EnviroTO
Senior Member
Fixed? The TTC's operational cost have been re-uploaded? Everything is back the way it was? When? How did I miss the news?
|
|
|
Fixed? The TTC's operational cost have been re-uploaded? Everything is back the way it was? When? How did I miss the news?
Pep'rJack
Active Member
^ I'm glad you point that out, because I thought I'd somehow slept through something big, as well. Don't know what he's talking about. This should go completely without saying, but unfortunately it needs to repeated once again, seeing as political memories really are maddeningly short: Toronto is in this mess because of downloading!!! This is all very largely the product of Paul Martin and Harris, but that reality seems to now be almost lost to the sands of time. 'Frustrating' hardly begins to describe this situation, with various loudmouths insisting that 'irresponsible' TO tighten its already crushing belt. Good lord, when will this bullshit end?
TrickyRicky
Senior Member
"TO tighten its already crushing belt"
The evidence has not been presented to make this assumption. If it were true and Toronto truly is cut to the bone and services were being provided at a favourable cost relative to other municipalities then this would be the first line of defence in an argument against senior government. The silence coming from the city infers that this is not the case and that the city provides services at a cost premium to satisfy various interests.
The evidence has not been presented to make this assumption. If it were true and Toronto truly is cut to the bone and services were being provided at a favourable cost relative to other municipalities then this would be the first line of defence in an argument against senior government. The silence coming from the city infers that this is not the case and that the city provides services at a cost premium to satisfy various interests.
Pep'rJack
Active Member
^ But the huge problem with this pov is that in choosing to see the situation in this way you've accepted a false frame as the fundamental question. Here's what's happened: fed and prov gov'ts downloaded responsibilities to municipal levels while keeping the revenue structure essentially the same, effectively planting an inevitable timebomb for TO a few years down the road (this was widely understood to be the case while this scheme was being initiated). Then the roosters eventually arrive back home, but instead of saying, "this is the necessary consequence of a fed/prov shell game intended to leave TO holding the hot potato", we say, "TO must prove its frugal worth to those who knowingly created this situation in the first place". It's illogical. The two upper levels of gov't forced the city into this impossible situation, and have now apparently succeeded in convincing most people that it's TO's fault. It's blame-the-victim nonsense, not dissimilar in strategy to dishonest garbage like starve-the-beast. And unbelievably, virtually everyone seems to be swallowing this junk because the policy choices that led to this have apparently just slipped out of consciousness. A spade needs to assertively be called a spade here: TO has been utterly shafted so that Martin and Harris could effectively fudge the fed/prov books and create the illusion of fiscal responsibility while simply dumping an unsolvable mess on TO, and calling the city the culprit. It's crazy. I swear, it is friggin' pitchfork n' torch time. This total crap has just got to stop - genuinely drastic and revolutionary measures are simply required now, just in order to restore some semblance of fairness and common sense to this absurd carousel of deceit. Why Miller can't muster the balls to rally the troops behind a totally righteous rebellion is beyond me - the simple truth is on the city's side, but he just won't brandish it. Grrrrr.....
adma
Superstar
I forgot who, but someone on some message board (UT?) equated, back in 2003, David Miller to NYC mayor John Lindsay--and it was funny, because I'd already thought the same thing. A fresh new face of reform swept in in a whiff of anti-Tammany...only to be creamed by the raw scale of urban rot out there...
fiendishlibrarian
Active Member
That was me adma, and I stand by that comparison. I made it after having read Vincent Cannato's The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York. It's a very interesting book, and provides an insight into Lindsay's utter inability - with the exception of finally bringing Robert Moses to heel - to bring about structural improvements as to how New York was/is run, despite being elected in a wave of reformist optimism and widespread "Lindsaymania" on the part of the media and intellectual elites of the day. Sound familiar?
