Monday, September 19, 2011

Pickets at Toronto City Hall

CUPE sent the big pink flying Squad bus full of workers to Nathan Phillips Square where emergency workers  joined other public service workers as they set up an information picket at the entrance to Toronto City Hall on Monday, September 19, 2011. Actually the bus is pretty cool. It has a great graphic showing a female worker in the style of a world war two factory worker poster. Toronto Council Executive Committee meet today to discuss 2012 budget cuts as part of a core service review.
The imaginary (not a real City Department) Department of Public Memory, City Service Division, works with citizens who posted stickers on a city map showing public services that they want to save. Reports are that about 400 public members are to speak at the meeting with their concerns of the possible cuts. Approximately 250 workers are expected to be cut from the TTC alone as they and other City departments seek to find 10% cuts in budgets.
Pickets form a large circle, moving counterclockwise (I thought that was only supposed to happen in the southern hemisphere?)
Media, including George Lagogianos from CP24, report from site. 

'Ignored by Ford?' poster.

My opinion is that there are savings available to be had, bureaucrats and politicians like nothing better than building empires and making rules that mean more staff and more costs. I think that they should make reviews like this every 5 to 10 years and really look at what they can do and what it costs to do something. Politicians should look at the requests to spend money or add bylaws and things (like more stop signs, traffic signals, etc) that cost money to install and money to maintain - usually against the advice of their own staff. Is 10% reasonable or is there other ways beside laying off staff, that is what they need to find out?

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