news
Newsstand: June 8, 2011
Illustration by Sasha Plotnikova/Torontoist.
It’s official: waking-up-in-a-puddle-of-sweat season has begun. But today’s news might make you want to stay in bed: Toronto’s budget chief wants the City to keep the land transfer tax, Toronto teachers will be given time off work to campaign against the Tories, and the deputy mayor wants to clean up the streets, one squeegee kid at a time.
Rob Ford has done a pretty good job of fulfilling campaign promises, what with the whole killing Transit City and scrapping the vehicle registration tax. But City budget chief Mike Del Grande (Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt) recommends that, to combat Toronto’s deficit, the City stray from Ford’s campaign pledge to nix the land transfer tax, which brings in approximately $300 million each year on the backs of home buyers. Ford has yet to publicly respond, but we’re all hoping for a good tantrum with at least a couple of bulging veins.
The Toronto chapter of Ontario’s secondary school teachers’ union will pay for Toronto teachers to take up to two days off in exchange for campaigning for either Liberal or NDP candidates in the upcoming provincial election, which should boost those teachers’ popularity in human rights and philosophy classes across the city. Conservative-supporting teachers will have no such luck, but hey, they could probably hire those Green Men, who should have some free time pretty soon.
While really anything would be an improvement to the current state of Toronto’s waterfront, Waterfront Toronto has announced it will be equipping the area with an ultra-high-speed broadband internet network for the condo dwellers and web companies expected to come knocking as soon as there are actual doors to knock on. On this network, residents in the future West Don Lands and East Bayfront developments will have internet access as much as 500 times faster than elsewhere in the city. Hopefully, more indoor slides will be coming as well.
A new report finds Toronto and the GTA’s economic development wasteful and ineffective, arguing municipalities should band together à la Metrolinx on economic development initiatives, according to the Toronto Star. Written by the Toronto Board of Trade, the report asks that the next Ontario government make the city a top priority, so let’s shine our shoes, adjust the bow in our hair and get ready to be wooed.
A squeegee kid’s attack on a driver who confronted him at the intersection of Queen and Spadina yesterday has deputy mayor Doug Holyday (Ward 3, Etobicoke Centre) now calling for a city-wide ban on squeegee kids in addition to the ban on panhandling he called for last week. But before people get all worked up about this, Holyday would like to remind you that 80 per cent of homeless people in the city are not originally from Toronto, which clearly makes them less than human. Next up in Holyday’s vendetta against loafers on city streets: pigeons, hotdog vendors and those people that stand in front of stores handing out coupons.