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Extra, Extra: Less Speaking for Councillors, Longer Wait for Presto

By • Photo by Andrew Louis

Every weekday’s end, Extra, Extra collects just about everything you ought to care about or ought not miss.

  • Those who follow city council closely know that among the minor but persistent irritations of Rob Ford’s term in office has been a crackdown on speaking time. Specifically, if a councillor wants an extension of his or her five minute speaking allotment, council needs to go through an annoying process of holding a formal vote to decide whether or not to grant an extra two minutes. It is a pain, and many think the requirement to have a recorded vote was instituted to discourage councillors from speaking longer. Next week the Government Management Committee will consider doing away with speaking extensions altogether.

  • The TTC is paying close attention as Ottawa’s transit system struggles with their planned conversion to the Presto fare card system. Ottawa is now delaying a planned system-wide implementation of the smartcards while they try to sort out those issues; the TTC is slated to move to full Presto use over the coming years.
  • Rio+20, the United Nations sustainability conference, is underway in Brazil. Playing an increasingly large role in combating climate change are cities, where a growing number of the world’s inhabitants live, work, and pollute. C40 cities met yesterday as part of the Rio conference (Toronto had no representation, though we are a part of the C40 group of cities); Treehugger and the Washington Post both have some useful summaries of what they discussed.

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Comments

  • Mike D

    When debating issues has been reduced to repeating slogans until people just wise up and get it, there is no need for speaking allotments of greater than a minute or so. Bottom line. BOTTOM LINE!!

  • Anonymous

    A two-thirds vote of City Council is needed to cut the extension to speaking. Personally, I would keep the request for extension, but cut the formal vote, except if there is an objection.

  • Anonymous

    Not sure this is a good idea.

    Like, how long does it take to explain to Rob that “Subways subways subways” isn’t really a relevant discussion point when discussing an OMB intervention in south Scarborough?

  • Anonymous

    Why do they need to discuss anything? I thought they just voted according to Mammoliti’s thumb.

    • Anonymous

      They haven’t been paying attention. They’ve been mouthing off — and chewing gum.

  • stopitman

    A note about the Ottawa Presto cards – they’re using a different contractor for the computer system, not the one used for the GTA’s Presto, which seems to work fine, so take the news with a grain of salt.

    • Eric S. Smith

      OC Transpo, Metrolinx, card-reader vendor Scheidt-Bachmann, and inevitable consultants Accenture teamed up to make Ottawa’s Presto implementation a classic IT project failure.

      The current story — and of course this, too, may be a total lie — is that the back end is fine, but the card readers are junk. All of the delicious, crunchy layers of delegation kept the city, not at all keen to exercise oversight in the first place, blissfully unaware that nothing bloody worked right up until the very last weeks.

      If another vendor is chosen for the Toronto deployment, that’ll just ensure that when it fails terribly, it will be a complete surprise to all concerned.