Pep'rJack
Active Member
^ I saw where this was (not) going early in Miller's first term, as well, and have been repeatedly braying the following ever since: The only two people who actually succeeded in truly getting things done in NY - Moses and Giuliani - did so through sheer force of will, and nothing else. It was not the 'strong-mayor' system - that's a cop-out - it was their complete refusal to take no for an answer at every turn. "Give Miller time, give him a chance, let the process work, blah blah blah", bull! There is absolutely no way that following the usual procedures, and adhering to the normal conventions of politics and inter-governmental negotiation and discourse is going to achieve anything of meaningful substance for TO. Only hardball - and I mean tear-up-the-rulebook HARDball - is going to get us out of this monumental jam. Normally I would never advocate such brazen strong-arm tactics, but the verdict is in, and it is abundantly clear: there is just no other way. The upper levels of gov't have declared war on us, but we still putter about as if it's all merely a gentleman's game of Parcheesi. We need nothing less than a son-of-a-bitch pit bull with colossal balls and an iron paw to take the helm in this town and to mercilessly bulldoze anyone and everyone out of the way until the playing field is at least kind of level again. Miller's heart has always been in the right place, but he just doesn't have the stomach or constitution for what has become a massively demanding task.
TrickyRicky
Senior Member
^Mike Harris?
adma
Superstar
If any Mike at this point, it'd be Thompson...
billonlogan
Active Member
Maybe next year, the budget committee can sharpen their pencils. This does not help the perception City Hall is making efforts to control spending. No wonder I see less and less charity car washes, when the city is tripping over themselves handing out grants. Sorry folks, the optics don't look good here.
Granted, taxpayers are getting taken
By JOE WARMINGTON
The Necessary Angel Theatre Company received a gift of $50,925 of our money!
Was that necessary for the well being of Torontonians? Probably no more so than the $2,000 for the Toronto Vegetarian Association, the $3,500 we gave Solo Chicken Productions, the $10,000 that went to the Toronto Fashion Incubator, the $4,000 to the Toronto Free Gallery (not free for us), the $4,500 to the Troubled Souls (troubled taxpayers) or the $29,389 to the Vermont Square Parent-Child Mother Goose Program.
It seems, folks, the city of Toronto does have some money available after all. Granted, you have to persuade somebody at City Hall to throw some of it your organization's way.
For a full list of handouts, broken down ward by ward, please go here. http://www.canoe.ca/Apr27/cpip1.pdf
Once there you'll see some $44 million doled out in 2005. More than $41 million has been allotted for city grants in 2007 at a time when the city's reserves are down to less than $30 million.
But, hey, there's always the equally as culpable province that can come in and take over a bankrupted Toronto should the day come. In the meantime, hundreds of organizations are lined up at the trough for our money.
People might want to think about this when council starts to talk about putting a congestion toll on people driving downtown or think about it when they nail the already stressed commuter further on their phony environmental cause. And you might want to think about it when you start to pay your almost 4% property tax increase this year.
Thinking about it is about all you can do. It's a done deal. There seems to be really only one councillor down there who believes a public dollar is worth fighting for. But the only people laughing at Councillor Rob Ford this week were his colleagues. It's actually them who are the laughing stock.
Judging from your e-mails yesterday and the more than 1,000 e-mails and calls Ford received, people are fed up with the freeloading.
They are tired of the parking assassins having zero tolerance against them and the constant attack on the family budget. They are tired of their mayor and council getting giant raises when they are not running on budget, free baseball, concerts, golf, TTC, parking, gas, cellphones, food and free passes to the CNE and the Toronto Zoo. (Still waiting for a councillor or mayor to offer a zoo pass for Indire Singh and her son, Ryan, who live next door to the zoo but have never been).
The truth is that to a majority of the people in this city all of those things mentioned above are luxuries.
That same majority never see a penny of cash coming their way in the form of grants.
But the minority seems to be cleaning up. "It is a racket," Ford said yesterday. "There is no need to be handing out free money. I would support loans over that."
Of course there were some who disagreed and don't see this as waste.
"Your article is a good example of irresponsible journalism ... to spread misleading information to the poor and uneducated," writes Caroline Law, who says cutting such grants has consequences.
"Cut funding on youth community centres so that our kids can spend time on the street and smoke pot and vandalize your home and car ...? It is people like you that make our city second class."
