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Mayor John Tory's Toronto

Jimmi T said:
I was baked most of my time there but from what I can remember Amsterdam is awesome for cyclists. I recall a big, separated path going right through the heart of the city.
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Wonder if the Canada Town in Amsterdam has the same problems with their bicycle lanes as Korea Town here in Toronto?
 
Why do only a some elitist residents get a mechanical leaf collection? Wasn't it to have been expanded cross the entire city where there are trees that drop leaves in the fall, or are we really only a desert and trees are scarce?

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Budget cuts at Toronto libraries ‘rip the heart out’: Keenan
Library board meeting looked at Mayor John Tory and city council’s direction that the library prepare a budget 2.6 per cent lower than the 2016 budget.

Agenda item 13 was a report from city librarian Vickery Bowles, “2017 Operating Budget – City Target.” It outlined recommendations in response to Mayor John Tory and city council’s direction that the library prepare a budget 2.6 per cent lower than the 2016 budget. The report makes clear that the library’s preferred budget, previously presented to the board, shows a 0.9 per cent increase over 2016 — a number she calls “responsible” given that in the past six years, the library’s budget has risen by less than half the rate of inflation.

Still, the demand is a budget proposal to cut 2.6 per cent, so an additional $6.195 million in savings needed to be found. (By way of comparison, the total provincial funding for the Toronto library system is $5.5 million.) Since 98 per cent of the budget is made up of staffing, collections (that is, the books and materials the library has) and fixed facilities and IT costs, there are not a lot of “other expenditures” to cut, Bowles’ report said.

So the proposal was to reduce library hours across the system, which would mean a “district” library like Cedarbrae might now close one weeknight evening per week, while a “neighbourhood” branch — 45 of them, in fact — would be closed three weeknight evenings per week. In all, the result would be 10.8 per cent reduction in the hours of service for the system, with 55 of the city’s 100 branches seeing their hours reduced. The report further suggested cutting the budget for acquiring library materials by 9.2 per cent.

There was not really a debate. There was an extended procedural discussion about the various ways of rejecting the recommendations — voting to “receive” them for information versus voting against them altogether — and how more information on the implications for specific branches could be requested if the board was officially rejecting the whole report. But no one in the room seemed to support the course of action outlined.

“I want to make clear I’m not recommending these service reductions,” Bowles said, even though the report’s language presented the contents as recommendations. “I’m presenting what it would take to meet the 2.6 per cent reduction.”

“This would rip the heart out of what we’ve been building up,” board member Ross Parry said at one point.

In the end, the board voted unanimously, 11-0, to reject the recommendations. This is, however, not the end of the matter. The city’s budget committee already has the report and will make its own decisions about what to do with it, and then the subject will go on to the mayor’s executive committee and then to city council. But perhaps it will be noted the library board opposes the cuts.
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https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/20...ronto-libraries-rip-the-heart-out-keenan.html
 
W. K. Lis said:
Why do only a some elitist residents get a mechanical leaf collection? Wasn't it to have been expanded cross the entire city where there are trees that drop leaves in the fall, or are we really only a desert and trees are scarce?

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Because it's cheaper to collect the leaves than fix the sewer damage if they didn't. That part of town is a mix of fragile sewers, mature trees, huge lots and limited street parking to get in the way of machinery.

Let's get rid of sidewalk shoveling but this has a decent business case.
 
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animatronic said:
Because it's cheaper to collect the leaves than fix the sewer damage if they didn't. That part of town is a mix of fragile sewers, mature trees, huge lots and limited street parking to get in the way of machinery.

Let's get rid of sidewalk shoveling but this has a decent business case.
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lets not get rid of sidewalk shoveling
 
I think Tory is playing with fire with the library cutbacks.

Even with the decline of the book, Toronto's world class library system is still heavily used by kids after school, seniors during the day, families on the weekends, study groups looking for free rooms, and job hunters with no home internet and printer. It is probably the one public service outside of utilities/infrastructure that is used by the widest spectrum of Toronto residents.
 
mjl08 said:
I think Tory is playing with fire with the library cutbacks.

Even with the decline of the book, Toronto's world class library system is still heavily used by kids after school, seniors during the day, families on the weekends, study groups looking for free rooms, and job hunters with no home internet and printer. It is probably the one public service outside of utilities/infrastructure that is used by the widest spectrum of Toronto residents.
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Not to mention it is something that Ford received major backlash towards, in the pre-crack days.

Some commentators even say that his attack on the libraries was the point where Ford's post-election honeymoon phase ended.
 
mjl08 said:
Lastman hasn't changed his tune. It's amazing to draw the similarities between him and Ford, from the policies down to the showmanship.
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I disagree. Lastman looks a lot more nuanced with his ideology than I remember, and it is clear from his comments that he understood the role of municipal government and responsibility of mayorship, and does care about the wellbeing and future of the city. Ford clearly did not, and Lastman's disgust with the Ford mayoralty is apparent.
 
WislaHD said:
I disagree. Lastman looks a lot more nuanced with his ideology than I remember, and it is clear from his comments that he understood the role of municipal government and responsibility of mayorship, and does care about the wellbeing and future of the city. Ford clearly did not, and Lastman's disgust with the Ford mayoralty is apparent.
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Lastman was a small-time conservative booster that was in way over his head when he went from being mayor of North York (which didn't demand a lot, since Metro looked after many of of the most important functions) to mayor of a newly amalgamated Toronto. Yes, he had similar politics to people like Paul Godfrey (who once dominated municipal politics), but he was mostly without Godfrey's nastiness.
 
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