politics
Duly Quoted: James Pasternak
“We’re also looking for candidates who really believe that, after approving so much in LRT in recent months, we would really get into subway visioning.”
—James Pasternak (Ward 10, York Centre), who sits on the City of Toronto’s Civic Appointments Committee. Pasternak was commenting to the Toronto Star about the hunt, now ongoing, for four citizen members to join the TTC Board: a fundamental change to the composition of the board, which is currently made up only of councillors. Apparently, the councillor has some fairly specific criteria in mind; in addition to a preference for subways, Pasternak also thinks current transit talk is too focused on downtown, and hopes to find candidates who will rectify that imbalance: “I don’t want to see North York left at the altar on transit any more.”
This isn’t necessarily a promising start to the City’s search for new blood at the TTC: as pointed out by transit watcher (and Torontoist contributor) Steve Munro, it’s not clear how adding board members who show up with particular policy commitments rather than open minds is going to help our already fraught transit debates.