news
Newsstand: February 8, 2011
Illustration by Jeremy Kai/Torontoist.
In the news this Tuesday: Rob Ford starts the privatization train, arson is to blame for the Yonge and Gould fire, and Adam Vaughan’s crusade against fun.
Starting with garbage collection, the Ford administration has begun plans to privatize anything that’s not nailed down at City Hall. On his way to dodge reporters greet a group of kids on a field trip, Mayor Ford confirmed that the City had faxed notice to the outside worker’s union of the City’s plan to privatize some services. Curbside collection from Yonge Street to the Etobicoke border, litter pickup in parks, and those street vacuum cleaners that almost run you down sometimes will be up for bids, pending council’s approval in May.
The fire that felled the Empress Hotel building on Yonge Street in early January was set intentionally. Police have confirmed that arson (or “fire-raising” in U.K. parlance) caused the blaze, but they haven’t made any arrests or identified a suspicious person seen entering the building shortly before the fire. Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam (Ward 27, Toronto Centre-Rosedale) is calling on the owners of the building, the Lalani family, to speak publicly about the incident.
City council gave Councillor Adam Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina) the two months of breathing room he requested, putting him kind of closer to his goal of taming the animal houses in the Annex. Vaughan has targeted a few frat houses he says use money they get from loaning their houses to film productions to throw awesome parties that bother the neighbours. He wants to have frat and sorority houses deemed as rooming houses so the City has more power to regulate them.