It's starting to look like waterfront development in Toronto might be heading off the rails. Though Waterfront Toronto set out to build “transit-first” communities on the city's lakefront, rapid transit plans have taken a backseat lately as the agency works through a seemingly doomed process to explore accelerated options for developing the port lands. Though there were once...
A quiet (and short) week at City Hall comes to a close. Here are some of the stories I didn't write about. Stratcom poll shows Ford's popularity down – and a city with strong opinions Mayor Rob Ford's populist messaging still seems to be mostly unpopular, per a May 15 poll by Strategic Communications. The pollster pegged Ford's approval rating at 35%, a level David...
By: Metro Canada Published on Wed May 23 2012 Things are moving pretty slow at City Hall these days. After council's historic and hard-fought transit decision in March, the political process ground to a halt. The mayor, after much consideration, decided to put a bunch of his energy toward a doomed-from-the-start move to cancel the city's mandatory five cent plastic bag fee. It's a...
By: Metro Canada Published on Tue May 22 2012 Pop quiz: what's more relevant to the future of this city than the five cents we pay for plastic bags? The answer, of course, is EVERYTHING. It's hard to think of an issue that matters less than the nickels we toss down when we need a disposable bag at the grocery store, and yet still the mayor's office seems to have seized on this as...
By: Metro Canada Published on Fri May 18 2012 What do you get when you cross Mayor Rob Ford with all the drama of professional wrestling? The mayor's surprise entrance at an LGBT event yesterday makes for a fun mash-up: You couldn't have scripted it any better. After more than a year of speculation, doubt and outrage over Mayor Rob Ford's seeming disinterest in engaging with...
By: Metro Canada Published on Thu May 17 2012 Mayor Rob Ford likes to say that there's lots of room to save money in the city budget through efficiencies and that new taxes aren't needed to move the city forward. Toronto's top bureaucrat disagrees. Speaking at an event held by the Institute on Municipal Finance & Government yesterday, City Manger Joe Pennachetti told attendees...
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