It's a point of view. Is she right? Reader Tony Dickins doesn't think so.
"Property tax dollars are supposed go towards services for the people of Toronto," Dickins says. "Perks and discretionary funds for elected officials would not seem to be services. There's no such thing as a free lunch -- except perhaps at city hall." And at a lot of other places too.
My feeling is that at a time when our roads are a mess and we have not sorted out what to do with the Gardiner Expressway and constant gridlock and poor transit, there should be no money from us for theatre groups, poets, singers, artists and street groups. If there were surpluses, maybe!
This doesn't mean these are bad people. They may also be talented but they can raise the money just like my colleague Gord Stapley's sons Graham, 14, and Brandon, 11, of the Credit Valley Wolves are doing to raise money for a hockey trip to Phoenix next year. You'll see them washing cars this summer. If they don't raise the money, they don't go.
The culture of free stuff creates a culture of freeloading in a society where it seems
everybody else has to sell what they produce or they are out of business. They get no gifts, no free ride. Just taxes.
Of course we all know nothing will be done. There are too many votes with the handouts. And we know the lefties will be difficult to pry away from the slop.
But since it is still a free society they can't stop us from printing the public documents of where the spending has occurred:
The Storytellers School of Toronto got $18,850. Stranger Theatre got $3,500, the Hardworkin' Homosexuals were awarded $4,000, Friends of Fort York $15,000, The Prisoners with HIV/AIDS Support Action Network was in for more than $108,000, the YYZ Artists Outlet got $65,000, $27,000 was earmarked for Toronto's First Post Office and the Parent Action on Drugs got $27,950. I think our council must be on drugs.
Can we impeach these guys? Anybody want to help me apply for the grant?
For a full list of handouts, broken down ward by ward, please go here. http://www.canoe.ca/Apr27/cpip1.pdf
Granted, taxpayers are getting taken
By JOE WARMINGTON
The Necessary Angel Theatre Company received a gift of $50,925 of our money!
Was that necessary for the well being of Torontonians? Probably no more so than the $2,000 for the Toronto Vegetarian Association, the $3,500 we gave Solo Chicken Productions, the $10,000 that went to the Toronto Fashion Incubator, the $4,000 to the Toronto Free Gallery (not free for us), the $4,500 to the Troubled Souls (troubled taxpayers) or the $29,389 to the Vermont Square Parent-Child Mother Goose Program.
It seems, folks, the city of Toronto does have some money available after all. Granted, you have to persuade somebody at City Hall to throw some of it your organization's way.
For a full list of handouts, broken down ward by ward, please go here. http://www.canoe.ca/Apr27/cpip1.pdf
Once there you'll see some $44 million doled out in 2005. More than $41 million has been allotted for city grants in 2007 at a time when the city's reserves are down to less than $30 million.
But, hey, there's always the equally as culpable province that can come in and take over a bankrupted Toronto should the day come. In the meantime, hundreds of organizations are lined up at the trough for our money.
People might want to think about this when council starts to talk about putting a congestion toll on people driving downtown or think about it when they nail the already stressed commuter further on their phony environmental cause. And you might want to think about it when you start to pay your almost 4% property tax increase this year.
Thinking about it is about all you can do. It's a done deal. There seems to be really only one councillor down there who believes a public dollar is worth fighting for. But the only people laughing at Councillor Rob Ford this week were his colleagues. It's actually them who are the laughing stock.
Judging from your e-mails yesterday and the more than 1,000 e-mails and calls Ford received, people are fed up with the freeloading.
They are tired of the parking assassins having zero tolerance against them and the constant attack on the family budget. They are tired of their mayor and council getting giant raises when they are not running on budget, free baseball, concerts, golf, TTC, parking, gas, cellphones, food and free passes to the CNE and the Toronto Zoo. (Still waiting for a councillor or mayor to offer a zoo pass for Indire Singh and her son, Ryan, who live next door to the zoo but have never been).
The truth is that to a majority of the people in this city all of those things mentioned above are luxuries.
That same majority never see a penny of cash coming their way in the form of grants.
