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Council Highlights
Archive
2008 |
The Council Highlights are
provided as a service to constituents in Ward 25. The
following is a brief summary of Council’s meetings held
on March 31, 2008.
2008
Operating Budget (EX18.1)
After a brief
meeting lasting barely a day, City Council rubberstamped
an $8.2 billion Operating Budget, essentially as
proposed by Mayor Miller’s Executive Committee. The
vote was 29-15. I was one of the fifteen who voted
against the budget.
At the bottom
of this email you will find a summary,
prepared by the City Communications Division of the new
and enhanced services funded by the budget – so that you
may form your own conclusions on their value to you and
the City. While it
undeniably does contain money for public transit, tree
maintenance and beautification initiatives, many
Councillors including myself, have been critical that
budget does not focus enough on providing those basic
core services that widely benefit citizens across the
entire City.
Interestingly,
the Division’s summary is entirely silent on the
financial implications to our residents – the first
being a 3.75% residential tax increase. While the Mayor
indicated that this fulfills his campaign pledge to keep
tax increases “in line with inflation”, the fact is that
it is about double the generally accepted rate of
inflation – 1.8%-1.9%.
And it further
ignores other recent taxes and charges recently proposed
and forced through Council by the Mayor and his team:
·
New Solid Waste
Collection Fee
- costing about $54 million annually
which, if spread evenly across the City, would
represent a 1.5% additional tax
·
New Land Transfer
Tax
- costing about $275 million
annually – equivalent to almost 10% additional
tax.
·
New Vehicle
Registration Tax
- equivalent to almost 1.5%
additional tax
·
9% Water Rate
Increase
Clearly, the
cumulative effect of all these other taxes and charges
goes well beyond being “in line with inflation”. On
balance, fifteen Councillors (including myself) did not
concur that this approach provided value for money for
the people of Toronto.
The budget
quietly contained some other unpleasant surprises – both
locally and across the City:
1. The
Children’s Wading Pool in York Mills Park,
one of the 60 outdoor pools operated by the City, was
singled out for closure in order to save $55,000.
2. A New
$10/day Parking Fee in the City’s Large Regional Parks
on weekends and statutory holidays from June to
Thanksgiving was proposed in order to achieve $225,000
in net revenue. Two of the six parks hit with this new
fee are in Ward 25 – Sunnybrook Park and Edwards
Gardens.
In my view, both
of these measures are not in the Mayor’s spirit of “City
Building”. But, when I moved to reverse them by clawing
back a small portion of the $500,000 in additional
funding being provided to the Mayor’s ‘Nuit Blanche’
event this year, some Councillors were dismissive. One
described the location of the wading pool as at the
“corner of Millionaire Avenue and Billionaire Street”.
Another councillor, a key member of the Mayor’s Budget
Committee, dismissed it as a “9-inch pool in
Millionaires’ Row.” This is both untrue and unfair
stereotyping. The clear implication is that residents
of Ward 25, no matter what their economic means, do not
deserve services that are routinely supplied to people
elsewhere in the City. My reversal motions on these two
matters lost on votes of 14-29 and 15-28 respectively –
in each case with Mayor Miller in opposition.
This operating
budget was also proudly advertised as the “first to be
introduced as balanced”. This claim conveniently
ignores that the City’s accompanying $1.6 billion
Capital Budget, approved separately a few months ago,
contained significant new debentured debt. The federal
and provincial governments bring forward their capital
and operating budgets together – they could/would not
claim a balanced budget while increasing debt. The
City’s ever increasing debt now totals more than $2.5
billion. Furthermore, the $441 million debt service
charge has quietly grown to be the budget’s second
largest line item – comprising 13.5 cents out of every
tax dollar spent. So while our credit rating remains at
the AA level, the increasing debt is of no comfort to
those who believe we should leave a fiscally sound City
to our children.
3.
Downloading - There is a
little news on the largest structural problem in the
Operating Budget – downloading. In 2008, the provincial
government is once again requiring the City to deliver
provincial programs - at a cost of $2.5 billion while
providing only $1.8 billion in funding, a shortfall of
about $700 million. As you may recall, our CFO
previously reported that provincial downloading began at
$150 million in the Harris years and grew last year to
$729 million.
This year, the
McGuinty government has finally begun modest uploading –
a phased take back of $39 million on two of its
programs, the Ontario Drug Benefit and Ontario
Disability Support programs. Our CFO declined to
speculate on the amount of future uploading by the
provincial government – but, the provincial government’s
$2.3 billion surplus last year gives it the financial
room to complete the uploading fairly quickly. In my
view, a rapid uploading of an additional $550 million
annually would truly permit the provincial government
to claim superiority over the
Harris performance.
