passes as governance in Toronto circa 2011. Rest assured Councillor Davis shares your pain and incredulity.

In fact, watching her in action, it’s safe to assume that the councillor not only feels our pain and incredulity at what’s going on at City Hall but raises it a couple fold. The Ford Administration is an affront to everything Davis stands for, an abomination of what a municipal government should be doing for its citizens. If there’s one word I had to use to describe Councillor Davis in 2011, it would be indignant.

She does not suffer fools gladly which — surprise, surprise – finds her oftentimes at loggerheads with the daftest of the mayor’s coterie, Councillors Mammoliti and Ford, and Speaker Frances Nunziata. None of whom can hope to match up which leaves her looking arrogant and disdainful at times. That downtown elitist badge further burnished onto her.

Which is not to say Councillor Davis is incapable of playing nice with her colleagues. As a member of the Community Development and Recreation Committee, she has fended off the mad rush to divest the city of its child care obligations led by committee chair, Councillor Mammoliti. The process has been slowed to at least wait until hearing from the provincial government later this winter about its plans for child care funding levels in the wake of the move to full day kindergarten. Councillor Davis has also been able to marshal enough opposition on the TPL board in order to blunt the axe being taken to the city’s libraries. At least so far but it has shown her ability to work with the more reasonable members of Team Ford like Councillor Jaye Robinson.

That’s a hopeful sign for this season of hope, a shimmer of light in these darkest of days. Maybe there will be fewer reasons for Councillor Janet Davis to be indignant in 2012, fewer times for her to hang her head in despair and uttering words of disbelief.

— here’s hopingly submitted by Cityslikr

On the 4^th day of Christmas I discovered it’s Colly Birds not Calling Birds. Colly Bird is just another name for a blackbird, a species of true thrush. In case you were wondering. Anyway…

Councillor Shelley Carroll, Ward 33 Don Valley East

As a former budget chief of Mayor David Miller, Councillor Carroll is the very face of the alleged out of control spending at City Hall that swept Rob Ford into power. She must defend her actions every time she opens her mouth, every time she asks a question or makes an assertion. There’s the profligate witch! Burn her! Burn her!

That the criticism of her often descends into personal attacks and manifests itself in the most bizarre of ways – remember that time Deputy Speaker John Parker tried to deny her an extension of speaking time under the pretence she’d strayed off topic? – suggests a couple things. First, the administration can’t really go toe-to-toe with her over the numbers. She defends hers passionately, tirelessly and with hard facts to back them up. They just sort of pull whatever’s convenient out of their collective asses.

Perhaps more significantly, the visceral nature of the animosity hurled at her is as if Councillor Carroll is a traitor to their cause. No left wing, downtown loonie she, Carroll is a big L liberal representing a suburban ward surrounded on all sides by members of the mayor’s Executive Committee. How could she think the things she does, say the things she does? Who does she think she is?

Taking us right to the heart of the matter.

If Mayor Ford really intends on running for re-election in 2014, you got to believe he sees Councillor Carroll as his most dangerous opponent. Aside from her connection to David Miller, she represents nothing he can easily shoehorn into the strawman he’ll need to successfully defend his administration. She’s plain spoken with an ease for explaining more complicated aspects of municipal governance. She’s hardnosed and will not be at all intimidated. She works a room like nobody’s business. And more to the point, Councillor Shelley Carroll clearly loves the city she lives in, from the suburbs to the downtown core. Something we’re not at all convinced can be said about the mayor.

So expect the battles to get testier, the attacks on Councillor Carroll uglier and more personal over the next couple years. The Ford Administration will attempt to run against her record because it sure as hell won’t want to be running on theirs.

— prognosticatingly submitted by Cityslikr

And Five Golden Rings!!

Councillor Adam Vaughan, Ward 20 Trinity-Spadina

I will confess to a personal bias on this one.

Councillor Vaughan is my favourite councillor to watch in action as he battles Team Ford. He is everything they aren’t. Smart and articulate with a positive vision how to build the city equitably.

For those reasons and many more, they can’t stand him.

Which is why Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti flashed him a middle finger during a council vote, and mused out loud about how Vaughan was just like the kids in high school he used to beat up. Vaughan is very successful in getting under this administration’s skin and is able to bring out its inner bully.

He serves as the opposition’s lightning rod, taking direct hits as the example of everything’s that’s wrong with City Hall culture in Mayor Ford’s view. He’s too downtown-y. An elitist. Completely out of touch with the real, hard working Torontonians the mayor is always running into at Tim Horton’s.

There is mileage in that, certainly. Some traction in helping to exploit the supposed urban-suburban divide the Ford administration so thrives on. During this month’s 2012 budget committee session, Councillor Vaughan lashed out during an argument with Councillor Doug Ford, referring to Ward 2 as ‘an industrial park’. He later apologized and clarified but couldn’t fend off the notion in the press that he was, in fact, a downtown elitist with no understanding of what goes on in the suburbs.

The thing is, neither does Councillor Ford. During the verbal tussle with Vaughan, Ford revealed his complete ignorance of his own ward, claiming there were no wading pools there (there are) as well as a misguided view of money matters at City Hall, suggesting money only flows in a one way fashion from the suburbs to downtown (it doesn’t). Councillor Vaughan lost the PR battle on that one but continued to build a case that the mayor and all his proxies are unfit to govern a city this big, this complex.

Councillor Vaughan is neither the furthest left of those standing in opposition to the mayor nor is he incapable of working with Team Ford when a compromise is possible. Being perhaps their most outspoken critic, however, makes him public enemy #1. It’s a role he seems to relish and is suited for, and one that is ultimately vital in the long run as it helps expose the radically anti-urban agenda Mayor Ford is seeking to impose on the city.

— strikingly submitted by Cityslikr