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Morning Brew: Stintz rethinks OneCity funding, Ford's tax freeze gets frosty reception, grand union repair stats, Jamie Bell playground reopens, and a "fire rainbow"

Posted by Chris Bateman / July 10, 2012

24 Comments

toronto skyline condos lake CN towerTTC chair Karen Stintz is conceding some ground on a key aspect of the OneCity transit plan she devised with vice chair Glenn De Baeremaeker last month: funding. Stintz told a group of councillors yesterday she plans to make the conversion of the Scarborough RT to subway and an eastern waterfront LRT a priority at the next council meeting and leave the money issue until later. An open mind on funding might coax more councillors over to Stintz's side on the subway, streetcar, bus and LRT expansion project.

Speaking of funding, Rob Ford's proposed property tax freeze for 2014 is also meeting some resistance; several councillors are concerned about the loss of revenue it would create.

Queen and Spadina is one of three grand unions - intersections where a streetcar can go in any direction except back the way it came - in Toronto (and North America for that matter). Repairing such a busy thoroughfare takes plenty of planning - The Star has a run-down of what's involved. Bonus points if you can name the other two grand unions in Toronto (without cheating) in the comment section.

High Park's Jamie Bell playground, burnt by vandals in March, officially rises from the ashes later today as an extensive rebuild by members of the local community and celebrity contractor Mike Holmes officially wraps up. Pushed back slightly by last weekend's heat wave, the opening day will finally let children loose on new slides and rebuilt wooden towers.

Meanwhile in Scarborough, this guy's leg infection was successfully treated with maggots. Yep, that's right, maggots.

It might not be a double rainbow, but this cloud phenomenon is still pretty amazing. Matthew Haskill captured a circumhorizontal arc, caused when sunlight strikes Cirrostratus clouds at a specific angle, on a flight to Toronto from Barrie.

TWEET OF THE DAY:

Rob Ford explains his opposition to Karen Stintz and Glenn De Baeremaeker's OneCity transit plan rather concisely:

IN OTHER NEWS:

Photo: "Postcard" by Acid_Punk in the blogTO Flickr pool.

Discussion

24 Comments

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john / July 10, 2012 at 08:53 am
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bathurst and queen and.....
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john / July 10, 2012 at 08:54 am
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bathurst and king?
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john / July 10, 2012 at 08:56 am
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spadina and king.
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Chris Bateman / July 10, 2012 at 09:00 am
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Queen and Spadina is one. You're right, the other two are King and Bathurst and King and Spadina.
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Paul / July 10, 2012 at 09:22 am
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So basically the end result of the grand OneCity plan will be to reopen debate on a Scarborough subway, when council has already made a decision that LRT is the most effective way to go. Nice going, Karen.
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huh / July 10, 2012 at 09:24 am
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"I can't support taxing the taxpayer." - RoFo

Uh, pardon? Is it possible that RoFo actually just got dumber?
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?? replying to a comment from Chris Bateman / July 10, 2012 at 09:30 am
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What about Spadina and College?
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I / July 10, 2012 at 09:40 am
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why is blogto trying to force me to download the app any time i try to access the site from my phone? that is annoying, leave me alone.
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Chris Bateman replying to a comment from ?? / July 10, 2012 at 09:42 am
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Not according to The Star. Perhaps there needs to be one more piece of track to make it a true grand union. Looking at the aerial view on Bing maps it seems streetcars can't turn south onto Spadina when heading west on College or make a few other track changes.
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jer replying to a comment from Chris Bateman / July 10, 2012 at 09:42 am
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Wasn't King and Bathurst re-done last year? I think they only had the whole intersection closed for a few weeks and did it as long term work... Traffic going north on Bathurst was crazy last night, I am glad I don't have to spend much time around Spadina/Queen for the next two weeks but still a mess of an area.
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Alex / July 10, 2012 at 09:47 am
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Eastern Waterfront LRT? How about downtown relief line!

