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Weekend Newsstand: December 11, 2010
Illustration by Jeremy Kai/Torontoist.
Saturday news works hard for a living: no more free snacks for city councillors, the Gardiner is crumbling, more lessons in city planning from the Empire, and the cop version of Rate My Prof fills in for a public inquiry.
Are you sick and tired of waiting for a public inquiry into police actions during the G20? Are you just not getting what you need from the SIU’s investigations? Well, wait no longer, the internet is here to help: justice at last in the form of Rate My Prof, the cop version. So far, only one Toronto police officer is listed on Judge My Cop—a user-generated database of officer evaluations. Apparently, Mac O. was kind of rude while ticketing a motor vehicle offense. So come on internet, do your thing.
A quarter of Toronto tenants will be getting a break on their rent soon. Almost 130,000 households will get a notice about the rent reduction after the market value of the buildings they live in is reduced. Landlords pay less property tax, tenants pay less rent. And not landlord pays less tax, tenant gets evicted for taking rent reduction, as some landlords would try to make you believe.
In other free money news, the provincial government has started mailing out round two of the HST benefit cheques. Most of those who qualify—those who file tax returns and earn less than $82,000 a year—will get about one hundred dollars. And then promptly spend it all on egg nog.
Not too content to look to the mothership for city planning inspiration? Try a fellow Commonwealth nation. Melbourne’s director of city design was in town this week to share his wealth of city building expertise. Pinkos and Rob Ford executive team members sat side by side to hear Robert Adams’ tips for building a better city that serves its population for generations.
Maybe some of those Rob Ford execs were just there for the free food, since the mayor has moved to stop supplying free snacks and coffee at council meetings. A few years ago, council decided to meet from 9:30 a.m. till 8 p.m. without any break for dinner, so they bumped up the goods on the afternoon snack trays to tide them over. Now, the removal of the snack trays will save a paltry $48,000 a year from the city’s $9.2 billion operating budget and force councillors to cross the street for some Starbucks.
The Northern Secondary School student suspended for criticizing his school’s soccer program had his athletic privileges restored on Friday. Emil Cohen is really excited to work out—on Monday. Yeah, us too. See you on the treadmill.
Speaking of getting old and lazy, the Gardiner is falling apart a little bit. Some chunks of concrete the size of bread loaves crumbled onto the road near Yonge Street and Lake Shore Boulevard on Friday evening. No people were injured. Oh, and no cars either, don’t worry Ford.
And Nick Kouvalis—the man who came up with “gravy train”—has the worst Twitter bio of all time: “Thunder with style.” Rob Ford’s campaign manager and now chief of staff must not have had that one focus-grouped like the campaign slogans. Learn more about the gravy brain trust in this Toronto Star article likening him to Karl Rove. Apparently, even former Communist Party leaders think Kouvalis is a pretty smart guy, so maybe all that pinko stuff was misdirected.