Specifically, Stintz says that Ford is “abdicating his responsibility” (to Ford Nation: that means failing to do his job), by continually putting off on hearing about various transit funding options for the city (expected to need about $2 billion over 25 years).

The options, put forward by Metrolinx, include:

• Parking fees levy: An extra $1 a day, for a total of $1.4 billion a year.
• Sales tax: An extra 1 per cent added to the HST, for an estimated income of $1.4 billion a year.
• Fuel tax: An extra five cents per liter of gas, estimated to bring in $330 million a year.
• Payroll tax: With a hike of 0.5 per cent, this would be expected to generate $700 million a year.
• Property tax: Estimated to bring in an additional $670 million a year.
• Vehicle travel fee: Drivers would be charged 3 cents per kilometer traveled. Expected to raise $1.6 billion per year, but the setup and administrative costs would probably be massive (if this was even doable).
• Highway tolls: Same as above, but only on highways and at 10 cents a kilometre. Expected to pull in $1.4 billion a year.
• Development charges: Developers would be dinged with a 15 per cent increase, amounting to about $100 million a year.
• Transit fare increases: Guaranteed increases each and every year (in place now — thanks, Rob!), are apparently not nearly enough. An additional 15 cent per ride is expected to generate $50 million a year.
• Land value capture: This weird one has private land owners forking over cash to the government when their property values increase as a result of adjacent government projects (they build a park next door, claim that it makes your property more expensive, and skim the difference). No figures provided.

I’m not going to sit here and claim that any of these are giving me a boner, but with these few, short paragraphs, I’ve managed to do infinitely more research into the topic than Ford.

Maybe none of these ideas have any merit at all. Maybe some of them are quietly and not obviously brilliant. Rob Ford will never know as his only response is to obstinately stick his fingers in his ears, scream “I can’t hear you!”, and blame everyone and their dog for lack of planning, poor leadership, and a lack of momentum.

In the meantime, you can actually hear the paint dry as Robbie mulls over his own, intricate and vast transit plans, which comprise of:

• Casino: expected by Ford to pull in hundreds of millions, along with pixie dust and unicorns, and by those with any actual influence over it about $50 million.
• Casino: At woodbine!
• Casino: Downtown!
• Casino: At Cherry Beach!
• Casino: At the CNE!

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll no doubt notice the occasional lapse in posts.

While you could be forgiven for thinking that this is due to laziness or just plain old lack of motivation, I want to assure you that nothing could be farther from the truth.

Aside from blogging, living, my hobbies, the challenges of Sarah’s MS, and that thing called “earning a living”, I like to think I keep busier than most. Case in point:

This happy fellow is FloorPig, and he’s the star of a game by the same name. And you take him for a whirl on your Android phone here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.olliebit.FloorPig

The game is a simple (at least initially), puzzle game. The point is simply to guide FloorPig from the green tile to the red tile while removing every tile in between. If you’re having trouble picturing that, I recommend you try the game. Did I mention it’s free?

And if you don’t have an Android phone, a desktop, web, iOS, and probably Blackberry version should be coming very shortly.

Sarah and I are now working on the next game (tentatively called “Radius”), and we’re also working on expanding FloorPig’s challenging but still somewhat limited nine levels.

It’d be wonderful if you could try our game and send us some feedback, even if it’s negative; I’ve done this for many years so I have a pretty thick skin by now.

So if Toronto City Life isn’t being updated as regularly as you’d like, please accept our apologies. Maybe playing a game or two while you wait would help to pass the time?

I mean, come on — you weren’t expecting Rob Ford to support something to do with biking, did you?

Okay, so now that we got that clarified, I hope it doesn’t come as a shock that Fordo vowed to kill a motion before City Hall to remove some (unused) parking spaces below City Hall and replace them with a locker to hold around 300-ish bikes.

To Rob, this just doesn’t make sense — spend $1.2 million to make an estimated $70,000 in locker fees? In a classic Fordian non sequitur, Ford blurted out, “I’m going to try to kill it at council, but that’s a complete waste of taxpayers’ money.”

