Posted by John Michael McGrath | OpenFile Toronto
The second morning of Rob Ford’s conflict of interest case was not a comfortable one for Mayor Ford to sit through. In hours of argument, lawyer Clayton Ruby laid out his case that Ford had demonstrated a “pattern of behaviour” of not only failing to understand the importance of the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, but deliberately going out of his way to not understand it.
“That’s not good faith,” Ruby told the court. “That’s willful blindness.”
At issue is whether …

Posted by Kelli Korducki | OpenFile Toronto

At long last, the City of Toronto will be announcing its new chief planner today, and it appears that Jennifer Keesmaat will be filling in for the vacancy left by longtime planner Gary Wright earlier this year.

Blog photo by Himy Syed, via Flickr.

Photo by Himy Syed via Flickr.

Perhaps the most remarkable detail to come out of the surprise unveiling of the OneCity Transit Plan is that it remained just that—a surprise.

The $30 billion proposal had been in development for three months, without anyone blabbing to reporters. Until the last few weeks, only four councillors even knew about the plan at all.

HiMY SYeD

Going for him: SYeD ran in 2010 and has remained a constant fixture at events and gatherings around the city.

Posted by Steve Kupferman | OpenFile Toronto on Saturday, June 9, 2012
Here’s a fun Saturday distraction for municipal politics nerds: a report card by the Academy of the Impossible that grades every city councillor on his or her social media skills.
Shelley Carroll, the Ward 33 councillor who is never seen in public without a smartphone in hand, gets an A-. Mayor Ford gets a C, which is generous considering the fact that his Twitter feed is obviously written by staffers. Giorgio Mammoliti, councillor for Ward 7, gets …

By Carmi Levy, Written Inc.
Reports emerging out of Toronto that there’s been a shooting at the downtown Eaton Centre mall.
I guess now we see how social media impacts an in-progress crime. I’ll paste resources below, as well as on my tweetstream – @carmilevy
Feel free to share your own in comments.
Sad.
Update from the Toronto Police 8:50 pm
Constable Victor Kwong has just confirmed the following:

At 6:23 pm, police were called in to shooting at food court, lower level, north end of the mall.
8 victims have been identified, with injuries of varying severities. …

Women in Toronto Politics panel. Photo by HiMY SYeD from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Tonight’s panel, titled “The Front Page,” will discuss the way we talk about women in politics, and the way that impacts women who choose to enter politics. Featuring Toronto city councillors Kristyn Wong-Tam (Ward 27, Toronto Centre-Rosedale) and Shelley Carroll (Ward 33, Don Valley East), Torontoist‘s own editor-in-chief Hamutal Dotan, and civics teacher Jse-Che Lam. Alison Loat, founder of Samara Canada, will moderate the conversation.

Women in Toronto Politics
23 May
Foursquare 1.0 snapped at our inaugural panel, The Comment Section, by the wonderful Himy Syed.

Huge credit to HiMY SYeD for capturing video of the mayor’s entrance. You can view more footage of the event on his website.

Posted by Steve Kupferman on Saturday, May 12, 2012 | OpenFile Toronto
The Globe’s makes an intriguing (albeit satirical) suggestion: exploit Mayor Rob Ford’s sometimes-embarrassing antics as a tourist draw.
As Southey puts it:
We’re stuck with this mayor for over two years more. But it needn’t be all bad. I hereby invite the rest of Canada, and indeed the world, to visit Toronto, the City with the World’s Most Embarrassing Mayor! Forgo your drive to the Reversing Falls: Imagine the children’s wonder at the Reversing Council, a place …

Dear Mr. HiMY SYeD,
Mr. Todd Harrison mentioned that I should contact you directly.
For a book on Meaning in Architectural Design, which I presently finish, I would like to include your photograph of the Council Chamber, Toronto City Hall (shown attached).
I saw it some time ago in a Spacing publication, on a flickr website and just recently on your photopia website. From the latter I derived the attached copy.
I would very much appreciate your giving me permission to publish the photo in my book by returning this e-mail with a remark accordingly. The photo …

By Samina Esha, National Post
The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 79 representing cities part-time recreation workers are set to vote on Tuesday. The voting comes after union reached a tentative deal following a five-hour negotiation with the city on Friday morning.
“I wouldn’t say we are happy because that is a pretty strong term. In terms of the agreement, it is a development from what the city had originally offered,” said Cim Nunn, a spokesman for the CUPE 79.
The two main issues for the …

Mon., March 5, 5:30 p.m. Council Chambers, City Hall. Mayor Rob Ford Returns to the floor of Council looking “very unhappy,” after stepping out to take a brief phone call. He appeared confused about the nature of the call when the phone had been handed to him, says man-about-town and former mayoral candidate Himy Syed, but Ford answered it in an upbeat manner. Syed says that he heard the mayor and his staff repeatedly refer to the call as coming from the Premier’s Office, but a spokesperson for Premier McGuinty denies that he contacted Mayor Ford that afternoon.

