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Newsstand: October 20, 2011
Oh Thursday, why can't you be more like Friday? Or a taco night, can you at least be a taco night? At the very least, give us some news will ya: police budget goes up instead of down after much public wrangling; private garbage collection bid is good, maybe too good; TTC operators will have to submit to random testing; and the eternal mystery of the SPUD tag revealed. Maybe.
Looks like police chief Bill Blair will get his way when it comes to the force’s budget. The police services, like every other City department, say it with us now, were asked to cut 10 per cent from their budget. But here’s where the similarities stop. The police, unlike other City departments, are kind of technically raising their 2012 budget. Some are blaming the chief’s apparent inability to lower the budget on the 11.5 per cent police salary increase Mayor Rob Ford approved earlier this year. No worries about bad optics though, since Ford-allied councillor Frances Nunziata (Ward 11, York South-Weston), who also sits on the police services board, is dubbing the $936 million budget request (0.6 per cent higher than 2011’s budget of $930 million) a “huge reduction.” So that’s settled.
Driving a bus? That’s a swabbin’. Operating a subway train? Oh, you better believe that’s a swabbin’. It’s official, TTC operators can expect to be randomly tested for drug and alcohol impairment while on the job. The plan was approved by the commission on Wednesday and could be implemented within a year. Union leader Bob Kinnear questions where the money for such a program will come from at a time when the TTC is being forced to cut service to meet City Hall’s demands for budget reductions. He also expressed some sort of strange paranoia about the DNA from mouth swabs being sent to labs by post, saying “I’ve got to tell you, personally I’m not comfortable with my DNA being circulated or being thrown into the mail to wherever it goes.” Which, only now that Kinnear mentions it, does sound a little weird.
A blight on SPUD tags in the city may be upon us, as Toronto Police have arrested and charged three men seen painting the monolithic homage to potatoes on the side of a Queen West building. Since the “SPUD” tag is visible all over the city, often in big letters at the top of high walls, police say the number of tags out there could result in “quite significant” dollar values for damages.
The City is one step closer to outsourcing trash collection in some parts of town. Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34, Don Valley East) declared Green For Life Environmental East Corporation’s proposal the winning bid. As excited as Minnan-Wong may be, council still has to approve the recommendation. And that may prove a bit trickier than just standing up in front of some people and saying the bid has been approved. There is some skepticism that the low-ball bid, a good $3.5 million lower than the next lowest bidder, could be too good to be true. But Kawartha Lakes recently decided not to renew a contract with Green For Life, despite the low low price tag, and you know what they say: What’s not good enough for a city of 80,000 is good enough for us.
And the Air and Space Museum may fly again.