City Beat

Less than a month ago, Ward 7 Toronto City Councillor George Mammoliti announced he wanted to get rid of memorials to slain gang members, as some kind of message he thought should be sent out to gangsters. Now he's got another plan. Mr. Mammoliti wants to remove the basketball hoops from public courts where drug dealers hang out.

"What we've been finding is that the traditional basketball courts that are outside -- not the recreational centres, not the controlled settings -- but the ones that are in our parks and some of our social housing complexes are becoming nothing but a place where gang members at night get together and listen to loud music and deal drugs," he said." Apparently this strategy, like the previous one, is designed to send a message to the drug dealers.

That'll fix those gang members. It reminded me of a fellow I know who suggested we get rid of parks and put up apartment buildings as a strategy to reduce crime. He wasn't kidding.

I'm glad to see our city councillors hard at work fighting crime. Speaking about sending messages, I heard today that the City will be sending out a newsletter to every resident in the city.

From the National Post: Our Toronto will replace three other utilitarian newsletters the city distributed each year on water, waste and roads, but will go to all households including apartments four times a year. For the remainder of this year, the newspaper will be funded out of the budgets of the trio of defunct publications, but council will be asked to approve another $400,000 for Our Toronto for next year.

Apparently the publication caught our councillors by surprise, and they aren't amused.

By the way, I'm not making any of this up.