Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow is asking the province to compensate the cost of its crossing guards and traffic safety police officers, which had been covered by fines from its speed camera program.<\/p>\n
During Thursday\u2019s council meeting, the mayor introduced a motion requesting that the province reimburse the city for the full operating cost of the 911 crossing guards and 18 traffic officers, which is $35.1 million.<\/p>\n
Chow warned that a thousand people could lose their jobs on Friday, when the speed camera ban goes into effect across the province.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn fact, a lot of councillors are saying, can we have more crossing guards? You\u2019re applying, you\u2019re saying that we need our crossing guard near the school. We will need more crossing guards if we don\u2019t have the speed camera. But guess what? As of Friday, i.e. tomorrow, we will not be allowed to collect a single dollar from the fines of people speeding, violating the traffic, the Highway Traffic Act that have been captured by the cameras,\u201d Chow told the council.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know how we\u2019re going to pay for the 18 traffic cops, neither would I know how to find money for the crossing guards.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her motion also requests that the Ford government reimburse the city\u2019s accelerated road safety initiatives capital budget of $210 million to mitigate the loss of the speed camera program.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach time you request traffic lights, do you know where that money comes from? The fines that are from people that are speeding, from the speed cameras. All of that starting tomorrow, the money is gone,\u201d Chow said.<\/p>\n
The mayor\u2019s motion was unanimously approved by council.<\/p>\n
While Chow welcomed the province investing $210 million to support increased road safety in school and community zones in the wake of the speed camera ban, the mayor said it won\u2019t be enough to cover Toronto\u2019s needs.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need to remember the premier said and the minister also said that they would make us whole and that they would find ways to make sure people are safe \u2014 well, firing or laying off the crossing guards will certainly not make people safe,\u201d Chow said.<\/p>\n
The province says it will provide $42 million in immediate funding through the Road Safety Initiatives Fund (RSIF). The amount for each city will be shared with them individually before cameras are turned off. <\/p>\n
Early next year, eligible municipalities will be able to apply to the RSIF for the remainder of the funding and submit construction plans for traffic-calming infrastructure.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe welcome the initial dollar. I hope it is only a down payment. They need to understand this dollar that we get from the fines goes to police officers and actually crossing guards and taking them out and then also removing the speed camera is dangerous,\u201d Chow said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow is asking the province to compensate the cost of its crossing guards and traffic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[712,43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-281940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-apple-news","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}