But the minority seems to be cleaning up. "It is a racket," Ford said yesterday. "There is no need to be handing out free money. I would support loans over that."
Of course there were some who disagreed and don't see this as waste.
"Your article is a good example of irresponsible journalism ... to spread misleading information to the poor and uneducated," writes Caroline Law, who says cutting such grants has consequences.
"Cut funding on youth community centres so that our kids can spend time on the street and smoke pot and vandalize your home and car ...? It is people like you that make our city second class."
It's a point of view. Is she right? Reader Tony Dickins doesn't think so.
"Property tax dollars are supposed go towards services for the people of Toronto," Dickins says. "Perks and discretionary funds for elected officials would not seem to be services. There's no such thing as a free lunch -- except perhaps at city hall." And at a lot of other places too.
My feeling is that at a time when our roads are a mess and we have not sorted out what to do with the Gardiner Expressway and constant gridlock and poor transit, there should be no money from us for theatre groups, poets, singers, artists and street groups. If there were surpluses, maybe!
This doesn't mean these are bad people. They may also be talented but they can raise the money just like my colleague Gord Stapley's sons Graham, 14, and Brandon, 11, of the Credit Valley Wolves are doing to raise money for a hockey trip to Phoenix next year. You'll see them washing cars this summer. If they don't raise the money, they don't go.
The culture of free stuff creates a culture of freeloading in a society where it seems
everybody else has to sell what they produce or they are out of business. They get no gifts, no free ride. Just taxes.
Of course we all know nothing will be done. There are too many votes with the handouts. And we know the lefties will be difficult to pry away from the slop.
But since it is still a free society they can't stop us from printing the public documents of where the spending has occurred:
The Storytellers School of Toronto got $18,850. Stranger Theatre got $3,500, the Hardworkin' Homosexuals were awarded $4,000, Friends of Fort York $15,000, The Prisoners with HIV/AIDS Support Action Network was in for more than $108,000, the YYZ Artists Outlet got $65,000, $27,000 was earmarked for Toronto's First Post Office and the Parent Action on Drugs got $27,950. I think our council must be on drugs.
Can we impeach these guys? Anybody want to help me apply for the grant?
For a full list of handouts, broken down ward by ward, please go here. http://www.canoe.ca/Apr27/cpip1.pdf
H
Hydrogen
Guest
Why do people have to pit it as an either/or scenario? Starving the arts and culture will have a significant downstream effect on the city in terms of quality of life. Reduce that quality of life and the city will begin to suffer.
Interestingly, the Gardiner is mentioned as a problem. But one has to ask why this highway is not the responsibility of the province? It sure looks like a 400 series highway - as does the DVP.
These types of arguments concerning the starving of one area of funding to benefit another are silly. It is not a debate about either/or, it is a much deeper problem than this, and should be addressed with a little more intelligence than pitting roads against arts.
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
Having a cursory look a the list posted, a good chunk (I'd say more than 50%) are community service agencies; frills you say? I wonder how they're going to comment if some senior is not able to get anyone to take them to the doctor because the agency got their funding cut.
Get angry at MPF and the like instead.
AoD
Get angry at MPF and the like instead.
AoD
Pep'rJack
Active Member
.
Probably not worth a new thread...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cities survey says: Toronto the middling
by Royson James
May 4, 2007
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/210358
"If we are so efficient, how come this study says we're doing so badly?" Councillor Norm Kelly wanted to know, on reading a benchmarking report on how well Toronto compares in delivering city services.
Kelly was looking at some of the charts that showed Toronto in the "bottom quartile," or bottom 25 per cent, among municipalities in the cost of winter maintenance of roads, waste disposal, transit, water distribution, as well as in its poor performance in curbing violent crime and traffic congestion.
"But we are better than the median in 52 per cent of the services," came the response from city manager Shirley Hoy.
In other words, for half the services it delivers, Toronto does it better than about half of the sister municipalities compared.
Hoy thinks that's good. But, of course, it means that Toronto does it worse than nearly half (48 per cent) of the other municipalities compared.
It's all a matter of perspective. The devil is in the details. And expectations.
