Nothing makes a great Saturday night out like a whole lot of muzak. Yeah, you on a sweat-soaked dance floor, getting really grimy to a soft organ and soprano sax version of “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do).” Mmmm. It’s fun times like this that are probably why the leadership at Exhibition Place want so badly to extend the lease of the Horticultural Building to Muzik, the club currently operating in the space, as far as 2034 without giving anyone else the opportunity to bid. This proposed sole-source contract even has the endorsement of councillor Mark Grimes (Ward 6, Etobicoke-Lakeshore), the chair of the Exhibition Place board and a Ford-friendly councillor. Something Ford is not friendly to: sole-sourced leases. No, no can do.

SmartCenters, a company with a fetish for all things parking lot, is trying to make in-roads into Leslieville yet again. Years after having their plans kept out of the neighbourhood, the company is now hoping to build an 18-acre development that ostensibly wouldn’t be so big-boxy. No application has been submitted to the city as part of the plan yet, but their current idea includes existing buildings and some new retail space. Whatever could those possibly be? Probably a Wal-Mart.

Premier Kathleen Wynne and provincial NDP leader Andrea Horwath are meeting this afternoon to try and iron out a few more details of the most recent provincial budget. One point that the New Democrats are not too fond of is the Liberal plan to allow carpool lanes to be used by single drivers, if those drivers pay a voluntary toll—thus undermining the purpose of the lanes currently restricted to vehicles with multiple occupants and vehicles with green plates. The PC party has already stated that they will not support the budget, so without the help of the NDP, the minority Liberal government will fall. Maybe Wynne and Horwath should drive over to the meeting together—see what that feels like?

A new poll shows that the majority of Torontonians support the city taking over Bixi’s bike-sharing operations in Toronto. Bixi is currently facing mounting financial problems, but even though people want to see the service continue, they also want to see it pay for itself.

Turns out that it was McGuinty’s idea (according to McGuinty, now that he is no longer Premier) to move those gas plants from Mississauga and Oakville. Case closed. Now we can all stop worrying about the millions of dollars in lost money. Right, McGuinty?

Mathematics is an important part of any student experience. Most 13- and 14-year-olds, however, aren’t prepared to really get the full weight or context of advanced functions. For this reason, it is important that math be put in terms that they can understand. That said, those terms might not be best explained with the same diagrams intended for gay bars or bathhouses.

Despite RoFo’s hissy-fit-like objections (that’s how we picture them), Toronto City Council voted 27-to-13 in favour of debating a city manager’s report that Mayor Ford’s executive committee had previously decided to defer any consideration of. Debating other revenue tools, such as taxes or road tolls to help fund transit, of course does not mean implementing these things, but it does however (hopefully) mean people talking about pros and cons, looking at the issues, forming rational thoughts, and putting the best interests of constituents forward. Not debating issues usually means none of those thing.

The Scarborough Hospital is continuing a path of cuts to services and the most recent round is extending to nearly half a million dollars worth of diabetes education and palliative beds. To balance its budget, the hospital is currently looking for $19.6 million in savings. In addition to cutting services and enacting changes that will result in increased patient wait times, the hospital is in the process of eliminating nearly 200 positions.

Nearly 600 of the school bus drivers in the city, working for both the Toronto District School Board and the Toronto Catholic District School Board, will not be taking to the streets (well, actually they will) as a tentative deal was reached about an hour before the strike deadline of 12:01 this morning. According to the boards, a strike could have directly affected over 4,000 students, mostly from the secular board. Good news, kids.

The illustrious mayor Ford would rather not know just yet what the rest of city council thinks of a Toronto casino. Through a rarely used device in the Mayor’s municipal arsenal, Ford has removed the casino vote from next week’s meeting agenda and is instead working on planning a special meeting on the topic for sometime later in May. It seems that Ford doesn’t feel very lucky about his casino prospects.

If you own a car, then the Ontario budget being released Thursday has a definite sweet spot for you. This budget will set, as a target, a price drop of 15 per cent on car insurance. The Liberals cut car insurance rates by 10 per cent in 2004, but within 6 months the rates had snapped back to their original level, so don’t call us skeptical for not running out to buy a red sports car and hiring a 16-year-old chauffeur.

Officials from the city’s public health office are expressing concern that parents are delaying their children’s vaccinations for thing like measles or polio because of scientifically baseless fears that the injections may be linked to autism. The report follows a measles outbreak that happened at a city daycare back in February in which public health officials say that some parents were hesitant to get their children vaccinated for the virus because of the supposed links to autism.

