Tag: budget

The Week at Toronto City Hall #3

The big event this week at City Hall: the launch of the rate-supported budget (water, waste, and parking). But there’s also audits galore, electric car charging stations, new appointments to the Zoo and Exhibition Place Boards, and more. Also, spiders make their debut in the weekly Bug Report!

Read the whole thing at City Hall Watcher.

Recap: The 2018 City Manager’s Address

Photo from @imfgtoronto.

“The iceberg is gone, global warming has taken care of that,” jokes new City Manager Chris Murray as he begins his speech.

The iceberg, a municipal budget infographic portraying the City of Toronto’s billions of dollars in approved but unfunded capital projects, had become a cult favourite among City Hall wonks—you know, the kind of people who have cult favourite municipal budget infographics. These are the kind of people who go to the IMFG‘s annual City Manager’s Address, which took place at the end of November. (Slides available here.) Continue reading Recap: The 2018 City Manager’s Address

The Cheat Sheet: December 13, 2018 City Council

Once more unto the breach, dear friends. (Well, more like twice more, because my first draft was eaten by an unruly text editor.) This is more of a recap than a preview, as I only just recovered from an awful cold. Continue reading The Cheat Sheet: December 13, 2018 City Council

Nightmare Rectangle Round-up: Municipal Finance, Black Widows, Migrants, and More

Header: This image from Lisa Jackson’s Biidaaban depicts a decaying Toronto City Hall surrounded by forest, on the edge of a flooded Nathan Phillips Square.

Trying a bit of a new thing. I occasionally do linkdumps via Twitter threads, but I felt like doing something more permanent. Title inspired by this ever-relevant @TechnicallyRon tweet:

Continue reading Nightmare Rectangle Round-up: Municipal Finance, Black Widows, Migrants, and More

The Cheat Sheet: June 2018 City Council

Livestream · Meeting Monitor

Welcome to this term’s penultimate Council meeting! There’s quite a lot on the agenda, including a slew of Integrity Commissioner investigations, laneway housing, improving deadly intersections, and more.

Warning: there are even more swears and opinions than usual. Lately I just feel civility is overrated, you know?

Continue reading The Cheat Sheet: June 2018 City Council

Not Another Fucking Budget Overview

I’ve lost my passion for covering the City budget. Partly the clinical depression, I think, but also—it just never changes. There’s only so many times you can write another fucking “after the City Manager warns Council they can no longer ‘kick the can down the road’ for another year, Council votes to kick the can down the road” piece. It’s all too predictable. Continue reading Not Another Fucking Budget Overview

Sidebar: Right Vs. Left

You often hear very tiresome people saying “I’m a social liberal and a fiscal conservative” as if it meant anything. In reality neither “social” nor “fiscal” issues are useful in telling left from right—especially not at City Hall, where “fiscal conservatives” have consistently championed pouring billions of dollars into an ever-shrinking subway plan. And saying that a “real progressive” wouldn’t be racist or sexist is as laughable as saying that “real Christians” aren’t homophobic, “real feminists” aren’t transphobic, etc., as well-intended as it is.

Nevertheless, I do think there is a way to meaningfully distinguish right- and left-wing politics. This is the framework I use when I talk about the political spectrum at City Hall. (That is, when I’m not talking in D&D terms.) Continue reading Sidebar: Right Vs. Left