Should Big City Toronto be more efficient that Windsor or London? Can you compare it to Markham and Milton? Results from a recent comparison done by the top bureaucrats from 15 municipalities representing 9 million Ontarians were analyzed and released this week. How did the Big Smoke do? Mixed results.
Called the Ontario Municipal CAOs Benchmarking Initiative (OMB!), the study looked at 12 service areas in 2005 and compared them according to 21 service level indicators and 48 performance measures.
High service levels earned a favourable ranking. High costs in delivering these services earned a low rating on performance. Participating were all of the GTA, Hamilton, London, Windsor, Ottawa, Sudbury, Niagara region, Thunder Bay, Muskoka and Brant County.
First, the good news:
# For 91 per cent of the service levels studied, Toronto has improved or maintained service levels in recent years. So, despite downloading and the fiscal squeeze, citizens have not suffered an erosion of service levels to a great extent.
Hoy says Toronto has maintained these levels primarily in areas where it has to, because of its size and population density and stature as the heart of the province's major urban region.
For example: a high number of police officers, transit vehicles, library books, emergency shelter beds, social housing, fire and ambulance responses.
(The inverse is that Toronto's high density accounts for a lower number of road lanes, fire vehicle hours, ambulance vehicle hours, indoor ice pads and recreation centres per 1,000 population. That means, when accounting for service levels, Toronto scores lower in these areas, when, in fact, this might be a virtue.)
# In children's services, service levels are way above the median. "We spend a lot on kids, more regulated and subsidized spaces than others and have lower costs of providing a subsidized space – displaying economy of scale," Hoy says.
# City Hall departments that deliver the city government – city clerks, corporate finance, etc., have shown huge savings since amalgamation.
# Library services show up in the top percentile of all service and performance measures. The city's per capita library usage is among the highest. It has the biggest system and the most efficient.
Bad news:
# Out of six measures comparing roads, four are worse than the median, including congestion, more accidents and poorer road maintenance. (Still, the city's roads compare favourably with other municipalities.)
# Waste water service doesn't score well, with only one in five measures scoring above the median. Why? Older infrastructure and higher rates of backup and higher costs of sludge disposal because of distance trucked.
# Policing doesn't fare that well either, with one in five measures better in Toronto than elsewhere. There are larger rates of reported crimes. And while the total crime rate fell in 2005, clearance rate of crime is not as good as other municipalities.
So-so news:
# For hostels, the city has a high length of stays (bad), though the number of available beds is high (apparently, good).
# For solid waste, Toronto has a lower collection cost and higher diversion rate (40 per cent). But overall system costs are higher.
# And while transit usage is higher than elsewhere and the cost per transit trip is lower – all good – the cost per vehicle hour is high because of the subway.
The study gives city council and staff much to mull over. Are you getting value for your money? Yes, no, maybe so. This will bear more analysis.
.
Probably not worth a new thread...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cities survey says: Toronto the middling
by Royson James
May 4, 2007
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/210358
"If we are so efficient, how come this study says we're doing so badly?" Councillor Norm Kelly wanted to know, on reading a benchmarking report on how well Toronto compares in delivering city services.
Kelly was looking at some of the charts that showed Toronto in the "bottom quartile," or bottom 25 per cent, among municipalities in the cost of winter maintenance of roads, waste disposal, transit, water distribution, as well as in its poor performance in curbing violent crime and traffic congestion.
"But we are better than the median in 52 per cent of the services," came the response from city manager Shirley Hoy.
In other words, for half the services it delivers, Toronto does it better than about half of the sister municipalities compared.
Hoy thinks that's good. But, of course, it means that Toronto does it worse than nearly half (48 per cent) of the other municipalities compared.
It's all a matter of perspective. The devil is in the details. And expectations.
Should Big City Toronto be more efficient that Windsor or London? Can you compare it to Markham and Milton? Results from a recent comparison done by the top bureaucrats from 15 municipalities representing 9 million Ontarians were analyzed and released this week. How did the Big Smoke do? Mixed results.
