Morning Brew: Marijuana marcher falls from tree, City's high mileage payouts, TTC bike racks on buses underused, Caledon car crash reveals murder victim
An estimated 25,000 pot users marched on Queen's Park on Saturday as part of the Global Marijuana March event. Fortunately, the event wasn't marred by a doofus pulling a gun, but the chill nature of things was hampered somewhat when emergency crews had to respond when a man fell from a tree. In related news, the Conservatives are attempting to reintroduce mandatory minimum sentences for small-time pot growers. They would like to see a mandatory six-month sentence for those convicted of growing as few as five plants.
Does the City of Toronto pay too much for mileage accrued by staff using of their own vehicles for work purposes? At $0.52/km, and with no change in this top rate for high mileage accumulators, it would appear so. In fact, some staff are compensated at an annual level that it almost makes more fiscal sense to buy them cars for work use.
Have you ever used one of the bike racks that are mounted on the front of most of Toronto's TTC buses? I didn't think so. Despite showing dismal usage numbers during the pilot project in 2005, the TTC pushed forward and spent some $2-million fitting over 1600 buses with the racks - that barely anyone uses even five years later. Much like bike lanes on Dupont (and Jarvis and University and Bloor), making decisions to prop up bike use in the city are great ideas in principle, but they may not be in practice.
Police responding to what they describe as a "minor crash" in Caledon, found a victim in the car... but not a victim of the crash itself. Passenger Krystina Armstrong was found dead in the car, and the driver -- her 18-year-old son Luke -- has been charged with second-degree murder.
And here's what blogTO was up to this weekend:
Photo: "Square" by PierreD., member of the blogTO Flickr pool.
Join the conversation Load comments