Monday’s headlines

6 comments

1. I think the city health board needs a new supplier, that stuff they are smoking is some really low quality stuff. Seems to me, that the easiest way to allow alternate foods, is this:

   Carts must be inspected at least once per year, if an inspector sees a cart in operation, they can do a spot inspection. An inspector is at city hall between certain hours on certain days, so a cart where the inspection is due, can be taken to city hall for inspection. It must be inspected in order to renew the city issued licence. There is no conditional pass for carts, a cart that fails inspection, can not be licenced.

   Cart operators must take the city food handling course.

   Cart owners must carry proper liability insurance.

   Food must be prepared in a commercial kitchen, then kept at the appropriate temperature until heated (if needed) for sale.

   This city is amazing, given a cheap and easy option, and an expensive and complex option, they will pick expensive and complex every time.

2. I would add to the Spacing-relevant headline list the bankruptcy of Circuit City. As the owners of the old Canadian Radio Shack stores, this has special relevance for many urban retail streetscapes. Radio Shack is an old name, small-footprint store that was in every Canadian community. Circuit City bastardized the stores to some extent but they still serve the Radio Shack role. Whatever happens to them matters to compact shopping districts in Bracebridge, Cobourg or St. Clair West. The last thing Canadians need is to have to drive to a distant suburban Future Shop/Best Buy to get their electronics.

3. I know Ford isn’t exactly a popular guy here, but he’s got it right this time. With the way the cart project is being run, it’s dooming itself to failure. Let the cart vendors decide what to sell, and how to prepare it. Liability insurance, and inspections will do the trick.
   Maybe I missed it, but there doesn’t even seem to be any justification given for the bland offerings that are allowed.

4. The word that kept coming up in the list of approved foods was “pre-packaged”. So not only are we going to settle for a typically-Toronto half-assed solution to our street-meat fixation, we’re also going to add to the amount of garbage we produce.

   Nothing like mixing the bad with the bad. Is there an ounce of courage in this entire council?

5. Yeah, the food cart thing has gone way off course, but from watching the development, it is much more of a staff problem than a council problem.

6. If the council votes down the proposal, then I’ll buy that notion.