And, as I remarked to Council, the City
could/should use that money to terminate the new Land
Transfer and Vehicle Registration taxes, and still have
over $200 million left over for debt reduction and other
core programs.
In summary, the
City’s Operating Budget was adopted by Council. It will
provide new and enhanced services while containing very
significant new taxes, fees and debt servicing. For
more information, see
http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/2008/agendas/cc.htm
and select Meeting 18.
Measures
in Preparation for a Potential TTC Strike
(CC19.1)
Council convened
a separate meeting to consider and adopt several traffic
measures in the event of a loss of TTC service. At this
writing, there is no agreement between the TTC and its
unions. If an agreement is not reached and a labour
disruption occurs, there will be a higher number of
vehicles on City streets, likely increasing congestion.
There is a need to take measures to assist emergency
vehicles in reaching their destinations, particularly
around medical facilities.
The first
measure would be extended “No Parking” from 7:00 a.m. to
7:00 p.m., Monday to Friday on certain streets.
In and near Ward 25, they would
include Yonge Street, and parts of Eglinton Avenue and
Bayview Avenue. Other measures would include the
permission for car-pooling vehicles, containing at least
three passengers, to utilize lanes normally used for
transit vehicles only. Some handicap privileges would
be rescinded for the duration of the disruption – in
particular the ability to park in a “No Parking” zone on
a major street.
The City’s
Employee and Labour Relations Committee, of which I am a
member, has met to review the TTC’s negotiating position
and I have provided certain suggestions for the
negotiations. To permit the negotiations to continue in
conditions which provide maximum opportunity to reach a
principled and fair agreement, public comment is not
indicated at this time.
For more
information, please see
http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/2008/agendas/cc.htm.
Then select Meeting #19.
Non-Council Items:
Ward 25
Environment Day – This
year’s Environment Day will be held Saturday, May 24,
2008 from 10 am to 2pm in the Toronto Parking Authority
Lot at 3885 Yonge Street (Yonge Street just south of
York Mills Avenue). More information will be provided
in the near future.
Bayview
Bridge Construction Postponed.
I have previously reported (in more limited
distribution) that the City was proposing to reconstruct
the bridge which carries Lawrence Avenue over Bayview
Avenue in the summer/fall of 2008. It would have caused
significant traffic disruption for 18 weeks.
Interestingly, one resident of Ward 25 noted that
Bayview would be subject to major water main work for a
large part of the summer of the following year and hence
would be disrupted for two successive summers. He
suggested doing both jobs in the same year. I relayed
his suggestions to City Engineering staff and after
examination, they determined that it was both desirable
and feasible. They have now scheduled the two projects
for 2009. I will report more fully on these projects,
and others, in a future newsletter.
_______________________________________________________________
City of
Toronto Communications Division
2008
Operating Budget Highlights
New and Enhanced Services
The
following are projects included in the 2008 Recommended
Operating Budget. These projects are listed by theme.
Public
Transit
•
Run all City bus routes
from 6 am to 1 am on weekdays effective November 2008
($2.616 million gross and net)
•
Operate 100 new
Ridership Growth Strategy buses to relieve peak
overcrowding effective November 2008 ($1.000 million
gross and net)
•
Open new bus garage to
house 100 new Ridership Growth Strategy buses ($1.996
million)
•
Invest in improving the
cleanliness and appearance of subway stations ($1.250
million gross and net)
•
Reduce occupational
injury rates by instilling safety as a culture in the
TTC ($2.644 million gross and net)
•
Establish Health and
Wellness Program – to reduce absenteeism due to sickness
and to improve the general physical well-being of TTC
staff ($0.673 million gross and net)
70%
Diversion & Climate Change
•
To achieve the 70%
Diversion Target by 2010, ($16.849 million and $0 net),
Solid Waste Management Services will:
o
Implement volume-based
user fees for waste collection for apartments,
condominiums and single family homes in order to
encourage more reuse and recycling
o
Provide single unit
residences with larger recycling carts that will
increase their ability to recycle. Multi-unit residences
will also be provided with on-floor recycling carts
o
Expand the range of
recyclable materials in the blue box to include
polystyrene and plastic file, which could divert 3500
tonnes annually
o
Expand the Green Bin
program to include apartments and condominiums.
o
Implement Collection of
Usable and Durable Goods for all residents for reuse and
recycling (once every two weeks)
o
Establish reusable
goods drop-off centres to provide residents with a
one-stop location for reusable goods.
