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Morning Brew: Ford under fire over coaching duties, Ryerson mulls Empress Hotel site, a soccer match-fixing scandal, a subway quiz, and Jays' winning streak ends
Rob Ford is taking flack for skipping out on a meeting of his executive committee to coach a high school football game. The mayor left five hours before the end of the committee meeting and only had time to sit on one item, the revised Port Lands development plan. This morning the Globe and Mail says Ford also appears to have used city staff and their taxpayer-funded cellphones to run summer football teams he founded while in office.
The paper says the mayor's special assistant, Andrew Gillis, a former U of T Varsity Blues quarterback, helped the mayor coach the Don Bosco Eagles in Etobicoke recently. None of this is gravy, apparently.
The tense relationship between councillor Adam Vaughan and the mayor is the focus of a National Post story this morning. The story highlights the key issues where the pair have clashed, including on the story above. Vaughan is touted as a contender for the mayor's job at the next election.
The Star repots Ryerson University is in talks to buy the site of the former Empress Hotel on the south-east corner of Yonge and Gould. The vacant lot currently houses construction equipment for the school's Student Learning Centre under construction on the opposite corner. The former hotel burned in January last year.
A Toronto semi-professional soccer team could be in hot water after the CBC alleged several of its players were bribed to fix the outcome of a match in Trois-Rivières, Quebec. According to the story, members of the Toronto Croatia team were paid roughly $18,000 to effect the result of a 2009 match against Attak. No charges have been laid.
Think you can tell your Castle Frank from your Greenwood? A new Spacing quiz lets you test your TTC knowledge from close-up images of various locations on the network. See how well you do. Most of the pictures provide some visual clues to the location.
IN OTHER NEWS:
- Blue Jays' win streak snapped by Mariners [CBC]
- Galloway Boys, the next generation: Police cite gang for fatal shootings [Globe and Mail]
- Disabled man dies in Carlton Street apartment fire [Globe and Mail]
- Bullied bus monitor Karen Klein receives $700,000 cheque in Toronto [The Star]
Photo by Victor Shum in the blogTO Flickr pool.
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He'd probably be doing himself (as well as the rest of the city) a huge favour by acknowledging the obvious - he doesn't really want to be Mayor anymore - and deciding not to run again in 2014.
And why didn't he return to the meeting, after the game?
Is "match-fitching" anything like match-fixing?
Apparently that's the new talking point to spam. He's doing it "for the kids".
If he wants to help kids so badly, he can quit his job and coach 24/7 as far as I'm concerned.
Here will be the Mayor's official response: "I don't know anything about it" followed by "No one told me I wasn't supposed to" and then "I'm just looking out for the kids."
There are no words for people who think like this.
Well, while he's out there on the field, he can't f up the city any worse, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to agree with this statement.
p.s. I find it amazing how his supporters twist themselves in knots trying to "justify" the fact that their hero isn't at all interested in the job they elected him to do. The fact that everyone in his world is constantly making excuses for him that explains so much about his governance style and his approach to being Mayor of the City.
come on dave you and ford nation need to stop blaming everything on miller it has been three years, get over it.
where's the fact?
http://app.toronto.ca/tmmis/getAdminReport.do
So basically Rob has been absent from Council nearly as many times in 2 years as David was in 4....
Also, he needs to take up yoga, and a ton o'therapy for whatever issues he has.