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Newsstand: October 28, 2010
Illustration by Matt Daley/Torontoist.
Thursdays are for suckers: City Hall severance packages lead to a gravy mudslide, Buttonville goes from airport to cute clapboard town, and all the vanity license plates are too FCKN CRZY for YR EYES. But we’ll have to sit down with Dalton McGuinty to discuss that.
City politicians who have either retired or lost their seat will get to ride the infamous gravy train right out of City Hall, according to the National Post. The thirteen councillors who are giving up their places in municipal government and Mayor David Miller are entitled to severance packages worth a combined total of more than $1.2 million. They will receive one month’s pay for every year in office up to a maximum of a year’s salary.
Several news articles this morning about Rob Ford’s new tenancy as mayor (like the one mentioned above, and this one, and this one) have ended with some variation of: “Ford says he will have to sit down with Premier Dalton McGuinty to discuss [insert issue at hand here].” Godspeed, McGuinty.
The small Buttonville airport at the border of Toronto and Markham, which has served as a space for landing and housing small aircraft for fifty years, will be closed to make way for a real estate development. Following the severing of the small, busy airport’s funding from the Greater Toronto Aviation Authority in 2009, the family-owned airport can’t stay afloat. The real estate development horning in on the airport’s turf promises to build “a town within a city.” The good news is that this little wedge of suburbia has a ready-made cutesy name with Buttonville.
Residents near Weston road south of the 401 between King and Church streets have received letters giving word that their homes may be bought up in order to construct a GO transit line connecting Union Station with Pearson International Airport. Some of the residents have lived in their houses of upwards of two and three decades, and they say that the expropriation by Metrolinx is unexpected and unwelcome. Metrolinx is holding a public meeting this evening.
More than five hundred hotel workers at the downtown Delta Chelsea hotel have walked off the job to start a two-week-long picket. Taking a page from a series of shorter pickets at other hotels in recent months (Royal York during TIFF, Novotel Toronto Centre during the G20), members of Unite Here Local 75 at the Delta Chelsea have opted for a longer strike. The labour dispute centres around issues of working conditions and workload, job security, and benefits. Delta Chelsea hotel managers say that the hotel will continue to run smoothly.
The Toronto Star has put its muscle into some serious investigatory work, using a freedom of information request to obtain a list of all of the vanity license plate requests turned down by the Ontario government since 2006. Requests for vanity plates were rejected because they promote obscene, racist, or derogatory language or refer to “drugs, alcohol, sex, violence, criminal activity, law enforcement, public figures, politics, or religion.” Don’t worry, employees of the transportation ministry are using UrbanDictionary.com and Wikipedia to keep your eyes safe. The list is worth a gander if you’ve got the guts for it.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year: the flu shot rolls out across the city today, with clinics opening their doors to those looking for a good jab in the arm. Remember last year how we all freaked out over that pandemic that never came? Let’s not do that again.