Go, run out the door and be blissfully ignorant of the calorie and sodium content of your favourite food while you can. Because, if Toronto’s medical officer of health, Dr. David McKeown, has his recommendations turned into reality, you might need to stare some unhappy and unhealthy numbers in the face next time you order something from the fast-food breakfast sandwich genre, or one of it’s later-day counterparts. McKeown is suggesting that Toronto follow-suit, albeit with a stricter set of rules, of New York City and soon all of America, where the calorie count of food must be prominently displayed at many chain restaurants.

The Leafs have made the playoffs, great. Now the team can finally start charging a higher price for their tickets. Granted, charging more for playoffs tickets is common practice, but here in Toronto, you should expect to pay an extra 75 per cent for the first-round post-ticket tickets. No, actually you shouldn’t expect to pay that much more, because you probably can’t afford them anyways.

A real estate company with major stakes near Exhibition Place is raising the question of whether or not the city can actually give the conditional approval to a casino in the city, as the mayor wants. The mayor’s executive committee has voted to support a casino opening downtown, but they want to put a set of over 40 conditions on any approval they send to the province (whom cannot put a casino anywhere without the blessing of the local municipal council). Problem is, there does not seem to be anything in the provincial regulations that say the conditions on the approval would even be valid.

You had better start stocking up on your spirits, wine, and better beer, because workers at the LCBO could possibly go on strike as early as next month. The union, who has already voted strongly in favour of a strike mandate is looking for movement from the province, which, for its part, says that there is no money for wage increases.

The city of Toronto and our bike-sharing service provider, Bixi, are exploring some restructuring possibilities. Bixi Toronto owed the city $3.9 million as of the end of last year and according to Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34 Don Valley East), the chair of the Public Works committee, it is currently looking to off-load the Toronto franchise and others. Apparently something is not working.

Canada’s largest hotel, the Delta Chelsea, will be getting a new name as of July 1, 2013. The hotel on Gerrard Street West between Bay Street and Yonge Street will soon be known as the Eaton Chelsea—the first Eaton hotel in Canada.

Four of the city’s largest taxi companies have agreed to stop the illegal practice of charging people that use wheelchairs extra fees for their rides in cabs. This action is part of the outcome of a four-year-old complaint to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario by Torontonian Alessia Di Virgilio. As part of the settlement, the companies named in the complaint will ask city hall to update the tariff and bill of rights posted in cabs to better reflect this fact. Additionally, a person making a complaint will be able to find out the outcome of their complaints.

An American man has made a voluntary return to our fair city to hand himself into the police on 26 charges flowing from the 2010 G20 in Toronto. Joel Bitar of New York is accused of causing $400,000 worth of damages during the summit. What a busy boy he must have been.

CORRECTION: April 17, 2013, 4:30 PM This post originally stated that the Delta Chelsea is on Gerrard Street East, it has been corrected to Gerrard Street West.

Guess what? Mayor Ford isn’t in favour of the proposed plan to create a massive underground bicycle parking station at City Hall. In fact, he has promised that he will make sure it doesn’t see the light of day. No, we probably didn’t need to mention this, but if we hadn’t then we couldn’t say we told you so when it does get built.

Rob Ford also thinks that you should stay away from construction if you want to avoid traffic (and the local businesses that feel the financial pains of nearby roadwork). Okay, we added the second part, but don’t forget about them. The city has released a list of the major roadwork for 2013. This year, Toronto will be spending about $170 million and fixing-up about 100 km of roadway. Included in the list of local streets prepared to frustrate all but the most even-keeled are Bloor Street West between Bathurst Street and Lansdowne Avenue, Dufferin Street south of Dundas Street, and a bunch of Yorkville. Enjoy. Driving rhetoric is alway fun.

A deeper look into the orders that police officers received from higher-ups during the 2010 G20 in Toronto has been officially requested of an Ontario judge by Torontonian Jason Wall, a man who spent 28 hours in the Eastern Avenue prisoner processing facility following his arrest on charges of wearing a disguise with intent (he had a bandana on his neck). Two officers are currently facing charges stemming from this arrest, but Wall and his defense team want to know whether there were actually widespread orders to simply arrest anyone with a bandana.

Spring was good, summer was totally rad, autumn was just beautiful this year, but now it is apparently winter again. Have a great day.

