Here’s a quick overview of this week’s committee meetings at City Hall! Issues to watch for: shelter beds and affordable housing, election accessibility, ferry terminal designs, the Spadina subway extension, and more. Continue reading The Cheat Sheet: Committee Meetings, Mar. 23-27
Tag: councilwatching
The Cheat Sheet: February 10 City Council
They say Toronto has four seasons: winter, construction, transit debates, and complaining about liquor licences. At least, I think that’s how it goes. But there’s plenty more to talk about on this doozy of an agenda. Continue reading The Cheat Sheet: February 10 City Council
The Cheat Sheet: Dec. 11 City Council
The first real City Council meeting snuck up on me! Much of the agenda will be familiar if you followed last week’s Executive Committee meeting. SmartTrack makes its debut, the budget schedule gets settled, and Mammoliti’s in trouble again.
The Cheat Sheet: Going To City Hall
With the 2014-2018 term about to start, I thought I’d provide a brief primer for people who want to start watching City Hall in person. Where to go, what to see, where to eat, and more. Continue reading The Cheat Sheet: Going To City Hall
Actually, It’s About Ethics In Canadian Journalism
David Hains, “Lessons from Rob Ford’s City Hall”:
As much as you’d like to hope that City Hall is too big and important an institution to be filtered through one man, that is not the case. Time and again, our public conversations have been distilled through Rob Ford’s ideology, preferences, and id. Rather than discussing important issues, like the funding crisis at Toronto’s social housing agency, we heard about the chief magistrate’s homophobia, racism, and misogyny. Would he apologize this time? What did he really mean, though? What would he say to Joe Warmington?
I think that there’s a sense in the press that they don’t want to start something. They want to respond to something. I think that’s a misunderstanding of what the world of the press should be. I think the Toronto Star is the exception to the rule I’m about to describe, but I think, generally speaking, the Canadian press has strayed from its basic connection to its audience. We should be running toward things that have not broken yet. News should be what people don’t know about yet. Everybody is just sort of chewing on the same bone. To be in a completely responsive mode is not responsible journalism.
It’s been incredibly vindicating to see Jesse Brown come along and make these criticisms of the industry. Not that we haven’t been yelling our heads off, but there are an awful lot of media people who will only take it seriously if it comes from the the right sort of white guy. (I don’t think they even realize they do this.) If you are one of those media people, go play outside. Everyone else, keep reading: Continue reading Actually, It’s About Ethics In Canadian Journalism
Councilwatching: THE FINAL MEETING
This doohickey ought to update live. So don’t touch that dial!
The Cheat Sheet: August 25 City Council
Well, here we are at the last City Council meeting this term. I feel…sad? Sure, it’s been a fucked-up, dysfunctional four years, but it was never boring.
After the jump: the Ombudsman is mad as hell and isn’t going to take it anymore; mid-rise invasion; transit recommendations of varying utility; and more. You can find the full agenda here. Let me know in the comments if there’s anything I missed! Continue reading The Cheat Sheet: August 25 City Council
Mean Councillors
Context:
This is going to be your guide to City Council. Where you sit at Council is crucial, because you’ve got everybody there. Continue reading Mean Councillors
The Cheat Sheet: July 7 & 8 City Council
Monday’s City Council is actually a Special Meeting, and for once it’s not a transit debate that we’ll all walk out of hating everyone and everything. This time, Council will appoint fill-in councillors for Wards 5 and 20, vacant after councillors Milczyn and Vaughan levelled up to MPP and MP, respectively. You might see some familiar names on the list of candidates for Ward 5 and Ward 20. They include former Ford staffer Nico Fidani, cinephile urban legend Reg Hartt, and, uh, me. Yep. After saying on Keenan’s show that you couldn’t pay me to be Ward 20 councillor, I went and signed up, mostly as a joke…but upon consideration, I guess I know this beat pretty well.
The July City Council meeting proper starts Tuesday. (You’ll have gotten a preview of several of these items if you followed my Executive Committee livetweeting.) Here’s the full agenda and the livestream. My picks for items to watch are after the jump!
I Go To Meetings So You Don’t Have To: July 2 Executive Committee
In which Denzil Minnan-Wong denies illicit arboreal relations and a familiar deputant calls on half the committee to resign.
Continue reading I Go To Meetings So You Don’t Have To: July 2 Executive Committee