Mayor John Tory's Toronto

[Palma]

Never.

Elizabeth Church @lizchurchto
Cllr Berardinetti's motion to undo additions to planning staff made at council by Adam Vaughan last year passes. #TOpoli.

Mike Layton @m_layton
The budget committee just voted 4-2 to cut 8 heritage & area planners from the 2015 budget. TO Heritage planning will be delayed years.

Of all the areas to cut staff - they choose development? With all the growth that is taking place! Crazy

 

[nohostages]

Toronto police cut $5 million from budget as pressure on city mounts

http://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2015/02/20/toronto-police-cut-5-million-from-budget-as-pressure-on-city-mounts.html

Apparently not really. Click through to John Sewell's excellent parsing of the budget. Seems to be chock full of lies.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

This is insane. Who decides on these increases? Is it GFL? And council just passes the rate increase?

I could be wrong but yes I believe so.

Surprised this isn't larger news, consider we get fussy about a 2.75% Property Tax increase, when this alone will cost 1/3 of Torontonian homeowners what? >6% more per year?

 

[W. K. Lis]

How soon we forget. Used to be that we had twice a week garbage pickup. That is ALL garbage, which included paper, cans, bottles, yard waste, kitchen waste, etc.. Basically everything that was in our current blue or grey bins, were picked up twice a week, every week.

Then to "save" money, it was cut back to once a week. Then to "save" money, it was cut to every other week for contents of the grey bin, alternate weeks with the contents of the blue bin.

 

[salsa]

I could be wrong but yes I believe so.

Surprised this isn't larger news, consider we get fussy about a 2.75% Property Tax increase, when this alone will cost 1/3 of Torontonian homeowners what? >6% more per year?

Of all the areas to cut staff - they choose development? With all the growth that is taking place! Crazy

Welcome to John Tory's Toronto, and that of his sidekick DMW. Hiking user fees to make it more expensive for mothers to send their kids to play is perfectly fine, but asking homeowners to pay an extra $5 dollars a month is a non starter. It's the job of other governments to give money to a city that refuses to raise it's low property taxes, and that refuses to implement new revenue tools that were made available to us by said governments. It's turns out Rob Ford failed to find efficiencies or save money through privatization, so lets try that again shall we. A city with $10B budget can't afford to install a few electrical outlets, but Scarborough subway... can't touch that. City planners, heritage, accountability offices... we don't need that. Lets borrow money to balance the budget for now, and deal with next year's impending financial crisis some other time. Lets depend on the real estate market being as good as last year for the land transfer tax, the same tax that many conservatives want to kill. And so on.

 

[edmundoconnor]

Speak of the Denzil …

http://www.torontosun.com/2015/02/21/light-a-fire-under-waterfront-toronto

The reason that DMW is being rightly ignored is that he is a terminal penny-pincher who has no concept of value being released long-term. Even the editorial admits that the reason behind QQ rejuvenation being behind schedule is because Toronto Hydro made a mistake. But it blows past that fact to give a walloping to people and an organization the Sun simply doesn't like.

The sad fact is that when this value is unlocked, DMW or people like him will be eager to claim credit for it, claiming that they were the ones who kept WT honest. *head slap*

 

[JWBF]

Welcome to John Tory's Toronto, and that of his sidekick DMW. Hiking user fees to make it more expensive for mothers to send their kids to play is perfectly fine, but asking homeowners to pay an extra $5 dollars a month is a non starter. It's the job of other governments to give money to a city that refuses to raise it's low property taxes, and that refuses to implement new revenue tools that were made available to us by said governments. It's turns out Rob Ford failed to find efficiencies or save money through privatization, so lets try that again shall we. A city with $10B budget can't afford to install a few electrical outlets, but Scarborough subway... can't touch that. City planners, heritage, accountability offices... we don't need that. Lets borrow money to balance the budget for now, and deal with next year's impending financial crisis some other time. Lets depend on the real estate market being as good as last year for the land transfer tax, the same tax that many conservatives want to kill. And so on.

Actually, people pay property tax on rental units, and as I have heard, more PT on average than home owners; garbage is also in that mix for renters.

 

[Videodrome]

Forgive me if I am not all over Tory for some issues, but I guess it is just nice to have a mayor who doesn't make headlines internationally because he was drinking on the job. I don't agree with everything he does, but did people really want Doug Ford to win? Council will always be a mess, no matter who is mayor.

Tory can't magically fix City Council. So long as idiots like Mammo, Ford and Karygiannis are there, it won't be drama free.

 

[Palma]

How soon we forget. Used to be that we had twice a week garbage pickup. That is ALL garbage, which included paper, cans, bottles, yard waste, kitchen waste, etc.. Basically everything that was in our current blue or grey bins, were picked up twice a week, every week.

