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Weekend Newsstand: October 15, 2011
Some Saturdays you just have to throw back the covers, thump your chest, and scream out a Jerry Maguire quote. This is one of those Saturdays. Go get 'em. In the news: Toronto prepares for occupation, police budget process gets even more drawn out, more "For Sale" signs go up at TCHC properties, and road closures. Inevitable weekend road closures.
Wake up Toronto, you are now officially occupied. As of 10 a.m. Saturday morning, Toronto’s 99% joined in the ongoing global protest against corporate greed and growing income disparity. About 3,000 Facebook users said they’d show, along with unions and environmental groups expected to be among those gathering around King and Bay (and proceeding to an undisclosed location). Organizers maintain the plan is to keep things peaceful, but police and area business owners are not taking any chances. All parties—police, business, protesters—hope to avoid any G20-like scenes. Same here.
Speaking of the police, they have a massive budget (comprising the City’s largest expenditure). Chief Bill Blair’s current budget request is just shy of $1 billion. But like all other City departments, the mayor is demanding a 10 per cent budget cut. Instead, Blair asked for a 1.5 per cent increase. So the mayor sent him back to the drawing table. The new budget was supposed to be debated in a public meeting of the police services board on Friday morning, but doors were closed on the meeting and no budget was announced. Now, depending on who you ask, the big budget reveal was delayed (again) for different reasons. The board chair says the cuts weren’t sufficient, Frances Nunziata (Ward 11, York South-Weston) says a new board member needed time to catch up, and Mayor Ford says they needed more time because the board only received the budget that morning (that last one is probably a lie; Police staff say they received it the night before). The new new budget is set to be revealed on October 20.
The Toronto Community Housing Corporation is proposing the sale of 706 houses and “stand alone units” in order to fund repairs at other properties. The sale could bring in $400 million and save enough money on maintenance to add $12 million to the housing corporation’s annual repairs budget. Currently the TCHC is facing an estimated $650 million repairs backlog. About 2,600 tenants would be displaced from their houses and put into multi-unit housing, a move critics disparage for furthering the income divide across neighbourhoods. Before any houses can be sold, the province must approve the sale. They have yet to approve plans for the sale of 22 units that council agreed on earlier this year.
Construction crews unearthed a time capsule at Maple Leaf Gardens. Brick layers were working away, busy converting The Shrine into a Loblaws store and athletic centre for Ryerson University, when they found the capsule under some bricks by the entrance. Apparently they also found a newspaper from 1931, but Loblaws whisked the capsule away before anyone could get a look at it.
And a whole bunch of roads will be closed on Sunday due to the Scotiabank Waterfront Marathon.