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Newsstand: March 8, 2011
Illustration by Jeremy Kai/Torontoist.
It’s the one hundredth annual International Women’s Day! Oh what a day. In the news: customer complaints about TTC drivers’ cell phone use are up, council considers a motion to oust remaining TCHC board members and replace the whole lot with former councillor Case Ootes, TEA pans new transit plan, and parties and graffiti rage on.
Gee this TTC driver cell phone use thing sure is getting confusing. Let’s try a recap: over the weekend, union president Bob Kinnear warned members that the mayor’s office had ordered an over-zealous enforcement blitz on cell phone use in order to drum up support for making the TTC an essential service. On Monday, TTC Chair Karen Stintz said the cell phone policy had not changed at all, and she questioned why Kinnear would “agitate his members and link those two issues.” Kinnear then responded, saying Stintz is out of touch with the issues at the TTC, and Sun reporter Don Peat made a funny with a Hitchcock reference. The mayor’s office denies all the accusations. All the while, TTC spokesperson Brad Ross maintains that education, not enforcement, is being stepped up, as drivers are reminded to step away from the wheel to use their phone. And the latest twist: the Star reveals that passenger complaints about distracted drivers have nearly doubled since the same time last year.
On to the next mess. The day after a tenant group launched a campaign opposing the privatization of public housing—and the forced resignation of the remaining tenant board members at TCHC—Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday has put together a motion that would force them out, should council approve it at Tuesday’s meeting. But don’t fret, TCHC tenants. You may be losing all the board members you elected, but the mayor hopes to lend you one of his closest allies, Case Ootes, to serve as “interim managing director.”
All the while, Giorgio Mammoliti does the dance of a thousand fails while he tries to avoid any responsibility. Yes, he was on the TCHC board when all that irresponsible spending was going down. No, that doesn’t mean he’s in anyway accountable. Yes, he suggested current board members resign even though they only just started the gig and all the badness was happening while he was there. No, wait, he never said they should resign, he just said he agrees with everything the mayor says. And the mayor said they should resign.
And another complicated tale: the fate of the city’s transit development. The Toronto Environmental Alliance has released a report and some maps claiming the mayor’s new transit plan would serve less than half as many people as Transit City would have. The report does not take into account the mayor’s proposed Sheppard subway extension because it won’t be funded by the $8.7 billion already pledged to transit by the provincial government.
As the graffiti clean-up debate rages on, so too do the “out of control” student parties at schools around town and across the country. No one’s quite sure what to do about either.
We originally referred to a special meeting of the TTC in this post, to deal with cell phone shenanigans; though the meeting is taking place, it is to discuss other matters.