Then to "save" money, it was cut back to once a week. Then to "save" money, it was cut to every other week for contents of the grey bin, alternate weeks with the contents of the blue bin.

Then to save more money it was outsourced and now finally the rate increase

 

[DonValleyRainbow]

How soon we forget. Used to be that we had twice a week garbage pickup. That is ALL garbage, which included paper, cans, bottles, yard waste, kitchen waste, etc.. Basically everything that was in our current blue or grey bins, were picked up twice a week, every week.

Then to "save" money, it was cut back to once a week. Then to "save" money, it was cut to every other week for contents of the grey bin, alternate weeks with the contents of the blue bin.

So this has nothing to do with the fact that landfills are having decreasing capacity?

We are way behind other countires when it comes to diverting waste. Toronto is growing, our supply of places to dump garbage is decreasing. Decreased pick up and increased rates is an incentive to decrease how much we throw out.

 

[Riverdale Rink Rat]

So this has nothing to do with the fact that landfills are having decreasing capacity?

We are way behind other countires when it comes to diverting waste. Toronto is growing, our supply of places to dump garbage is decreasing. Decreased pick up and increased rates is an incentive to decrease how much we throw out.

Actually, due to (yes, that guy once again) Mayor Miller & his purchase of a dumpsite, Toronto has a pretty good handle on its waste needs.

Also, as I said in the other thread where he crossposted his faux outrage, Wisla is taking a $1 to $2 change and calling it a 100% increase. 'Cause, headlines. It sure doesn't sound as bad if you say the garbage fee went up $3 or so, does it?

 

[Cooper]

Actually, due to (yes, that guy once again) Mayor Miller & his purchase of a dumpsite, Toronto has a pretty good handle on its waste needs.

Also, as I said in the other thread where he crossposted his faux outrage, Wisla is taking a $1 to $2 change and calling it a 100% increase. 'Cause, headlines. It sure doesn't sound as bad if you say the garbage fee went up $3 or so, does it?

Except garbage only went up $3 people who have the small bins. Everyone else is paying between $32 and $126 more, but my read of the chart. At my house (medium bins), the increase will cost more than a 1% increase in my property taxes would cost. More than half of council would be shitting bricks if someone proposed raising taxes by another percentage point.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Used to be that the garbage collect "fees" were included in the property taxes (which includes those office towers downtown and print shops out near the airport). But to "save" money, they mostly separated it from the property tax and made it into a "user fee". So now instead of that print shop paying for your garbage collection from their property taxes, it's a "user fee" for that home owner.

 

[nohostages]

Actually, due to (yes, that guy once again) Mayor Miller & his purchase of a dumpsite, Toronto has a pretty good handle on its waste needs.

Also, as I said in the other thread where he crossposted his faux outrage, Wisla is taking a $1 to $2 change and calling it a 100% increase. 'Cause, headlines. It sure doesn't sound as bad if you say the garbage fee went up $3 or so, does it?

Expensive waste removal is kind of like expensive gas. It nudges us to reform our wasteful ways. For 20 years I have been whittling down my amounts of true garbage. No single use products (e.g. paper towel, sandwich bags) less processed foods come with less packaging, returning as much organics to the soil as
possible. Gardening friends are ecstatic to take my compostables but at first I just dug a hole and kept filling it. I was shocked the first spring that I was unable to find an egg shell or corn cob that I knew I had buried in there. The beauty of composting like this is that if the coons want it they just take it. No compost bin destruction required. Do not compost meat or kitty litter and it wont stink.

Im with Don Valley Rainbow... we tend not to change our ways til it hurts our wallet. I also think Green For Life should mean green practices to enhance our lives not greenbacks flowing to giant corporations for the
rest of our life.

 

[SunriseChampion]

How soon we forget. Used to be that we had twice a week garbage pickup. That is ALL garbage, which included paper, cans, bottles, yard waste, kitchen waste, etc.. Basically everything that was in our current blue or grey bins, were picked up twice a week, every week.

Then to "save" money, it was cut back to once a week. Then to "save" money, it was cut to every other week for contents of the grey bin, alternate weeks with the contents of the blue bin.

If you really need rubbish to be picked up twice a week then you have serious consumption issues that no amount of increased rubbish collection is going to help you with.

As far as I'm concerned, people should be paying more for creating waste. The last time I had use of a bin, it was a large one. Our two person residence shared it with two small businesses and it wasn't even full half the time it came to be picked up. That's on top of it being publicly accessible and being used as a street bin by passersby.
I don't even want to know where people get all the crap they stuff their bins with on the regular.

Now that I live in a flat again, I throw out 1 medium sized garbage bag of rubbish once every 2-3 weeks that's mostly full of unrecyclable smoke packs and bread bags making it take up more volume than more compact items would. I sometimes imagine that some people are flushing their wardrobes weekly. Seriously, what is all this waste being generated?