June 27, 2006
Sewell Wants In, Watson Wants Out, and Toronto Most Expensive in Canada
Big news on the municipal election front. Former mayor John Sewell wants back into the concrete clamshell. He's running in Ward 21 against Miller ally Joe Mihevc. Sewell has the support of Margaret Smith and many from the Save Our St. Clair campaign that lobbied against the right-of-way.
Sylvia Watson, current councillor in Ward 14 (Parkdale-High Park), wants out of City Hall and is looking to fill Gerard Kennedy's seat at Queen's Park. This will mean another open race in November's municipal election.
Caribana was in court again. This time it's because one of the bands wasn't included in a draw to decide marching orders during the parade.
The cash-strapped Toronto District School Board wants relief from the GST.
Two more shootings, one of the victims was a 15-year old boy. He's in hospital and expected to survive.
Two major crashes gum up GTA highways.
Italy goes through to the quarterfinal on a controversial penalty kick. Little Italy doesn't care.
No surprise to us, but Toronto is the most expensive city in Canada according to the Global Cost of Living Survey. We can take solace in the fact that we're far far far less expensive than places like Moscow (ranked no.1), Tokyo (3rd) and New York (10th).
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CITY COUNCILLOR JOE MIHEVC IS IN A BIG CONFLICT OF INTEREST WHEN HE DEMANDS MORE FEDERAL SCPI GRANTS!
Toronto City Councillor Joe Mihevc is demanding better funding for Supporting Community Partnership Initiative grants (SCPI,) today, September 12 at the Holy Trinity Church, saying that they have been a big help to Toronto's poor and homeless.
What he isn't saying is that his family is a direct beneficiary of these grants.
SCPI is a federally funded program through CMHC that is administered locally, in this case by the City of Toronto's Shelter HOusing and Support division (SHS).
A few years ago when Councillor Mihevc's wife had just graduated from social work school and was out of work, Mihevc pressured the city SHS's Trish Keachie to award a SCPI grant to East York East Toronto Resources, who created their RENT project www.housingworkers.ca for housing workers to be headed up by Rosalee Bender, Joe Mihevc's longtime commonlaw wife! Mihevc's wife gets a fulltime salary for what is about 2 day's work a month and used to be done in the spare time of one city employee!
In the meantime many social advocacy groups have had no response from Mihevc Chair of the city's Community Services Committee on why the city purposely creates so many delays for those trying to get benefits from Ontario Works.
Mihevc also had som affordable housing in his own ward bulldozed for parking saying that the property was owned by the Parking Authority and tha tlocal businesses needed more parking far more that the tenants needed the housing!
Councillor Mihevc is only using the issue of homelessness and poverty to benefit himself financially and his ward 21 reelection campaign.