Toronto’s city government has entered the garbage-time phase of its term.I mean, the executive committee passed a recommendation on Monday to explore accepting Bitcoin — if that isn’t a circus play made to run out the clock at a point when nothing of consequence is left to happen, I don’t know what is. Garbage time. If you watch any sports, you’ll know that term applies to the final few minutes of a game when the result is no longer in question and there’s nothing left to do but wait for the buzzer. Teams often sit their stars on the bench, play seldom-used substitutes, and often don’t even bother trying to make plays — why risk injury? There’s no point. It’s garbage. The government equivalent has settled in at city hall, with only, let’s see, well, eight months left until the next election. That seems like a long time to write off, especially when the election campaign doesn’t even kick off until May 1. But here we are. The city could be doing serious work. In his very last report as City Manager Peter Wallace put forward a grim picture of the city’s financial future to the executive committee on Monday that calls for tough decisions. As he’s done before, Wallace explained a choice must be made about the city’s path — they can either hike taxes and revenue substantially to carry on city building efforts or they can massively scale back what they are trying to accomplish. The status quo, he said, is not an option — it leads directly to a $1.42 billion deficit within five years, in a city that is legally not allowed to run a deficit.So! This is actually an interesting discussion, and a core one to the city’s mission and approach. It will be a defining discussion. We shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood and we took... well, on Monday, we took a knee. We’re not ready to go down either one of those ...
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