And yet it's been explained to you many times, that it isn't, with examples.
That you continue to make such bizarre claims, either proves that you have no capacity to actually comprehend what is being said here, or you are simply trolling.
Actually, besides two recent posters over the past day, nothing has been explained to me in regards to the gross operating budget. On the contrary, it has continuously been explained to me that the "gross operating budget" has been explained to me...but it hasn't, or at least nothing that conflicts with what I've been saying. What exactly am I missing here?
The gross operating budget not growing as quickly doesn't really mean much in an of itself. If the government was to cut $200 million in funding to the city, the gross operating budget goes down by $200 million without any action whatsoever by the city.
What you should really look at is the net operating budget, which has grown at pretty much the same rate as it did under Miller, aside from Ford's first year where he implemented a tax freeze...courtesy of Miller's surplus.
I understand this. And please, if anything I say here is wrong, correct me, as I want to lay rest to this "gross operating budget" stuff.
The gross operating budget represents the total cost or total spending, whereas the net operating budget represents what the city funds directly. The gross operating budget has both federal/provincial funding, user fees and other revenue.
So, in essence, if the net operating budget stays the same, that means the city is paying about the same. However, if the net operating budget stays the same while the gross operating budget stagnates, that means that the city is paying the same, but is either receiving less funding, user fees or other revenue streams at the same time.
Please, if anything I said here is wrong, pile on, everybody.
To keep property taxes incredibly low, it would mean they were already incredibly low to begin with. I guess Miller wasn't that bad...
I said property tax
increases were being kept incredibly low.
Do you know what a punitive measure is? Do you know what an externality is? Do you know who picked up the bill to clean-up the excess plastic bags all over our city?
Yes, I know what those are, and they're completely irrelevant. City council introduced the bag fee to reduce bag consumption over environmental concerns, not because they were paying too much to clean up littered bags.
Regardless, I would have been fine with a tax. What I'm not fine with is being mandated by the government to pay money directly into business coffers. If I'm going to pay a "tax," it better well go into the government.
Let me re-state exactly what Ford said. Ford said there would be 100km of new well-lit bike trails/lanes built before 2015.
So far in his term the city has built 2.5km of new bicycle lanes, and removed 2.5km from Jarvis.
By 2015 there will be an extra ~3.5km built along a route where there are already bicycle lanes today. Waterfront Toronto will add an extra Miller-legacy 2.5km, too (only 1km of which lacked bicycle lanes before).
Do you have a source for this? The article I linked, albeit old, showed that city hall had a plan for the installation of 70km of bike lanes.
And it's not just things that haven't materialized. As I demonstrated a few posts ago, Ford told blatant lies to mine votes. He lied about indisputable facts at least 8 times in one speech. There wasn't one bit of truth in those lies.
Maybe we have a different definition of what a "lie" is. In that transit speech you posted, Ford made a lot of claims ("raising 1 billion from the private sector", "having subways completed by the Pan Am games") which we know never materialized. If he knew they never would, then yes, they were lies. However, we have no indication that he knew they wouldn't materialize. As Ford has apparently met with the private sector to discuss transit funding and has been fighting with Stintz and council over subways and transit, most of his claims seem to be unfulfilled or maybe even unrealistic rather than lies.
