Mayor Olivia Chow's Toronto

[Northern Light]

More on Chow's budgeting mastery...

Matt Elliott: A year ago Toronto’s budget was a dumpster fire. Now the city’s running a surprise surplus. What happened?

There are two main reasons why this week council will debate the first budget report since before the COVID-19 pandemic to offer relatively good news.

www.thestar.com

I wonder if the stormwater charge issue will have more salience this year?

I think the choice is going to be to pursue the parking levy rather than the stormwater one.

The two overlap.

Both punish surface parking; but the stormwater tax is a bit more complex to implement and would effect a lot of SFH for relatively little tax revenue.

 

[evandyk]

Either way, hopefully this year they come back, tell people they took the time to do the due diligence, select the best option, then get something passed.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

I think the choice is going to be to pursue the parking levy rather than the stormwater one.

The two overlap.

Both punish surface parking; but the stormwater tax is a bit more complex to implement and would effect a lot of SFH for relatively little tax revenue.

Though the stormwater tax is probably an easier sell when we just had that storm event - and she can probably use the "rain tax" label to her benefit now.

AoD

 

[generalcanada]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1816600513556689086

Where they have redirected the funds from the gardiner and dvp upload

 

[EddyMCD]

So does this mean no absurd tax increase again next year?

 

[Richard White]

So does this mean no absurd tax increase again next year?

It does not.

It's likely this will be to cover the cost overruns for renaming Dundas Square, renaming a street for cultural significance and possibly money to assist with reports.

If the city did actually have an extra 2 billion, it would be better served as funding for the TTC or for things like street cleaning.

 

[PL1]

So does this mean no absurd tax increase again next year?

"Absurd"? After years of absurd "efficiencies" that hamstrung the city? Toronto is still underrated undertaxed. Autocorrect!

 

[Northern Light]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1816600513556689086

Where they have redirected the funds from the gardiner and dvp upload

I reported this out on the previous page in the thread:

Mayor Olivia Chow's Toronto

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-ferry-purchase-approved-1.7252366 Not sure where to put this. Not much that’s new, except that the ferries will be built in Romania, and cost $92M vs. the 25M originally proposed (wow). This is really a story of two things...........design...

urbantoronto.ca

So does this mean no absurd tax increase again next year?

200M per year, give or take, when the deficit in capital funding is in the tens of billions..............

Surely you jest.

After years of failing to increase taxes in line with inflation, or population growth.......there is a piper to pay.........

I expect this year's increase on the property tax side will be lower, but still above current inflation........but there will likely be a Commercial Parking Levy among other revenue generating moves.

Its likely that what will come up for approval this year still won't be enough to rectify the City's long term challenges, but it will reduce the gap to something more manageable.

 

[picard102]

It does not.

It's likely this will be to cover the cost overruns for renaming Dundas Square, renaming a street for cultural significance and possibly money to assist with reports.

If the city did actually have an extra 2 billion, it would be better served as funding for the TTC or for things like street cleaning.

Except it's listed where this money is going, and it's none of that.

 

[evandyk]

I wonder what's happening with Land Transfer Tax revenues these days? It must be declining, and is a big slice of revenue.

 

[Admiral Beez]

I wonder what's happening with Land Transfer Tax revenues these days? It must be declining, and is a big slice of revenue.

I’m wondering when I’ll see the benefits of the approx 20% increase in my property taxes. I’m fine with it, as long as we can get the infrastructure working, reliable transit, squats out of our parks and underpasses, etc.

 

[Northern Light]

I’m wondering when I’ll see the benefits of the approx 20% increase in my property taxes. I’m fine with it, as long as we can get the infrastructure working, reliable transit, squats out of our parks and underpasses, etc.

There was no 20% increase in property taxes (rate); the increase was ~9.5% that includes the City building fund.

 

[Northern Light]

I wonder what's happening with Land Transfer Tax revenues these days? It must be declining, and is a big slice of revenue.

This was how the City budgeted for this year:

Budgeted Revenue 2024: 880M which would be a decline of just shy of 400M from the peak in 2021.

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The current year budget variances are only out to April 30, 2024.

They show LTT revenue tracking 17M above budget at that time.

https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2024/ex/bgrd/backgroundfile-247400.pdf

See p. 16

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My guess is that this year's numbers are pretty solid, because LTT is paid on closing, not on initial purchase.

So revenue is more tied to completions than to starts, in the current year.

That said, the go-forward impacts could be very substantial.

 

[picard102]

I’m wondering when I’ll see the benefits of the approx 20% increase in my property taxes. I’m fine with it, as long as we can get the infrastructure working, reliable transit, squats out of our parks and underpasses, etc.

I'd guess you'll see improvements in the same amount of time we've put off increasing property taxes.

 

[Northern Light]

I’m wondering when I’ll see the benefits of the approx 20% increase in my property taxes. I’m fine with it, as long as we can get the infrastructure working, reliable transit, squats out of our parks and underpasses, etc.

There isn't currently enough affordable housing in the pipeline to keep up with population /demand growth, it will take years to rectify that, if a serious effort is made.

Well managed transit doesn't require more money, more service does, some more will be added this September, probably the largest increase of the year, but we will still be below pre-pandemic levels.

Crudely the TTC needs in/around 12M to achieve a 1% service increase in hours. To get us back to where we were, with an appropriate population adjustment would be get to about 110% of pre-pandemic service and require something like 120M in additional subsidy (but it would be more initially until ridership growth caught up).

That's do-able, but it will require another above-inflation increase of taxes in the range of Inflation + 3%. Or alternative equivalent in revenues.

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For most people the most tangible things this year will be the September TTC service improvement and the expanded Library hours the same month.

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In respect of the infrastructure backlog on the capital side, its actually currently forecast to continue growing, we will need a parking tax, a storm water levy, much higher permit parking fees, and an increase to the City building fund of at least 3% to get the municipal side caught up.

That, however, would presume additional Federal and Provincial contributions in matching funds on major projects.