news
Newsstand: April 7, 2010
lllustration by Clayton Hanmer/Torontoist.
It’s a big day for Toronto’s billboard tax and the Beautiful City arts coalition that fought for it. Today, the city’s executive committee will vote on whether or not to use the new tax’s estimated ten million dollars of annual revenue to fund arts and culture, as Beautiful City had lobbied for. At the same time, the tax faces two legal challenges mounted by sign companies, who argue that it amounts to an illegal indirect tax, since the ad companies will pass the increased cost on to ad clients and landowners who rent out sign space. See the line of thinking, there? Indirect, isn’t it? Practically crooked? That’s for the Ontario Superior Court to decide, now.
Two men caught spelunking in Toronto sewers have been slapped with mischief charges. The two men, Michael Cook and Andrew Edmond, are urban explorers and photographers who have each detailed their previous adventures on their websites vanishingpoint.ca (which includes a guide to Toronto’s hidden drainways) and undermontreal.com—but depending on how the pair’s legal situation turns out, those sites might be headed for an indefinite hiatus.
A Toronto court heard yesterday that an accused rapist and murderer knew he was HIV-positive. Though it pales in comparison to the other charges William Imona-Russel faces, people with HIV are required by law to disclose their status to partners before sex. It’s unclear at this point what bearing this information will have on the trial of Imona-Russel, who was linked by DNA evidence to the rape and murder of his neighbour Yasmin Ashareh. Ashareh’s body was found in a bag behind the townhouse where both she and Imona-Russel lived.
And an almost three-year-long stint of “sprucing up” is about to begin at Nathan Phillips Square. Revitalizing the aging grounds of Toronto City Hall was the goal of a 2007 design competition, which Torontoist’s favourite entry won. The $42.7 million plan, created by Toronto-based architectural firms Plant Architect and Shore Tilbe Irwin & Partners nods at Viljo Revell’s original design for the square. Scheduled for completion in 2012, the updated site will have three hundred more trees, a disappearing fountain, and a high-fronted, glass tourist information and bike rental kiosk, among other changes.
“Jerzy” Rucinsky, a well-known and generally well-regarded homeless man who got by as an odd-job handyman despite missing his left leg, was bludgeoned to death and possibly carried to a West Toronto laneway somewhat far from where police believe he usually lived. Police are reviewing surveillance footage from TTC property in the hopes of learning more about the homicide.
And an Oshawa politician is demanding a $325,000 salary cap for employees paid by the province. Oshawa city councillor Robert Lutczyk added his voice to a chorus of backlash following the release of Ontario’s annual list of public-sector employees earning one hundred thousand dollars or more. Toronto had a record number of employees on the list, largely because of overtime paid during last summer’s strike. With government budgets already strained, the list has been a prominent target for abuse.
Speaking of strained budgets, we’ll learn the fate of Transit City on May 19. That’s when provincial transit authority Metrolinx will present its plans to meet the McGuinty government’s demand to delay construction on four billion dollars’ worth of Transit City projects. City Hall’s position is that “transit delayed is transit denied,” but Metrolinx CEO Robert Prichard would say only that there is broad public support for expanded transit in the GTA. Check back in six weeks to find out what that means to him.
This article originally said that the Nathan Philips revitalization was “scheduled for completion in 2010″—it’s 2012.