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Newsstand: September 14, 2011
It's Wednesday, also known as the furthest distance between two weekends, for all you glass-half-empty people. In today's news: the City Manager will recommend against cutting libraries (for now), Rob Ford's feud with Waterfront Toronto escalates while his public support drops, and private pools will now have to disclose health violations.
Here’s some good news for bookworms and people who like to make weird Craigslist postings anonymously. Toronto’s libraries are safe from branch closures and service reductions, at least for now, as City Manager Joe Pennachetti said he would recommend against library cuts to City Hall for the coming year. Also, the City’s library board voted yesterday to delay any decisions on cuts until October, when many of its members will likely be out on their asses and replaced with mindless drones loyal to the mayor. Or maybe just Case Ootes.
And on one last “hooray for libraries” note, a pro-library essay contest with prizes such as meeting Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje got way more entries than an anti-tax essay contest with prizes such as meeting Doug Ford (Ward 2, Etobicoke North) and Ezra Levant. But it’s probably unfair to compare the two contests, given that, you know, they involved literacy skills.
A feud between Rob Ford and Waterfront Toronto CEO John Campbell that started last week in the pages of the Globe and Mail is continuing there. The paper reports Ford’s office has sent Campbell a very strongly worded letter regarding his comments last week on Ford’s idiotic Ferris wheel plan. Speaking on behalf of the mayor, brother Doug Ford said the administration wants to continue working with Campbell rather than trying to have him removed. Given that Toronto is in the midst of discovering just how much a Ford promise means, we’ll reserve judgment for now.
Speaking of Rob Ford, apparently we don’t like the guy as much as we used to, according to a recent poll that finds the mayor’s support is dropping across the city, even in the Ford Nation bastions of Etobicoke and Scarborough. The poll also found Torontonians don’t widely support the gutting of city services.
The city’s grimiest private pools will soon be known to the public as Toronto’s Board of Health has voted to post pool inspection results online in a similar fashion to the DineSafe program, and to force pools to post their latest health inspection results for swimmers to see. The decision comes out of a Toronto Star investigation that revealed many private pools repeatedly violate health and safety regulations. Kind of makes the urine, saliva and God-knows-what-else-filled waters of Toronto’s public pools sound more appealing.