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Newsstand: April 26, 2012
Like moths to a flame, so too news to a Thursday. Engulf yourself in some: a plan for regional road tolls to fund transit, some figures on TTC delays, extra money found at City Hall, G20 activist plans to sue, and a scammer is targeting desperate apartment seekers.
Yesterday we told you some councillors were bandying about the idea of road tolls to fund public transit. Well, today, things got real. Councillor Josh Matlow (Ward 22, St. Paul’s) is planning on putting forth a motion at the next council session to get a group of staff going on a study of road tolls and sales tax increases to raise money for transit. Matlow wants to see not just Toronto City staff working on this, but also staff from surrounding municipalities and the province. And before you go saying, “Sure Matlow. Up to your old tricks again, I see,” consider that TTC Chair Karen Stintz has said she’ll second the motion.
Speaking of transit, councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34, Don Valley East) is using sort-of facts to prove a sort-of point about delays on the system. Minnan-Wong made a freedom of information request to get data on all service disruptions on the entire system for all of 2010 and 2011. The TTC decided Minnan-Wong had bit off more than he could chew and offered the data for buses in the month of March 2012 (which came out to 8,187 individual delays). But of course that number comes without context or explanations, and is not, according to TTC spokesman Brad Ross, an official response to the councillor’s request. But it’s a weirdly high number, and so it will do for Minnan-Wong, who called the figure “shocking.”
Thanks to some confusion around budget time and a new deal with the Toronto District School Board to use some of their pools for City programs, there’s some extra cash at City Hall. About half a million dollars are now freed up that the budget committee will think about what to do with at their meeting on Friday. Some plans include keeping outdoor pools open that were slated to close, maintaining day care service, and restoring the 311 email service. All we have to say is this: you can’t cool off in an email on a hot summer’s day.
A jilted G20 activist is planning to sue an undercover police officer who befriended the activist ahead of the summit. Julian Ichim is also suing the province and the Toronto Police Services Board, all to the tune of $4 million.
We’ve all been there, checking Craigslist every 20 minutes only to see all the purple links from the apartment ads you’ve already looked at. Planning your route via Padmapper so as not to miss any potential rentals in the neighbourhood you’ve been eyeing. Missing out on countless places because the couple ahead of you came to their showing armed with neatly printed copies of their pay stubs and references, and a couplet they wrote just for the landlord. So when a listing comes along that is cheap and good-looking and right in the area you were looking at, don’t be fooled. You know it’s too good to be true.