Called the Ontario Municipal CAOs Benchmarking Initiative (OMB!), the study looked at 12 service areas in 2005 and compared them according to 21 service level indicators and 48 performance measures.
High service levels earned a favourable ranking. High costs in delivering these services earned a low rating on performance. Participating were all of the GTA, Hamilton, London, Windsor, Ottawa, Sudbury, Niagara region, Thunder Bay, Muskoka and Brant County.
First, the good news:
# For 91 per cent of the service levels studied, Toronto has improved or maintained service levels in recent years. So, despite downloading and the fiscal squeeze, citizens have not suffered an erosion of service levels to a great extent.
Hoy says Toronto has maintained these levels primarily in areas where it has to, because of its size and population density and stature as the heart of the province's major urban region.
For example: a high number of police officers, transit vehicles, library books, emergency shelter beds, social housing, fire and ambulance responses.
(The inverse is that Toronto's high density accounts for a lower number of road lanes, fire vehicle hours, ambulance vehicle hours, indoor ice pads and recreation centres per 1,000 population. That means, when accounting for service levels, Toronto scores lower in these areas, when, in fact, this might be a virtue.)
# In children's services, service levels are way above the median. "We spend a lot on kids, more regulated and subsidized spaces than others and have lower costs of providing a subsidized space – displaying economy of scale," Hoy says.
# City Hall departments that deliver the city government – city clerks, corporate finance, etc., have shown huge savings since amalgamation.
# Library services show up in the top percentile of all service and performance measures. The city's per capita library usage is among the highest. It has the biggest system and the most efficient.
Bad news:
# Out of six measures comparing roads, four are worse than the median, including congestion, more accidents and poorer road maintenance. (Still, the city's roads compare favourably with other municipalities.)
# Waste water service doesn't score well, with only one in five measures scoring above the median. Why? Older infrastructure and higher rates of backup and higher costs of sludge disposal because of distance trucked.
# Policing doesn't fare that well either, with one in five measures better in Toronto than elsewhere. There are larger rates of reported crimes. And while the total crime rate fell in 2005, clearance rate of crime is not as good as other municipalities.
So-so news:
# For hostels, the city has a high length of stays (bad), though the number of available beds is high (apparently, good).
# For solid waste, Toronto has a lower collection cost and higher diversion rate (40 per cent). But overall system costs are higher.
# And while transit usage is higher than elsewhere and the cost per transit trip is lower – all good – the cost per vehicle hour is high because of the subway.
The study gives city council and staff much to mull over. Are you getting value for your money? Yes, no, maybe so. This will bear more analysis.
.
dowlingm
Senior Member
WTF Case you only got Ward 29 250k out of a 40m budget?? 
Here's my take on the fiscal situation:
1. Council should not be legally able to draw down reserves every year for several years. Reserves should be drawn down, for sure, but if there are three successive years of draw down this is a sign of structural imbalance in the City Budget. David Miller has spent a billion dollars that was built up in the Lastman era - what happens next year?
2. I would argue that Toronto Social Services should be made an agency like Toronto Hydro, Toronto Water and TTC. This agency could then produce annual reports on its income and its expenditure so that people can truly understand where the province is underproviding or the city is not managing social services efficiently (probably the former 99% of the time) as well as understand what it is TSS does.
3. I would like to see the City and the School Boards consider putting certain assets into joint ownership - playing fields, pools, libraries. This means that both community and school population get a fair go but one side can't arbitrarily threaten to close a pool or sell a football field when the budgets are tight.
4. All new taxes be ringfenced. The problem isn't really that the City spends too much, it's the fear that an increase in revenue will be treated by public service unions as a de facto pay rise rather than a service increase. When Ireland introduced the plastic bag tax the money was ringfenced for environmental projects. If Toronto does, for example, introduce alcohol and tobacco taxes they should be targeted at Toronto Public Health or other agencies which deal with the effects of addiction.
5. New taxes should be equitable. The proposal to do stuff like increase registration charges on cars hits the transit using car owner as hard as the executive who parks his BMW in a company owned spot downtown every day - worse still one from the 905 who pays no Toronto tax! Tax parking spaces, not cars!
