City
Morning Brew: 2010 Capital Budget Approved, Paid Off-Duty Cops a Cash Cow?, Double Hit-and-Run, Pretending to Practice Witchcraft
Photo: untitled by zanoskim, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.
What's happening in the GTA (and sometimes beyond):
Toronto City Council passed the 2010 Capital Budget (full presentation in PDF format) and is already getting plenty of flack. Recent, massive spending sprees with debt amortized over 30 years (rather than 10 years, which the city has chosen in the past) means that we're paying a lot more than we should in the long term. And some argue that little is being done to address the growing repair backlog on city roads (while $22million is being earmarked for bike lanes in 2010).
The Toronto Star wins the award for most annoying web click sequence of the day. First they post a fluff piece called "Top 10 vehicles for hockey moms" on the GTA main page, but when you click it, you get a nothing article with a link to the fluff list. Clicking on the link, we arrive at an old, incorrect page, and a massive floating Toyota ad prevents the reader from accessing the main navigation menu. Anyhow, if you're keen to see the fluff, I was able to hunt it down via search.
And the Toronto Star also wins the award for most ballsy expose of the day, calling out the Toronto Police on their "cops as props" paid off-duty cash cow program. Paid $75.30/hr to stand around a construction site holding a flag (which is twice their hourly salary to do real police work), and with whopping 42,000 work requests per year, the "company" would be one of the 150 most profitable businesses in Ontario.
They still have no suspects or concrete leads to suspects. Toronto police and the family of slain pedestrian Christopher Skinner are now offering a combined cash reward of $75,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for running him over in an SUV and leaving him to die on the sidewalk back in October. With a number of people believed to have been in the SUV, and others believed to have observed the altercation that led to his death, someone must have told someone something - and we all know how money can make people talk.
Another fatal hit-and-run - this one last night - involved more than one car striking the pedestrian and fleeing. In this case, however, a distraught woman did call police shortly after the incident, to reveal that she hit something. But police are still seeking an additional driver, believed to be the one to first hit the pedestrian.
Lawyers generally occupy a high tier on the intelligence scale, right? How an unnamed Toronto lawyer was convinced to pay out tens of thousands of dollars to Vishwantee Persaud, a woman who claimed to be a witch that embodied the spirit of his dead sister, is beyond understanding. But the case is real, and is making the courts dig into an obscure section of the criminal code that cites offences related to "pretending to practice witchcraft."
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Why on earth would you believe this? Two things are needed to get a law degree:
1) Money
2) Time
We shouldn't be too quick to destroy traffic flow when so much of our transit system is MIXED IN WITH traffic. Canadians are no longer ambitious enough to build subways downtown, and that's a damn shame.
Ps. - bike lane haters: remember how much of a pain in the ass bikes are while you're sitting parked in traffic on your way home tonight. Damn bikes.
Why the massive capital spending if we're short on money? Wouldn't the prudent move be to not buy these things until we can afford them? Council is financially crippling the city.
They like to spend not budget
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pdphotography/2115018021/
Somehow it's okay if you want to buy a house over 30 years but not a subway car or streetcar which will last at least 30 years.
A house is often the largest investment an individual will make in their lifetime. The same can't be said for the city and these capital expenditures. The lifetime of the subway cars has no bearing on how we pay for them, they aren't being funded with TTC revenues.
The city has made the choice to incur much greater long term liability in exchange for short term gain. If you'd like to make an analogy to home ownership, the city is acting like the people who took on mortgages they couldn't afford in the long term so they could buy a larger house in the short term. Canada recently cracked down on this by banning 40 year term mortgages, it's unfortunate that our city council hasn't taken any lessons from that.
If the expenditures were urgent, then I wouldn't have a problem with it. Unfortunately it seems that council decided to take advantage of currently low interest rates primarily to indulge their wants, and not their needs. This despite our terrible fiscal state.
The citizens of Toronto will be hurt by this decision for the next three decades as debt service payments limit our flexibility and divert funds that could have been spent on services to pay down three-decade old subway cars. and orangutan cages. and pedestrian bridges. and a st lawrence market building. and so forth.
It's downright irresponsible. They should have focused on urgent needs and deferred the other expenditures until the city can afford them.
If we were talking about widening streets and ADDING bicycle lanes, it would be one thing - but as it is, we have a very vocal minority badgering council into taking the easy way out: throw a few million at the cycle lobby, make it look like council is doing something, kiss a little ass to the green movement at the same time. Win, win - yes? Except the city is on a terrible slide, somewhat reminiscent of NYC in the early '70s.
Also, how the heck did this thread get jacked so badly? I thought we were talking about off duty cops with guns getting $87 / hour to stand around on construction sites.