While this won’t all be officially over for another month—and maybe still not then—the direction of city council is turning more and more each day away from a downtown casino. With 23 votes needed for a majority on council, there are currently 21 councillors that have come out strongly against the idea of building a casino in the city’s centre and only nine that are pro-casino. Look forward to a lot of lobbyists “bumping into you” at city hall over the next month, undecided councillors.

Last year, Toronto’s Island Airport sent/received 1.9 million people—a 23 per cent increase over the previous year. Billy Bishop Airport (which is not to be confused with the other airport named after Billy Bishop, located in Billy’s hometown of Owen Sound) apparently also generated “$2 billion in economic output.” Whatever that really measures, it probably means the City can finally get the millions of dollars it is owed by the Toronto Port Authority, right? Nope?

City staff are recommending a change of plans for where to concentrate efforts first on the crumbling Gardiner Expressway. Originally, staff had proposed that work begin on the East side, but as of yesterday, those plans have changed because some points on the west side are deteriorating faster than the damaged areas along the rest of the road. Luckily, the Gardiner doesn’t run much east of the Don Valley. If it did, city crews starting on the west would probably just talk about how they really should spend more time on the east side this summer, but never actually do it.

Taxes? Bllaaaghhhbh. Casino.

According to their external auditor, the Ontario Federation of Labour is staring into a deepening money problem. A note from the auditor explains that it is not that the OFL, which represents around 1 million workers in the province, is spending more money than they bring in or that it is paying for things on credit, but rather that the federation is saddled with relatively hefty pension and benefit obligations. Last year OPSEU, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, effectively left the OFL because of finance concern.

A Scarborough Seafood restaurant has been served $10,000 in fines for a dish that counted the threatened (but should maybe be listed as endangered) spiny soft-shelled turtle as a key ingredient. Up until a routine inspection found 31 of the the turtles inside Fortune Seafood Restaurant’s freezer, the eatery was making soup from the cute little reptiles. They even went as far as to proudly say so on their menu.

On an entirely different note, played on a different instrument, Ontario’s Local Food Act was re-tabled earlier this week by Premier Kathleen Wynne. The act will create funding for local food initiatives and education programs aimed at promoting food from Ontario. The act has already died once before, when former Premier Dalton McGuinty shuttered the legislature and stepped down, but it should make it this time.

In light of a new GTA casino-to-be, workers at Woodbine slots have voted in favour of a strike action as part of their ongoing labour negotiations with the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation. The roughly 300 workers, most of who are part time, are looking for more job security as a new casino could start etching away the profits of Woodbine. Come on, slots workers, live a little. Why have job security when you could pull the big lever of life? It’s just got to payoff soon. Can’t you just feel it? Or, do you think that the house might have the odds in their favour?

Get your racing sacks back out of storage and be prepared for a choir of out-of-tune first graders to melt you heart with their rendition of the ABCs or maybe, if you’re lucky, a rarely heard b-side, because extracurriculars are about to come kicking and screaming back in to elementary schools across the province. The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario said last night that the boycott should end as talks with the province appear to be going well.

Charging people to park at GO stations seems to be a counter-intuitive idea, according to Glen Murray, our provincial Transportation Minister. The former mayor of Winnipeg pointed out that in many places the only reasonable way to get to GO lines is to drive, so charging to park would probably mean less people taking trains and buses as part of their commutes. Metrolinx had recently floated the idea of charging for parking to raise more transit funding.

Cyclists can now ride beside each other on city streets without fear that an old, redundant by-law would be grounds for an officer to give them grief. Yesterday, the city’s public works committed voted unanimously to scrap the law, which many view as redundant to a section of the Highway Traffic Act that requires cyclists to move over should a quicker vehicle want to pass.

Because it’s not litter if you suck on it first. Right? Wrong. While litter on the whole is decreasing in Toronto (yay!), cigarette butts increasingly constitute the largest portion of tossed and dropped garbage in the city. According to the general manager of the solid waste management division, butts are one of the most difficult things to clean up from city streets. This probably doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone that has ever looked down.

Today, council will be looking at changing the way that lobbyist-councillor interactions are reported and when those lobbying efforts can occur. A lobbying “curfew,” which was proposed in the fallout from 2005’s computer licensing scandal, is intended to help keep tabs on what lobbyists want from officials and to make sure that there is less of an opportunity for either side to be taken advantage of.

Lastly, today is the first day of spring. So, get out your light jackets, put away the warm boots, and be prepared to enjoy the sounds of chirping birds while flowers bloom all around you.

