news
Extra, Extra: Xtra, Core Service Review Revisited, and a Tragic Death
Every weekday’s end, we collect just about everything you ought to care about or ought not to miss.
Photo by Ian Muttoo from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
- Today marks the 31st anniversary of Xtra, and sadly it is also their last print issue. The pioneering LGBTQ bi-monthly magazine played a crucial role in the Toronto media landscape, documenting the AIDS crisis, addressing stories that other publications would not, and fighting for various rights and justice issues, including gay-straight alliances in publicly funded schools. The magazine will continue to exist as a digital-only publication, but we’ll miss those pink newspaper boxes.
- Remember the City’s 2011 core service review conducted by KPMG? And how they were supposed to analyze the effectiveness of city services so the City would have a good sense of the costs and benefits of what it provides? Well, a report [PDF] from the City’s Auditor General concludes that no formal evaluation of the consultant’s performance was done, and that the benefit the City claimed from the review was dramatically overstated. The City claimed savings in excess of $110 million from the review; the Auditor General disagrees and puts the number closer to $16 million. Either way, it’s more than the $3.5 million spent on the review.
- On Thursday morning, a three-year-old boy named Elijah wandered out of his apartment building by Allen and the 401. A massive search ensued, but by the time he was found six hours later, it was too late. Elijah, who wandered out to the -15 weather in a t-shirt and Pull-Ups―the apartment lobby door locks when closed―was reportedly staying with his grandmother.
Like Torontoist? Send us tips, get involved, or follow us through Twitter, Facebook, or RSS.