In articles when they mention raising taxes, they always mention raising a percentage, e.g. "taxes will go up 1.75%". Does anyone know if they mean that the amount you pay will go up 1.75%, or they are raising the percentage of property tax (e.g. before you paid 10% of your property value, now you're paying 11.75%). Or they are raising the percentage you pay of property tax by 1.75% (so if you paid 10% before you now pay 10.175%). Because the second and third ones don't make any sense to me, since eventually you would end up paying 100% of your property tax.
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Franco / July 10, 2012 at 09:52 am
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I cannot believe the politics behind TTC expansion. It's absolutely ridiculous. London, NYC, Buenos Aires, etc., can make these things happen more quickly. What is wrong with the culture of this city?
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Welshgrrl / July 10, 2012 at 10:06 am
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We're never going to have better public transit are we? Great - 20 years from now Toronto might as well be renamed "Caronto", and we'll have the same decomposing transit system we have now, with more dirt, delays, and 1000s more people jammed into it Tokyo-style. Depressing.
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Aaron / July 10, 2012 at 10:09 am
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Ugh, without the funding model there's no plan, it's just lines on a map. Total failure.
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High Park / July 10, 2012 at 10:38 am
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Rode by the playground last night in High Park and it isn't near to being finished yet - it still looks like the Star article photo and there was no one working on it.

Follow Sarah Doucette's site http://www.ward13.ca to get more accurate updates then the Star. There are are even better sources on YouTube with videos of Holmes himself saying that he is aiming for this Friday to finally open the playground. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM_34OFAed4&;feature=relmfu
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Xavier replying to a comment from Paul / July 10, 2012 at 10:42 am
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So it looks like Karen is now saying that Rob Ford was right all along. Good of her to come to her senses
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Alex replying to a comment from Xavier / July 10, 2012 at 10:47 am
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I think you're confusing all of Scarborough with just Sheppard, which is a single street. OneCity is proposing replacing the SRT with a subway instead of an LRT. What Ford was fighting for before was a subway on Sheppard, which is not what OneCity is proposing. Don't worry, it's still just Ford who's an idiot.
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EricM replying to a comment from Xavier / July 10, 2012 at 10:51 am
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Not quite. Ford had ZERO idea how to fund his plan. His allies even proposed a $100 annual tax on every public parking space in the city once they realized that there was no funding model in place for his plan. It's probably also worth noting that his transit plan during the election featured only two pages on the TTC and was never costed even on a basic level in the first place. Perhaps Stintz didn't consult enough, but at least the plan wasn't drawn up on the back of a KFC napkin.
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EE105 replying to a comment from Franco / July 10, 2012 at 10:53 am
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The city is surrounded by a thick blanket of middle-aged and elderly suburbanites who can't see past the hood of their own car. That's the difference.
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Chris replying to a comment from EE105 / July 10, 2012 at 11:58 am
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I think you hit it right on the head with that comment. These are the same voters who keep electing councillors who fight to the death to preserve leaf blowing by the City in their particular corner of the world (I'm looking at you, Holyday), that we ALL pay for, but then complain about all the "gold plated" services in downtown paid for by taxes - you know, stuff like libraries and such.

Of course, we downtowners are just as bad as we continue to elect councillors who want the city to pay for every conceivable service imaginable, as well as various forms of social engineering, and believes there an unending well of property taxes that can be tapped to pay for it all - that was the part of One City that disappointed me the most, that they didn't even attempt to look beyond property taxes for funding. Some more creative thinking would have been welcomed on this.
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gladfly / July 10, 2012 at 12:27 pm
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Ford will continue to have my vote, say no to tax increases!
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Rich replying to a comment from EE105 / July 10, 2012 at 01:46 pm
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Exactly.
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vampchick21 replying to a comment from gladfly / July 10, 2012 at 02:37 pm
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And say yes to reduced necessary services and a continually disintegrating transit system! You do realize that the money for municipal programs comes from tax dollars and not magic beans, right? And you realize that cost increases?
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Gabe / July 11, 2012 at 10:20 pm
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HIGH PARK - JAMIE BELL PLAYGROUND

Grand Reopening this Friday, July 13 at 1:30 pm

Update (July 9, 2012): Thank you to the over 800 people who came out to help yesterday. The rain did not dampen anyones enthusiasm. Unfortunately due to the heat wave we just could not get the castle finished in time which did restrict what we could work on. We did however move the enormous pile of wood chips, we designed and painted 500 wooden shields, repainted the rooftops of the old structure and painted murals on the two buildings to the east side of the playground. Families had fun in the picnic area with food, drinks, and entertainment for everyone. The fire department had fire trucks, water spray, bouncy castles, and 11th Division brought Blinky the talking police car. Mike Holmes and his team will be back at the playground this week to finish the build. We will be looking for help to move the remaining wood chips under the new structure so it can be CSA approved.

http://www.ward13.ca/
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