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Newsstand: December 16, 2010
Illustration by Jeremy Kai/Torontoist.
Thursday, I love you, but you’re bringing me down: projects in priority neighbourhoods have an uncertain future, the TTC says the TTC is essential but Transit City’s not so much, half of 200 Wellesley goes home, and a seventeen-year-old murderer’s adult sentence sticks.
Coming off the heels of news of Toronto’s growing economic disparity, the Globe and Mail reports that programs aimed at the city’s thirteen priority neighbourhoods have an uncertain future going into 2011. A $40-million priority neighbourhood initiative launched five years ago has seen its resources depleted and is preparing to report on its progress to council. Similarly, a pilot project launched by David Miller to transform high-rise slab apartment buildings is ready to lose its training wheels and take wing. Both these initiatives will require money in order to continue. Oh, and in case you’ve forgotten (or blocked it from your mind in order to preserve your holiday merry): Rob Ford is the mayor.
It’s “uncertain times for projects in progress” day at City Hall (that’s not actually a day—don’t get too excited): the TTC has put the work of several design companies aside and a plan to fill one hundred new jobs on hold while they figure out how to, and we quote, “rethink the city’s transit priorities in a way that will please its new mayor.” Solution: cover those priorities in gravy, natch. No, seriously though, it’s looking like the commission’s mayor-pleasing includes plans to quietly smother the likes of the-project-formerly-known-as-Transit-City. Well, shit.
Speaking of the TTC, Ford’s hope of declaring transit an essential service was supported by a 6–1 vote by the Commission in favour of that move. The lone hold-out was Ward 9, York Centre Councillor Maria Augimeri (pinkos represent). The TTC’s recommendation will be brought to council, who will have to decide whether to formally request that the McGuinty government tattoo the TTC with the “essential” brand. Council is meeting today to discuss a number of Rob Ford’s campaign promises. Friday Newsstand, we wish you godspeed.
In halfway good news, more than one hundred families are finally moving back into 200 Wellesley Street East after being ousted from their homes by fire nearly three months ago. We say half-and-half on the good-news/bad-news front because while residents of the lower floors of the tower are moving back in over this week, those whose apartments are on the upper floors will have to wait until the new year to go home.
David Bagshaw was a few days short of his eighteenth birthday when he stabbed Toronto teenager Stephanie Rengel on New Year’s Day, 2008, and yesterday his lawyer’s bid that his current life sentence be reduced to a youth sentence was overturned by the Ontario Court of Appeal. At his original trial, Bagshaw pleaded guilty to stabbing Rengel six times at the urging of his jealous girlfriend Melissa Todorovic, who was also convicted of first degree murder. Despite the fact that psychological assessments peg Bagshaw at an emotional maturity of 12–14 years old, the court ruled that his adult sentencing stands. Of course, your favourite columnist and ours, the Globe‘s C-Blatch, she of the measured, hyperbole-free prose, weighed in on this one with a wee Shakespeare allusion. Don’t even get us started.