Video: Norm Kelly will bring council’s concerns to Mayor Ford on Saturday
TORONTO – Norm Kelly will meet with Mayor Rob Ford Saturday to discuss “concerns” some council members have following revelations police have been investigating the mayor for months and have video of him purportedly smoking what looks like crack cocaine.
“I will be meeting with the mayor tomorrow and I will be bringing to his attention the concerns that have been expressed to me by a number of councillors on both sides of spectrum,” the deputy mayor said.
At least three councillors on Ford’s executive committee addressed those concerns with Kelly Friday afternoon. (Neither the mayor nor his brother, councillor Doug Ford, was at City Hall Friday)
“I hope that the mayor will listen very carefully and I would hope that he would look at these concerns through the eyes of the people of Toronto, his colleagues on council and himself and his family,” Kelly told reporters. “And I’m hoping, upon reflection, he will make the right decision that affords him the opportunity to address the concerns of the three groups that I just identified,” Kelly said.
He wouldn’t elaborate on those concerns, suggesting the media “already know the concerns.”
Read more: Complete coverage of the Rob Ford story
And he wouldn’t say what the “right decision” is, or whether Mayor Ford should resign.
”That’s going to be up to the mayor and that will be reviewed with him,” Kelly said.
WATCH: Denzil Minnan-Wong makes a short statement on councillors’ concerns.
But if the deputy mayor and executive committee wouldn’t say whether they want the mayor to resign, the head of Toronto’s Board of Trade had no such reticence.
Just before 5 p.m Friday, the board issued a press release demanded the mayor “put Toronto first” by taking a leave of absence.
Related: Toronto councillors call for Mayor Rob Ford to resign
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The executive committee’s concerns come a day after Chief Bill Blair said he’s watched the video of the mayor smoking what could be crack cocaine. Also Thursday, hundreds of pages of documents were released detailing an extensive police investigation into the mayor and his friend Sandro Lisi, who’s accused of using extortion to get a video in May, days after reports of the alleged crack video surfaced.
The mayor was not at city hall Friday. He spent some of the morning at his mother’s house before visiting a bakery, meeting with TCHC CEO Gene Jones and stopping at his family business, Deco Labels.
In a short statement to reporters outside his office Thursday, the mayor refused to resign.
“I have no reason to resign,” he said. “I’m going to go back, return my phone calls. I’m going to be out doing what the people elected me to do and that’s save taxpayers money and run a great government that we’ve been running for the last three years.”
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