Listen up, folks. Mayor David Miller and budget chief David Soknacki want to hear from you.

Starting this Saturday, the two Davids will hold seven pre-budget group therapy sessions - called "Listening to Toronto" - to hear what the public thinks the city's budget priorities should be for 2004.

They'll ask attendees to sit with their "neighbours" and mull over three questions: (1) What makes Toronto great?; (2) What challenges are we facing? and (3) What advice would you offer the city as it considers its 2004 budget?

Some $110,000 from the city's cash-strapped coffers has been budgeted to hold these group therapy sessions - mostly to pay for newspaper advertising.

"We've changed the process this year to truly involve the public in decisions that affect their lives," Miller said during the launch of the sessions last week.

Now, I know our new mayor is trying like heck to open up the doors of City Hall. But he might as well take that broom he so prominently displays in his office and sweep $110,000 down Toronto's litter-strewn gutters for all the use these sessions will be.

The last thing City Hall needs is more consultation; more moaners, whiners, professional grant-getters, handwringers for the hard-done-by; more of the usual suspects coming with their perennial requests for fiscal life support to keep their pet projects and special interest groups afloat.

I'd like to think a few hard-working citizens would come to the sessions (and give the Davids a piece of their minds). But after six years of watching the budget process unfold here, one thing is clear. Most hard-working people don't have the time, or energy, to navigate the bureaucracy or to fend off the professional grant-getters. They're too busy trying to pay their bills and raise their families.

Asked what mechanisms are in place to ensure the sessions don't get stacked with the usual suspects, Miller said the sessions are "designed in such a way to encourage individuals to come."

But sources tell me, "individual" members of special interest groups (who are only asked to provide their names and addresses) are already signing up in droves.

Besides, as I've observed, the kind of listening practised around these parts is very selective indeed.

It's not as if there aren't plenty of opportunities to hear from the public in the budget process already - at the February meetings of all five standing committees and at the joint meeting of the budget/executive committees on March 30.

For a mere $1.50 (the cost of today's Sunday Sun) I'm also happy to offer the two Davids some advice:

Do the job you were elected to do, show some leadership and make the hard decisions. Have the guts to say no to pet projects. Demand more from the city's workers and stop rewarding managers with ridiculous wage hikes of 6% (the amount set for 2004) just for doing their jobs properly.

Set some priorities. Get out of businesses this city should not be in and do your best to deliver the basic services for which people pay their property taxes. Be more aggressive about paying down the city's nearly $2-billion debt.

Stop waiting for Brink's trucks from Queen's Park and Parliament Hill to land at the city's doorstep. If some money does flow, consider it a windfall. But for heaven's sake, have a Plan B in case the money doesn't come.

Problem is, Miller doesn't have a Plan B. His economic platform - the package that swept him in as mayor - is based on getting some $300 million in handouts from the senior levels of government to replenish the city's coffers.

One wonders if Miller is hoping people will tell him they don't mind residential and business taxes going up, even by more than 3%, to get better services.

Coun. Mike Del Grande said from his experience with the Toronto Catholic school board, it's a way for politicians to come back and say people told them to raise taxes and increase services - instead of taking responsibility themselves for making costly decisions.

"Maybe one of the budget consultation items should be not to spend $110,000 on budget consultations," he said.

Coun. Case Ootes said the mayor and council can "consult until the cows come home." But most people expect council to do the job it was elected to do.

"We just had an election, for God's sake, and we all have a good idea of what our communities need," he said. "We should just get on with our job of what is essential ... it's time to fish or cut bait."