We only have ourselves to blame—unless you live in a residential home, then you have mostly condo and apartment dwellers to blame. But still, blame yourself a little because Toronto has still not hit the mark on diverting 70 per cent of our waste from landfills by 2010. That year has long since passed, and apartments and condos are only diverting 25 per cent of their waste, while houses are at a better, but still below-grade 64 per cent.

This year’s Luminato festival is getting a new featured event courtesy of the New York Times. The TimesTalks events will feature conversations between Times journalists and luminaries such as Willem Dafoe and Atom Egoyan over two days.

A construction worker died yesterday in the northwest of the city after being crushed beneath a concrete slab. The Ministry of Labour is investigating the events that lead to the tragedy at the construction site. The crews were contracted by the city to install the sewer-service for an industrial building.

Margaret Atwood, Toronto’s Twitter laureate, is taking issue with U of T’s plans for an synthetic replacement to the school’s back campus. As we have mentioned before, the space is set to be used for the 2015 Pan Am Games’ field hockey competition and international rules for the sport require a synthetic field—however, well functioning sewage systems require dirty, porous ground. Atwood implied that she may not leave money to the university in her will over the “anti-green plan.” Peggy, we promise that we aren’t laying fake grass anywhere. Just saying.

“Would you be suspended if caught going 45 over [the speed limit]?” That was the stupid response a spokesperson from the Toronto Catholic District School Board gave after a teacher was apparently caught driving a van of 12 students at 146 km/h. The teacher, Paul Melnik, was given a ticket for driving with more than 10 passengers—something that he does not have the proper licence for—in addition to the speeding ticket. At the time, Melnik was driving the school basketball team that he coaches to a tournament in Windsor. Really? You were in that much of a hurry to get to Windsor?

Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West) seems to have pushed for a section of Islington Avenue, which was paved and used for parking by local businesses, to be reclaimed by the City in 2008. Thing is, his family members had owned four of the five units in the plaza that benefited from the parking spaces on City property, but they all sold their holdings in the plaza within a week of each other a couple years before this happened. Some terribly foolish councillors just never catch a break.

Inching ever closer to a run at Toronto’s mayoral seat, Olivia Chow now says that she is “considering it.” Chow has, up to this point, mostly avoided any indication that she will run in the next municipal election, generally stating that she is “listening” to the people.

A superjail, sung to the tune of $622 million and located in Etobicoke, is going unused (and not because the $622 million went to crime prevention programs). Rather, the province is unable to get the staff needed to run it. This not only has ramifications for the corrections staff and inmates who are set to be transferred over from other facilities, but also for Bridgeport Hospital, which is set to gain what is currently the Toronto Jail, is still waiting for that to come available.

Hundreds of Toronto District School Board employees will be out of work, as nearly $28 million in staffing cuts were approved by the board last night. The notices will go out by mid-April, mostly to secondary school teachers.

Put your hands together (and then leave them together) for zoning bylaws. That’s what Mayor Ford and a few other councillors are expected to do at a prayer rally alongside noted anti-gay-rights “Doctor” Charles McVety. As part of the ongoing harmonization of the City’s rules, a new zoning bylaw will make it illegal for places of worship to be put in light industrial zones. McVety doesn’t like that idea, so he is holding a prayer rally.

It’s a good time to start calculating your weregild, because blood money could be coming to Toronto. A new plasma collection company plans to open their doors at two locations in the city and if they receive the clearance they need from Health Canada, you could get about $20 for giving what’s in you to give. This practice of paying for plasma donations is currently in place across the US and in Winnipeg, but the World Health Organization is encouraging all countries to move towards only unpaid donations.

Prayers aside, Ford is not planning on asking tax payers to foot his legal bill. Instead, he’s asking a single tax payer to cover his costs. That is, if Ford does not receive the full amount of his legal costs from Paul Magder, the private citizen who brought Ford’s recent conflict of interest case forward, then the Mayor will not ask the city for any cash to cover his expenses.

Do you remember yesterday, when we told you about an apparent discrepancy in who can and who can’t easily get an appointment with a family doctor? Well, it turns out that maybe you shouldn’t be a baby either.

The Bowmanville Zoo is coming under scrutiny from an American animal rights organization that claims the pending transfer of an Asian elephant to the facility is rooted in commercial pursuits, not breeding, as the zoo claims. The zoo, as you might expect, denies the claim. Just imagine the look on that elephant’s face when he finds out that the fatherhood he was promised was all just a sham to get him to come live in a very elephant un-friendly climate.