Sure there’s waste at City Hall — there are two seats reserved with the name “Ford” that are complete wastes of space, for example — but the bike locker isn’t one of them.

For starters, the current parking spots to be occupied are mostly sitting idle. Of course, that doesn’t mean an additional cost, but it also doesn’t mean additional revenue. For the 12 phantom cars that are to be displaced, that would be about $3,600 per year (assuming $300 per vehicle). Even if those spots were paved over with gold and diamonds and rented out at $1,000 a pop, and the number of cars were doubled, that would still only amount to $24,000 a year.

But for the city to get that money, those spots would actually have to be reserved, so to call it lost revenue is just not correct.

To be sure, $1.2 million is an up-front cost that can’t just be ignored. If the $70K revenue stream is accurate, it’ll take just over 17 years to pay off. So in the short term, it definitely would not make economic sense.

However, this re-fit is part of the plan to re-do Nathan Phillips Square and has been for many years, so Fordo kinda missed the boat on that one (he’s been on City Council for a decade, conservatively*).

But, okay, that’s Ford right? He did, after all, come out and declare that he’s not exactly skilled at doing the whole “mayor” thing, so this shouldn’t come as a shocker to anyone.

But Ford’s numbers (still trusting him on that dubious $70K), do make sense if you require immediate payback on projects. Municipal government doesn’t always have to require that, and especially not on a relatively small $1.2 million. Even at two and a half times, as one must expect from government projects, that’s still a less-than-astronomical $3 million.

I’m willing to bet that that new stage being put up top side at the Square, not to mention all the extra stuff behind it, is worth at least a cool three mill, and what purpose do they serve?

Presumably to attract tourists and locals who might spend money. Those same tourists and locals that may arrive on bicycles (I’ve seen ’em, even on those rented numbers!)

Seems like it’s not an economic issue that Rob Ford has, nor is it a political problem; for him, it’s ideological. He doesn’t like bikes, thinks cyclists are a pain in the ass, and still thinks that it’s possible to cram more cars onto the streets of Toronto as a solution to congestion.

I can see why he’d think that; he has the right of way on all streets (presumably because he’s mayor), and doesn’t really have to obey all of those lesser-known (and unenforceable!) laws — that’s for everyone else to do.

* I feel it’s fair to chip off a couple of years for vacancies, mental and otherwise.

This is, of course, in response to Ford’s latest bluster about how people need to sue him when he calls them liars (I’m sure it makes sense to him).

The Star’s Robyn Doolittle seems to be gunning close to the core Rob Ford issue of the moment: his alcohol / drug abuse. Not terribly surprising given both the rumours and some earlier contacts (this date last year, in fact):

The story, apparently, is that Rob made another slovenly mess of himself at a war veteran’s charity ball, and had to be shown out.

Three members of the Garrison Ball organizing committee said Ford was asked to leave because he appeared impaired. One said, “he seemed either drunk, high or had a medical condition.”

Doolittle goes on to name a variety of sadly but understandably anonymous (all fearing the mayor’s wrath),  sources who detail the alcoholism that Rob Ford is “battling with” (seems like a warm embrace to me, but that’s just my take). Some of the guest descriptions of Ford from the military ball, however, should remind us that there’s probably more than alcohol involved:

“incoherent,” “stumbling,” “rambling,” “intoxicated,” “slurring,” “seemed to be drunk,” “was nervous, excited, sweaty, out of it.”

I’ve had my fair share of alcohol, and I can’t say that I’ve ever been nervous or excited. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I know that Fordites are going to cling to their main mass no matter what, but to the rest of us, doesn’t it seem like maybe it’s time for a random drug test? And before anyone raises a fuss about inequality, I’d definitely be in favour of all the Councillors taking one.

(I just have to find the other one)

Perhaps one of TCL’s readers can tell me what this thing is? I’d guess either a fixed compass or solar clock.

It’s still cold and windy and I booked it over to warmth and coffee. On the lookout for ball #2.