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My Toronto Video Contest Voting Page

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A 72 Year Crossing at Yonge and Bloor

"A 72 Year Crossing at Yonge and Bloor" Comparative...

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STREET SCENE: Linux Cafe

Street Scene will appear each week showcasing the...

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Farm Friday: Evergreen Brick Works

Name: Evergreen Brick Works Farmers' Market Location:...

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SPACING VOTES WEEKLY: Coach Ford, Smitherman walks & a heated TV debate

EDITOR’S NOTE: Spacing Votes — our dedicated 2010...

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SPACING RADIO: Smitherman talks walking, while walking

LISTEN TO THIS SPACING RADIO PODCAST George Smitherman...

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IDEAS FOR TORONTO: Infrastructure referendums

The Toronto City Summit Alliance held a roundtable...

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Bike parking takes over car parking spaces

Toronto bike riders can celebrate a "first" today:...

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Cities for People — New Toronto design intervention

This is part of a series of posts by students in...

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LORINC: Greenwashing by any other name

I normally have a lot of time for the Toronto Environmental...

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World Wide Wednesday: Maps, Trains, Trikes and Three Million on the A40

Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around...

Wednesday’s Headlines

A worry in Camelot: Is there green to pay for the park? [ Toronto Star ]
Why we don't like Mondays [ Toronto Star ]
City park to be named for black trailblazer [ Toronto Star ]

 

Comments

Neither the author nor Spacing necessarily agree with the comments posted below. Spacing reserves the right to edit or delete comments entirely. See our Comment Policy.

Wasn't Royson James against the new taxes?

He didn't say he was for them here either, but he has provided an intriguing route out of the logjam which if the Mayor's office is half-awake they should strongly consider accepting.

It's doubtful that any additional announcements on city fundings would have been scheduled in the two weeks between then and the election now that the parties have set out their stalls in the weeks after the 23-22 vote.

Now Miller can say to the mushy middle - "you made your point, some additional money has been promised, Ontario has been prodded into action on approving LTT and MVT collection through their facilities which they hadn't at the time of the first vote. Surely you can agree that the election cycle has moved on. We can issue press releases to the four winds, hug it out and let Ootes, Stintz et al revert back to being the serially outvoted Lastman Rump"

The phrase "Lastman Rump" should be used a lot in City Hall writing from this point forward.

Second

Thanks for the link, Mark.

I hope Miller takes a portion of tomorrow's taxes campaign launch to tell Torontonians that community centres can be saved if Council debates and approves the taxes in September.

It's not a "hostage" thing, it's that the cost containment measures assumed that the City wouldn't be able to collect on the new streams of revenue for a longer period of time and with a vote that gets moved up, if the taxes are passed, the same level of cuts won't be required.

Although Miller will have to choose his words carefully so he doesn't alienate the mushy middle, if all the arm twisting is done in the backrooms then the average resident still won't be able to grasp what's going on.

I'll agree with that. If you could fault Miller, it is that he did not sell the tax scheme properly in the first place, but now certainly has the best opportunity to do so. If the taxes are approved soon, the libraries and community centres can open. Some councillors on the left side of the mushy middle (your Perruzzas, Augimeris, Feldmans) will fall in line, and separate themselves from the Lastman Rump.

But can Miller get enough votes for council to reverse the deferment? I thought it took more than a simple majority to do so.

As for good news (if you could call it that), the TTC just decided to not cut service, but institute a 15 cent fare increase for November, which is in the middle of the 10-25 cent range of what was predicted. The much-needed service improvments will just be delayed until early 2008, when they should have been implemented already.

 
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Wednesday’s Headlines
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