By Daren Foster (aka City Slikr) | Torontoist
Let’s look at yesterday’s Executive Committee meeting not as a glass-half-empty scenario—as a group of councillors unable or unwilling to deal with some seemingly intractable problems faced by the city that elected them. Instead, let’s think of the glass as being half full.
With two of the biggest files on the table yesterday—those being transit and the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC)—Mayor Ford and his closest allies reached a compromise with his council opponents. Yes: compromise, Mayor Ford. …

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 …

Mayor Ford at a Pan American Games announcement in May. He’ll have lots more microphones in his face come September, that’s for sure. Photo by HiMY SYeD, from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

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 …

Posted by Kelli Korducki, OpenFile Toronto
Friday’s Union Station flood disaster stalled Yonge-University-Spadina trains between Osgoode and Bloor stations for about 10 hours. It also lent itself a little too well to meme creation. Writes the Sun’s Ian Robertson:
As news spread of what TTC spokesman Jessica Martin on Saturday called the site’s worst recent flooding, photo funsters posted altered pictures on Twitter that seemed to show Ford surrounded by sharks.
One prankster inserted the famous Jaws movie poster showing a giant shark attacking a swimmer. Another computer whiz inserted …

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 …

By Steve Kupferman, Torontoist

SPOTTED BY: HiMY SYeD, from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
WHERE: Stapled to a fence at the High Park Zoo.
WHEN: Saturday, April 14
WHAT: City council cut the High Park Zoo’s budget earlier this year, but thanks to a generous private donation it will probably be fine for the time being. Even so, it seems at least one member of the public is still inclined to hold Mayor Rob Ford to account. We’re pretty sure those numbers aren’t accurate, and the penmanship and spelling could use some …

Posted by Emily Burke on Tuesday, March 20, 2012 | OpenFile Toronto
With only today and tomorrow remaining before city council’s big transit meeting, the mayor could be using these final hours to show council his funding strategy for underground transit along Sheppard. Instead, he’s handing out flyers with images of light-rail crashes that have caused fatalities.
Rather than sorting out his own numbers and committing to a concrete plan, he’s trying to sway the centrist councillors by scaring them out of voting for LRT. But the …

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 …

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 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 …

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 …

From Ford For Toronto by Matt Elliott (@GraphicMatt)
Beginning at 9:30 a.m. and extending through to the next morning, the City of Toronto’s Executive Committee — led by Mayor Rob Ford — heard more than one hundred and fifty deputations from a diverse group of citizens. In a sincere bid to ensure that the passion, insight and creativity displayed over the course of that epic meeting is not forgotten, Ford For Toronto will be posting a deputation video every weekday for the month of August.

Deputant: HiMY SYeD (website, twitter)
Occupation: Independent Photojournalist; …

By Orwell’s Bastard
Storify: great for aggregating tweets, but you can go blind putting them in order if you’re dealing with more than a handful.
If only there were a sort function …
[View the story "Why it's important to kill off the Pissed-off Taxpayer meme | #TOpoli" on Storify]
Tips of the chapeau to @AureliaCotta and @timfalconer and @HiMYSYeD as well.

Mayor Rob Ford: “I never supported #Jarvis Bike Lanes…only rumour I want ‘em removed..not a priority” #bikeTO #TOcouncil

By Derek Lang, BagelHot
Ended up walking down to the beach today. It was rainy and it’s been a while since I’ve been down there since moving to the other side of the city. Not surprisingly there was no one around. Torontoians are odd that way in that a bit of rain scares them off. Being a saturday they couldn’t even use the excuse that they were at work.
While walking toward the life guard station, in the distance I saw a figure …

By Derek Flack, blogTO
Shortly after Toronto City Council passed the 2011 budget by a vote of 31-14, Rob Ford proclaimed that it was a “great day for Toronto residents.” Although major questions loom on account of the $774-million hole facing the City in 2012 — a subject bizarrely decried off-limits by Speaker Frances Nunziata — as promised, there will be no property tax increase this year. And while Ford and his supporters claim that there were no major service cuts associated with the …