By Patrick Metzger

Illustration by Matt Daley/Torontoist.

Today is Day 2, Year 0 of the new municipal order. In the news, the Fords triumphant show a magnanimous side, talking about lowering taxes, donating earnings to charity, and not ripping up your streetcar tracks just yet.

The Gravy Train Nation rejoices as mayor-elect Rob Ford sticks to his guns and says that cutting taxes will be first priority when he ascends to the mayoral throne. He hopes to start with the widely disliked vehicle registration tax at the first council meeting, and follow up by eliminating the municipal land transfer tax.
Doug Ford, who just won baby brother Rob Ford’s former Ward 2 council seat in Etobicoke, says he’ll donate his almost one-hundred-thousand-dollar salary to community organizations. He says he’s not doing it to embarrass his fellow councillors, which is just a bonus.
Doug Ford is also telling the media that “we want to look at more effective ways of running transit, but by no means are we going to get a crane and start yanking up streetcars and throwing them in the lake,” a revelation which bodes well not only for transit but for environmental policy in the city. Ford the elder says that the anti-streetcar idea was a rumour started by competing candidates, who presumably also inserted the line in Rob Ford’s transportation plan which says: “Streetcars on downtown arterial streets will be replaced with clean buses that provide the same capacity on the same routes.”
The gravy train may be pulling out of the station, but it’s not too late to hop on board! Council members who lost their seats in this week’s election won’t be going home empty-handed, as a 1999 bylaw gives outgoing councillors a month’s severance pay for each year of service, up to a full year’s salary. That means long-serving public servants like Joe Pantalone will be lunching on your dime long after Rob Ford has taken the axe to the city hall buffet.
G20 bad boy Alex Hundert is back in jail again after supposedly threatening a Crown attorney. The alleged ringleader of the summit miscreants had his bail revoked after he was supposedly seen copying down the licence plate number of the car belonging to one of the prosecuting attorneys. Ironically, Hundert was at the courthouse appealing his stringent bail conditions when the ineffectual threat was said to have occurred. Neither Rob nor Doug Ford were involved in this story.
Workers at the Delta Chelsea Hotel will set up picket lines today after voting overwhelmingly in favour of a two-week strike. The BlissDom Canada conference scheduled for this week is still on, although it may be slightly less blissful without clean towels.