Do you wonder what the plan is?

If you drive around this city, one of the first things that sticks out is the deteriorating road conditions. You wonder how long it will be before the city gets around to go from fixing the potholes to putting in a new road surface.

If you go to the city website, you can find out about current and planned road closures but even after looking at city budget documents you cannot find out when work in scheduled on that third world roadway you just drove over in TO - without reading an 8 page PDF file and then you aren't sure one way or the other: there is no simple lookup such as entering Leslie, Finch, Lawrence, Wilson and getting a fast response. With a 5 year capital budget, maybe we should be expecting more detailed and specific planning. Doesn't the city have a simple project database that allows workers, councillors and citizens to find out what is going on? (How is 311 going to work around this?)

Yesterday, the Star initiated a federal "stimulus" tracker program project by citizens to see if what is planned is being done_ are the shovels in the ground? They provided a list of Toronto projects. Some cover some roadways and parks.

(By the way, there doesn't seem to be much money allocated for any stimulus project on roads or parks in our ward_except for Victoria Park road work and Shawnee Park tennis.)

Many residents in our ward might be interested to know about work related to "basement flooding program". Yes, it's a chore to go to the city website and find anything unless you are a trained researcher or librarian.

Would you have tried looking under Get Involved then select Projects then scroll down to Basement Flooding then scrolled down and clicked Ward 33?

Bottom Line: the city doesn't make it easy to find out what's going on in. You must wonder how city staff get to know what those are planning to do or are working on in the room next door. You can understand why a road like Leith Hill gets prepped in late 2009 for road re-surfacing before the planned early 2010 sewer work! We live in the information age_ why is it so difficult for our council and city management to get their act together.