Posted by John Michael McGrath, OpenFile Toronto
Here’s an item from the weekend that shouldn’t be missed: the Toronto Star/Angus Reid survey on Rob Ford’s approval rating, subways, and who Torontonians trust on these issues. But before we dive in to the numbers, why does a poll like this matter three years before an election? Because the Mayor and his brother Doug Ford (Ward 2, Etoicoke North) think they’ve got re-election in the bag. From Marcus Gee’s Saturday column in the Globe and Mail:
Councillor Ford said …

By Derek Flack, blogTO
So yesterday’s vote to return to an LRT-based transit strategy for Toronto (one that looks a lot like the former phase one Transit City plans) was kind of a big deal — regardless of which of the competing plans you hoped would win the day. Ranging from elation to frustration, there’s been no shortage of reaction to the events at city hall. Here’s a quick roundup of what’s being said in the aftermath of one the most significant city council decisions in …

Posted by John Michael McGrath, OpenFile Toronto
The Toronto Star has an important point in its latest article over the chaos that is Toronto’s transit planning, since yesterday’s TTC meeting torpedoed Karen Stintz’ (Ward 16, Eglinton-Lawrence) attempt to get some answers from staff. From the Star:
The vote prompted some city councillors to suggest it’s more important than ever to put the mayor’s transit plans before city council even if it means calling a special council meeting.
“It’s clear that a majority of council doesn’t think this administration and its few …

Posted by John Michael McGrath, OpenFile Toronto
One of the items that was supposed to be on the agenda at the City of Toronto Executive Committee meeting today was the potential sale of 740 units, most of which are single-family homes, from Toronto Community Housing Corporation’s stock, the plan being to use the money to spruce up the remaining apartments in TCHC’s inventory.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the committee. Ford unexpectedly, and almost at the last minute—the city clerk sent out a …

Bike City [ 1:35 - 1:55 ] :
” In Toronto we’ve actually, now about to lose cycling infrastructure. Despite the spin that comes from our municipal level of government, we are actually going to be losing bike lanes and increasing the expenditure in this area. ” — HiMY SYeD

Posted by John Michael McGrath, OpenFile Toronto
The big news from city hall this week will be the multi-day meeting (with the over-under being at least three shoutfests across council chambers) over the city budget. While there have already been several changes, as the budget has made it through both the budget and Mayor’s executive committee, on neither of those committees do opponents to the Mayor’s cuts have serious weight. That’s going to change when the budget comes to full council, and the Globe and …

By Hilary Best, Spacing Toronto
This series features highlights from the ongoing exhibit The Fourth Wall: Transforming City Hall. The exhibit, on now at the Urbanspace Gallery, considers possible avenues to break down the barriers to participation in civic life that exist at Toronto’s City Hall.
The Fourth Wall identifies a number of areas for improvement to step up civic engagement at City Hall. Examining best practices in other cities and major gaps in this city, the exhibit yields 36 recommendations. While there is certainly much room for improvement, the …

By John Michael McGrath, OpenFile Toronto

People shouldn’t make too much of Rob Ford losing the occasional vote in a committee or even at council. That said, there’s a number of recent stories that suggest the mayor’s office might not have iron-clad control over the budget process already, and that the real fight hasn’t even started (the height of battle will come in January when the budget goes to city council).
First we’ve got news from the Toronto Public Library Board meeting last night, where …

From Centre for City Ecology
Last night was Day 1 of Toronto Talks Mobility, the Transportation Month event hosted by the University of Toronto’s Cities Centre and the Canadian Urban Transit Association which continues today at Wynchwood Barns.
Students from the University of Toronto’s Workshop in Planning Practice will be writing summaries of this event and we will post them on our mobiliTO project page in the next couple of weeks. For now, here are some press articles and photos and comments from Twitter, like these:
nowtoronto The catchphrase of tonight is “value …

Posted by John Michael McGrath, OpenFile Toronto
A live-blog of the Toronto City Council meeting for October 24th, 2011.

Blog photo by Himy Syed via Flickr

View the story “After I went to bed, #StarWarsCouncil started trending” on Storify]

Posted by John Michael McGrath, OpenFile Toronto
Apparently following on the success of #councildrinks, some of the tricksters who keep an eye on city council meetings started a new hashtag game on Twitter last night: Star Wars-themed jokes about city council. Some of the best ones from earlier this morning.
View the story “#starwarscouncil” on Storify]
 
Blog photo by phil g via Flickr.

Posted by John Michael McGrath | OpenFile Toronto
Late yesterday afternoon, City Hall reporters started pointing their Twitter followers to an interesting budget document, tipped off by councillor Gord Perks (Ward 14, Parkdale-High Park), which shows that Toronto’s Land Transfer Tax has raised much more money than previously projected—37 per cent more. That one boost alone could mean close to $100 million in unexpected revenue. Of course, Perks has been warning for weeks that the $774 million number that Mayor Rob Ford and his allies have …

Himy Syed, once a mayoral candidate, asked, “How many cities have walked away from something like this and what the hell do they look like now?”