Friday’s Headlines

5 comments

1. Re: Peter Kuitenbrouwer

   A short, but easily one of the better articles from the National Post.

2. The issue that I have yet to see raised in TCHC story is the amount of orientation/education that was provided to these TCHC board members. They don’t strike me as bad people and I am sure they were more than qualified to do a good job. I do not like how Ford has dealt with these people through the media, but if anyone has hung these people out to dry, it was the previous administration. Organizations have a duty to ensure that their board members are supported/educated in terms of doing their role. (I’m assuming, in good faith, that the City’s and it’s various agencies value Board input as more than just a group of people who can provide volunteer, or low paid, PR shilling.) Anyone who has had anything to do with a board knows that to varying degrees, board members need to be educated with respect to their roles and duties. On the evidence of Councillor Janet Davis, it seems a good deal of time and effort was spent on recruiting these people. Given the outcome of this story, it seems very little was spent in terms of ensuring they understood their role, particularly their fiduciary duties. The story does sound that the current CEO is working to change (making as few waves as possible) a situation that occurred on someone else’s watch (albeit she was COO at that time). But in terms of the Board’s ability to fulfill it’s role, that would fall within her realm of responsibility.

3. LOL, is it true that they’re shutting down bike month and not renewing any city cycling staff contracts?

4. Oh Toronto..

   TCHC = Canada’s biggest slumlord in complete disarray: the bed bugs and cockroaches rejoice

   TTC/Transit City = Who knows? There is no ‘plan’. Whatever happens will be insufficient, not completed for decades, subject to change 3 years from now, and not DRL- which is what is really needed and definitely NOT being discussed.. still.. 30 years later. Subway to Barrie anyone?

   Still no TTC smart cards

   G 20 lingering embarrassment

   Impending PanAm (who cares) games cost overruns

   Porcine mayor = ‘Hogtown’ more appropriate nickname than ‘El Toro’

   Dundas Square… (the perpetual embarrassment)

   But hey.. still lots of ‘messy urbanism’ going on. Unburied hydro, jaunty wooden telegraph poles, stickers and posters and shite everywhere! Still waiting for other First World cities to follow suit and un-bury their hydro, plant jaunty wooden telegraph poles willy-nilly in the middle of their lamentably un-messy sidewalks and let their store fronts deteriorate and heritage buildings crumble and mount giant ads and..

   Fret not though: lots of unaffordable, crap condos going up (while the middle suburbs turn into ghettos). Quick buck developers retain control.. Skyline ‘bulking up’..

   ‘Diversity’ is the new ‘World Class’..

   Still no sign of an identity..

   Hey ho, way to go, Toronto…

5. TCHC scandal will enable Ford to sell housing stock to pay for the tax cuts during his term and satisfy his developer friends and slumlords. If anyone’s read the United Way’s Vertical Poverty report, released in January, it’s clear that they’re hardly better at running buildings.
   Tenants & renters more broadly get lost in all of this. The rent supplements or vouchers that Ford touts, in a city with low vacacy rates like Toronto, means that an infusion of low income renters will just drive rents up. The hard to house (TCHC houses some 9,000 mentally ill and countless disabled) will get lost in this all and end up on the streets. Students will pay more.
   We need to reject this path — forcefully — and tell Rob that his suburban solution doesn’t work: http://on.fb.me/hWMUkU