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Newsstand: August 4, 2011
Thursday, got your Thursday here! Get it while it’s hot! In the news: more of Ford’s council allies are standing by their local library branches; the SIU is called in twice in one night; the mysteries of falling glass not so mysterious after all; and the founders of Music World are doing fine, don’t worry.
Members of the city council of contingent of Ford Nation are lining up to check out of making drastic cuts to the city’s libraries. First it was Karen Stintz. Then yesterday council speaker Frances Nunziata (Ward 11, York South-Weston) made her feelings about branch closures known. Now Michael Thompson (Ward 37, Scarborough Centre), Mayor Ford’s handpicked economic development chair, is giving Toronto’s “creative people” reason to hope for some fair consideration when the budget cuts finally do come. Thompson says he has “great respect” for Margaret Atwood and the budget process. And he pointed out that he’s been trying to get a new library built in his ward. AND he reminded us all that The Brothers Ford are only two council votes out of 45. Sounds like somebody passed Grade 10 civics.
While councillors are assuring library branches are safe from the chop (though not from “efficiencies”), the city’s top bureaucrat is stressing that all city services are in this together. If fire and police are spared cuts, says City Manager Joe Pennachetti, then other areas—like libraries, social services, and other “soft services”—will bleed even more to make up for it.
The Special Investigations Unit has been busy these days. The provincial body charged with investigating incidents of death, serious injury, or sexual assault in police matters was already looking into the fatal Caribana shooting. Now two separate incidents on Monday night have left two men dead. A total of eight officers have been designated, two as subject officers and six as witnesses, in an investigation of a scene that saw shots fired by police, a man dead of gunshot wounds, and a woman stabbed to death in Thornhill. And residents of a public housing unit in the Bloor and Christie area are wondering what their gentlemanly neighbour with special needs could have done to warrant a physical interaction with police. The man collapsed and died soon after the interaction with police.
Engineers are saying “I told you so” after a recent spate of glass panes have come loose from towers, shattering and crashing down to the streets around town. Glass is good-looking and all, but those nerds have always known that fluctuating temperatures, high winds, and inbred imperfections in the material can result in the sort of shardy showers seen in recent days.
The founders of Music World, a Toronto couple, have made a private donation of $2 million to famine relief in the Horn of Africa. That is super nice and inspiring, and also puts all our fears to rest that the owners of brick and mortar music stores were in trouble. Double phew!