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Highlights of the Toronto City Council
meeting of February 31 - March 1, 2005 |
This is not intended to serve as an official record of the meeting.
 THE
2005 TORONTO BUDGET - $7.2 BILLION
The good news - we're investing money in some
worthwhile programs, including the Clean and Beautiful
City initiative and TTC Ridership Growth Strategy.
The bad news - we're spending money we don't have.
Without a serious financial investment or "new deal"
from the Federal and/or Provincial Governments - our
Chief Financial Officer has advised us that our current
fiscal strategy is 'UNSUSTAINABLE'.
First, the good news: we will acquire one hundred
additional buses for suburban routes for $5.7 million
and invest almost $12 million in new money for our Clean
and Beautiful City programs, including care of orphan
spaces, increased litter picking, enhanced horticultural
displays and improvements to the city's urban forest.
Mayor David Miller said: "The people of Toronto expect
us to invest in this city, to help it grow. This budget
does just that."
The 2005 budget had exceptional challenges, due in
part to a shortfall in provincial government funding for
mandated social services. As a result, the City used a
number of one-time revenue sources to balance the
operating budget. These included selling the land under
the Ontario Science Centre to the Province in lieu of a
debt payment, and selling City-owned power poles to
Toronto Hydro. In addition, we depleted several reserve
funds.
TTC tickets, tokens, and cash fares will go up in
price, however, City Council was able to freeze the
price of metropasses, and approved the introduction of a
transferable weekly TTC pass. The TTC estimates that
ridership will increase by 2.3 million riders.
Now, the bad news: The budget included a 3% increase
in residential property taxes, and a 1.5% increase in
business property taxes. The residential increase
exceeds the 1.7% rate which is generally accepted for
inflation. The business tax increase further aggravates
the inequitable position that City businesses face
versus the rest of the province on provincial education
taxes.
Even more ominous for taxpayers is the very
significant new increased debt that the City is assuming
within our capital budget - $350 million. This number
includes some accounting measures that are questionable,
including the capitalization of about $1 million of
lawyers' fees to defend the City's new Official Plan at
the Ontario Municipal Board. This new debt will greatly
increase our interest costs in future years.
The unsustainable spiral of increased debt followed
by increased interest costs is a well-worn path
pioneered by the Trudeau government of the early 1980's
and the Rae government of the early 1990's. In my view,
we should learn from those unfortunate experiences and
not repeat them.
The Mayor is counting on the new City of Toronto Act,
currently under discussion with the provincial
government and the recent federal announcement of gas
tax sharing to return the City to fiscal sustainability.
He is also demanding that the provincial government pay
its previously agreed share of social programs.
While we are all hopeful that the Province will come
to the table, in my view, we should not assume those
revenues will be completely achieved as the provincial
government has very significant fiscal problems of its
own. We need to do more ourselves. In my remarks during
the budget debate, I advocated the following additional
measures which I believe would go a long way towards
finding new efficiencies and reducing the City's overall
spending:
- a city hiring
freeze - except where hiring is forced by
provincially mandated programs;
- instructing our
Chief Administrative Officer and two
soon-to-be-hired Deputy City Managers to begin a
business re-engineering initiative to find and
achieve internal efficiencies and savings;
- asking the Mayor
to begin personal negotiations with our major unions
to find "win-win" productivity solutions - where the
unions propose viable measures, we jointly share the
benefits - for example: hiring part-time TTC
operators instead of inefficient split shifts could
save us a significant amount, which we should share
with TTC workers;
- a review of the
fees for all City programs to ensure cost recovery
and a review of the City's "Welcome Policy", in
which fees are waived for needy users. Under this
policy, forgone revenues are increasing very
significantly year over year;
- increased
residential development charges - to continue
receiving approximately $5,000 per person, for each
incremental resident of the City in new condominium
development, when that person will ultimately
require approximately $20,000 of municipal
infrastructure, is a going-out-of-business strategy
similar to Jetsgo's operating strategy; and
- a review of the
City's grants programs which were very significantly
increased again this year. The prevailing view of
many Councillors is that City grants multiply the
efforts of the voluntary sector. There are, however,
some grant recipients who seem to spend a great deal
of their time lobbying Councillors around City Hall.
In the end, Council adopted the budget. There were
several votes on different parts - most were decided by
a margin of about 26 to 13. I was one of the 13. There
is, however, a sea-change occurring on Council. Unless
we adopt a more fiscally responsible strategy, I believe
that votes on future budgets will be "too close to
call."
I welcome your opinions and comments on the above.
Please note: I am sometimes deluged with e-mail and can
be more than a week behind in responding.
OTHER
ITEMS OF NOTE
The City Works and Emergency Services Department has POSTPONED the
re-construction of the bridge on Lawrence Avenue over Bayview Avenue, planned
for this summer. It was deemed too disruptive to re-construct two nearby bridges
at the same time. The planned bridge re-construction on Mount Pleasant Road near
Glengowan Avenue will proceed in the spring. There will be at least one lane of
traffic available in each direction all summer.
Ward 25 Environment Day will be held between 10 a.m.
and 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 28, 2005 at the Toronto
Parking Authority parking lot on Yonge Street south of
York Mills Road, near The Miller Tavern. Please drop by
to get some free compost, to drop off hazardous waste
for disposal and to see some interesting environmental
displays - or just to talk to me about issues of
interest to you.
Cliff Jenkins
Councillor, Ward 25
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