What is the rationale for hammering young renters who are first time buyers with another few hundred or even thousands when the 60 year old senior partner with the million dollar home in Rosedale will not pay any because that's "his last house"?
6. There is a point to some of Rob Ford's "cuts". Presented with a list of them, very few Torontonians would agree with all of them, as has been pointed out things like free coffee are common in many establishments. Maybe let them keep metropasses, but the City could offer its support for transit by eliminating free car parking at City Hall. For Gord Perks to vote to retain golf passes when golf courses are notoriously environmentally dubious is strange to me. There are plenty of families who don't have a 100,000 a year earner who probably wish they could bring their kids to the Ex or the Zoo for free.
When I am short of cash I delay an low priority expense or live without it and there is ample evidence that the City could and should do so too. If the ordinary taxpayer doesn't see the City cutting back, why should he/she believe taxes need to be raised?
7. Reform the grants system to reach more people. Toronto could enforce a maximum number of continuous funding for any voluntary group, making grants seed money rather than subsidy and encouraging new groups currently excluded from the process to join in. This is how George Soros funded pro-democracy groups in Europe - he gave them money for a number of years but they knew after that time they would have to have secured additional funding as the Open Society Institute would be moving on.
Here's my take on the fiscal situation:
1. Council should not be legally able to draw down reserves every year for several years. Reserves should be drawn down, for sure, but if there are three successive years of draw down this is a sign of structural imbalance in the City Budget. David Miller has spent a billion dollars that was built up in the Lastman era - what happens next year?
2. I would argue that Toronto Social Services should be made an agency like Toronto Hydro, Toronto Water and TTC. This agency could then produce annual reports on its income and its expenditure so that people can truly understand where the province is underproviding or the city is not managing social services efficiently (probably the former 99% of the time) as well as understand what it is TSS does.
3. I would like to see the City and the School Boards consider putting certain assets into joint ownership - playing fields, pools, libraries. This means that both community and school population get a fair go but one side can't arbitrarily threaten to close a pool or sell a football field when the budgets are tight.
4. All new taxes be ringfenced. The problem isn't really that the City spends too much, it's the fear that an increase in revenue will be treated by public service unions as a de facto pay rise rather than a service increase. When Ireland introduced the plastic bag tax the money was ringfenced for environmental projects. If Toronto does, for example, introduce alcohol and tobacco taxes they should be targeted at Toronto Public Health or other agencies which deal with the effects of addiction.
5. New taxes should be equitable. The proposal to do stuff like increase registration charges on cars hits the transit using car owner as hard as the executive who parks his BMW in a company owned spot downtown every day - worse still one from the 905 who pays no Toronto tax! Tax parking spaces, not cars!
What is the rationale for hammering young renters who are first time buyers with another few hundred or even thousands when the 60 year old senior partner with the million dollar home in Rosedale will not pay any because that's "his last house"?
6. There is a point to some of Rob Ford's "cuts". Presented with a list of them, very few Torontonians would agree with all of them, as has been pointed out things like free coffee are common in many establishments. Maybe let them keep metropasses, but the City could offer its support for transit by eliminating free car parking at City Hall. For Gord Perks to vote to retain golf passes when golf courses are notoriously environmentally dubious is strange to me. There are plenty of families who don't have a 100,000 a year earner who probably wish they could bring their kids to the Ex or the Zoo for free.
When I am short of cash I delay an low priority expense or live without it and there is ample evidence that the City could and should do so too. If the ordinary taxpayer doesn't see the City cutting back, why should he/she believe taxes need to be raised?
7. Reform the grants system to reach more people. Toronto could enforce a maximum number of continuous funding for any voluntary group, making grants seed money rather than subsidy and encouraging new groups currently excluded from the process to join in. This is how George Soros funded pro-democracy groups in Europe - he gave them money for a number of years but they knew after that time they would have to have secured additional funding as the Open Society Institute would be moving on.
H
Hydrogen
Guest
How about the federal government invest some of that huge surplus in cities? I mean, only 80 percent of the Canadian population lives in urban areas now. It's not like they can't be missed.