Palacio wins handily

Doesn’t matter who’s mayor, says Cesar Palacio, he’ll work with anyone as long as his ward concerns are adequately addressed at city hall.

Palacio was re-elected to his Ward 17 seat on Oct. 25. He won handily, receiving 42 percent of the vote out of a total of seven candidates.

“In my campaign, I had a good number of people who were supporting Joe Pantalone, some supported George Smitherman and a large number of them went for (Rob) Ford,” Palacio said when he was asked who he preferred in office.

“I know I can work with anyone. They all expressed passionate points and ideas… I will provide a hundred percent to working with Mayor Ford and continue to work for the public and improving the community.”

Palacio said he has no plans to butt heads with other councillors unless they are against certain Toronto initiatives such as the Cleaner Greener project.

“I also want to work with city finances, with local businesses and lowering taxes through property tax assessment appeals,” Palacio said. “I want to enroll reconstruction projects for streets, sidewalks bike lanes for Ward 17 and reconstruct the budget to help traffic.”

“I would also like to push the new idea of outside adult recreation as outside gyms beside the neighbourhood playgrounds. It’s nothing new – you’ll see it in Europe and some places in South America. I believe it’s important for the community’s health and they can work out while their children play in the park.”

He’s also putting his focus on safety and crime initiatives.

“Community safety and crime prevention is a big priority for us and I will continue to strengthen the cooperation between our Toronto police services and the local community and increase police impression in certain problematic areas such as back alleys and parks.”

Palacio also wants to take the next term to fix fallout from the St. Clair Right-of-Way project.

“We should learn from the incident. We should take it and familiarize ourselves with it and use it to improve the public transit system.”