A very nice piece written by a former staffer.....
http://www.torontosun.com/2016/03/22/rob-ford-gave-his-all-to-toronto
Rob Ford gave his all to Toronto
By Adrienne Batra , Toronto Sun
Rob Ford, 1969-2016
You either loved Rob Ford, or you hated him.
On some days, I did both.
When I was his director of communications during the 2010 election, and subsequently his press secretary until December 2011, there were days when I wanted to wring his girthsome neck with my tiny little hands.
And others when I wanted to give him a big hug.
That was Rob. That was how he lived.
That was how he governed as mayor of Toronto from 2010 to 2014.
He was never shy about attracting controversy – as the whole world eventually came to know.
But what a lot of people don’t know – or don’t want to remember – is that Rob Ford, first as a councillor and then as mayor, gave everything he had to his constituents when they asked for his help.
The mom who couldn’t get a pothole fixed outsider her house had a friend in Rob Ford. Ditto the dad who called in to complain his garbage hadn’t been picked up.
Ford, first as a councillor, and later as mayor, would assemble the necessary staff to fix the problem — which often drove the staff crazy — and get it done.
It all sounds so simple, but these are the things that matter to ordinary people in their daily lives.
And because it mattered to them, it mattered to Ford, who wanted to matter to the people who elected him.
It was from their ranks that Ford’s mayoral campaign was able to muster a 3,000-strong volunteer army, when no one from Toronto’s Conservative establishment would step up to help.
Governing Toronto wasn’t easy – because Rob didn’t want it to be.
He wanted to poke his finger in the eye of the establishment, including many of his fellow councillors, whom Ford viewed as derelict in their duties and complacent in their jobs.
He was determined to hold staff and politicians accountable.
The media, and many politicians, made fun of Ford for answering his own phone – because apparently politicians don’t do that.
He was berated for never spending his taxpayer allocated office allowance.
He was mocked for taking calls from – and helping – the constituents of his fellow councillors.
Ford didn’t care. Whenever his colleagues would drop the ball on what Ford considered to be the most important part of their job — providing services to taxpayers — he picked it up and ran with it down the field.
That’s why so many people — “the Ford nation” — were so loyal to him.
It was the deciding factor in his 2010 mayoral victory.
Ford has his personal demons — drug and alcohol addiction — and they eventually overwhelmed him.
But anyone who has worked in politics, knows even the most savvy and polished politicians have skeletons in their closets.
None of us is perfect and heaven knows Rob wasn’t perfect, which made working for him a white-knuckle job, not for the faint of heart.
On any given day, we were accused of unsuccessfully trying to cover up the fact he was out of his depth, or of being the most brilliant and diabolical political minds of our generation.
What we really did was to work hard, which on some days meant trying to run the city with an absentee mayor.
We counted the votes before we went to council on any big issue. We consulted city executive.
Rob knew in advance what the vote would be on any major issue at council, win or lose.
He had many accomplishments. Killing the car tax, outsourcing garbage collection west of Yonge St., four-year labour deals with the city’s unions, without a garbage strike. Ford saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
He’s been called a lot of things -- a populist, a conservative, a radical – and he was all of them in part.
But ultimately, Ford was a political pragmatist who simply didn’t give a damn
what anyone thought about him other than his constituents.
It was that gumption that endeared him to hundreds of thousands of Torontonians.
There will always be those who refuse to see Ford as anything more than an addict, a liar, a racist, a homophobe and a bully.
But none of that accurately describes Rob Ford.
He was the only councillor that held town hall meeting for Toronto Community Housing Corp. residents.
The only one who went into their apartments to see for himself the often horrible conditions they were living in.
The only one who listened to their concerns and tried to help, whether it meant getting repairs done or finding them a new home.
He cared about people. He once gave me $20 for cab fare when we were at a campaign event on the other side of the city because I’d left everything at the office, saying he didn’t think, “any young lady in Toronto should be without some way of getting home.”
Rob Ford was often the only politician on council who really gave a damn about how the public’s money was being spent.
He was deeply flawed. He lied about his drug and alcohol addictions, picked fights when he didn’t have to and destroyed his political effectiveness through his outrageous personal behaviour.
But he loved Toronto. Even when we was hurting himself, he never stopped thinking and caring about the people of this city.
As controversial as he was was in life, let him now rest, in peace.
