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Newsstand: September 26, 2011
It's Monday, so remember to stop having fun and start being mean to Mondays everywhere. In the news: City Council gets ready to talk about cuts, baby, let's talk about cuts; councillors still not told which museums have the lowest attendance; the reason you see so few wheelchairs on the new subway trains; and the Air and Space Museum closes for good this time.
City Hall is bracing for a battle royale as Council begins meeting Monday morning to debate some big cuts. Even after last week’s meeting of Executive Council took a lot of big cuts—like those to libraries and daycare—off the immediate agenda, debate is still expected to be fierce. Grassroots activists and unions have organized demonstrations and rallied the troops with robocall campaigns leading up to this council meeting. Among the cuts up for debate this go around are the offloading of City-owned theatres, leasing or selling the zoo, and closing museums with low attendance numbers. And FYI: For anyone opposed to those big (but not library-big) cuts, CUPE expects about 10,000 people to show up to their 5:30 p.m. rally at City Hall on Monday evening. Just sayin’.
The funny thing about the vote to close sparsely attended museums is no one knows which of the city’s 10 museums have low attendance rates. Well, City staff knows, but councillors say they had not been enlightened as of Sunday night. Economic development chair Michael Thompson (Ward 37, Scarborough Centre) let us in on the secret, saying Fort York will be spared, and those in the know expect Spadina House’s recent makeover will keep it off the chopping block, too. But with local councillors rallying to save museums in their wards that may not even be targets, everyone is sure to stay tuned for the big reveal.
So remember how last week everyone was happy to hear about the six-month reprieve granted to the Canadian Air and Space Museum? As it turns out, Downsview Park expected those six months to be less about finding a solution for the financially struggling heritage spot and more about packing up the heritage into boxes ahead of the museum’s imminent shuttering. Saturday was the last day the old planes and satellites were on display to the public.
“Mind the gap” is taking on a new meaning for subway riders with disabilities. Turns out the new cool Rocket subway trains, the ones that still excite everyone when they pull up to the platform, are less exciting for passengers with wheelchairs and other mobility aids. Despite having fancy features like antimicrobial bars and fold away seats to accommodate wheelchairs, the train’s suspension is so high-tech and sensitive that unless the cars are pretty full there’s an insurmountable vertical gap between train and platform. The TTC says its engineers are working on the problem and hope to have it fixed by the time the Rockets are running on the entire Yonge-University-Spadina line.
And some sad news from the development community, Stephen Dupuis, the president and CEO of BILD Toronto died suddenly last week, just hours after receiving a lifetime achievement award.