•
Honour City’s
stewardship of the environment by contributing to the
Perpetual Care of Landfills Reserve Fund ($3.500 million
gross and $0 net)
•
Develop, maintain and
support a new billing system to integrate the solid
waste billing system with the current water billing
system to produce one utility bill ($1.110 million gross
and $0 net)
•
Live Green Toronto -
Establish a social marketing and local food campaign to
assist Toronto’s neighbourhoods and communities to take
action on climate change ($0.800 million gross and net)
•
Provide tree
maintenance on 2,300 trees annually on Arterial / Main
Streets and Commercial Areas ($0.700 million gross, $0
net and 1 position)
•
Remove Tree Hazards on
pathways, picnic areas and park entrances ($0.705
million gross and net and 3 positions)
•
Provide funding for the
Smart Commute Initiative to implement workplace-based
transportation demand management strategies within
Metrolinx ($0.280 million gross and $0.150 million net)
•
Provide incentives to
achieve, through demand response measures, 90 MW of
energy savings, in partnership with Ontario Power
Authority ($3.220 million gross and $0 net)
•
Develop and implement a
strategy to address forecast changes in weather patterns
($0.085 million gross and net)
•
Establish dedicated
financial portfolio management for the Sustainable
Energy Plan initiatives ($0.238 million gross and $0
net)
•
Establish Green
Economic Sector Development Initiatives for the Toronto
Discovery District - District Energy Assessment, the
Municipal Green Vendors Trade Fare and the Green
Manufacturing Action Team/Plan ($0.075 million gross and
net)
•
Purchase Green Power to
meet the electricity requirements of City Hall ($0.500
million gross and net)
Public Spaces
•
Increase Neighbourhood
Beautification project funding to $20,000 per ward
($0.220 million gross and $0 net), that will provide
$3,000 per ward for a neighbourhood based community
project and $17,000 per ward for Demonstration Projects
that will transform and enhance neighbourhood
•
Orphan Spaces Clean-Up
– Implement Final Phase of maintenance of 360 landscaped
orphaned areas on City streets and boulevards ($0.400
million gross and $0 net)
•
Establish Public Realm
Office– to improve the public realm including the
deployment of over 3,500 new street furniture elements
in 2008 ($3.598 million gross and $0 net)
•
Open new Waterfront
parkland and facilities ($0.799 million gross and net)
•
Improve service
delivery in Community Planning, Heritage Preservation
Services, Urban Design and Transportation Planning
($0.500 million gross and net, and 12 positions)
•
Establish Unit to begin
implementing the Union Station Revitalization project
($0.410 million and $0 net)
Creative City
•
Install Stingray Touch
Tank Exhibit 2008, Toronto Zoo ($0.932 million gross,
$1.024 million net revenue)
•
Improve Nuit Blanche
($0.505 million gross and net)
•
Begin planning for
Bicentennial of War of 1812 ($0.048 million gross and
$0.025 million net)
•
Enhance funding for the
Toronto Arts Council, major arts organizations, local
arts services organizations, and the Glenn Gould Protégé
Award within the Community Partnership & Investment
Program mainly to support the Culture Plan established
in 2003 ($1.097 million gross and net)
Community
Health and Wellness
•
Enhance funding for the
Community Services Partnership Investment Program to
address inflationary pressures and increasing service
needs in emerging communities and priority
neighbourhoods. ($0.467 million gross and net)
•
Meet safety
requirements as recommended by the SARS Commission
Report in Homes for Aged for infection prevention and
control demands ($0.544 million gross and $0 net)
•
Enhance Nutritional and
Support Services to ensure compliance with the new Long
Term Care Act within Homes for the Aged ($0.670 million
gross and $0 net)
•
Increase support for
the Streets to Homes Initiative to help people living on
the streets find and keep housing ($0.116 million gross,
$0 net, 1 position)
•
Provide necessary
training and supports to Ontario Work clients to find
permanent employment through the Woodbine Entertainment
Redevelopment project ($0.491 million gross and $0 net)
Public
Safety and Security
•
Increase reception
relief coverage hours at Eastview Neighbourhood
Community Centre to ensure security is maintained during
weekend and evenings ($0.016 million gross and net)
•
Enhance Central
Ambulance Communication Centre contingency and disaster
recovery planning at EMS ($0.160 million gross and $0
net)
•
Establish Fleet Safety
and Standards to ensure safe operation of City vehicles
and equipment ($0.063 million gross and $0 net)
•
Provide funding to the
Native Child and Family Services Toronto to develop two
aboriginal child care centres that will create an
additional 66 child care spaces ($2.928 million gross
and net)
•
Create new child care
centres in three elementary schools that will provide up
to 69 additional child care spaces for preschool
children and school age children in each site ($2.0
million gross and net)
Improving
the Business Climate
•
Introduce Financial
Services Sector Strategic Initiatives to support the
development of an International Centre for Financial
Services Training and the Financial Services Information
Technology Innovation Initiative ($0.100 million gross
and net)
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