So the city passed its $7.8 Billion operating budget on Monday. It includes a 3.8% tax hike for single family homes, and a 1.3% tax hike on multi-residential (apartments/condos), business, and industrial properties.
Here's a concise version of the budget process: As usual, our councillors ran out of money, raided the reserves, still didn't have enough money. Then they begged the province for money as usual, the province said no. So now we're suing the province for money.
Then our esteemed councillors sat down and debated the budget, knowing full well that they're already short on cash, decided not to give up on ludicrous perks like free coffee, free TTC passes, and best of all, free golf! They passed a budget without any significant cuts, and now we're sitting around, waiting for provincial money yet again.
All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.
Yes, I know that the Mike Harris team downloaded some programs onto the City, and they will be uploaded again in due time. But what about ludicrous spending everywhere?
-In 2006, we paid city grass cutters $17.45 per hour.
-In 2004, we paid the City Administrative Officer (Shirley Hoy) $282,173, which is more than what the Prime Minister of Canada gets paid.
-The crappy service providers at the TTC have tons of people getting paid over $100,000 per year, including bus drivers! (I'll have a bigger post on the TTC later)
These are only a few examples, there are hundreds more. Why should you care? If you live in a house, you pay more property tax. If you rent an apartment/condo, your rent will go up. If you run a business, your costs will go up as well. All of this to support a budget that is always rubber stamped.
This is YOUR money people (and mine too). Unless you start caring, they'll keep riding the gravy train.
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Wow! That is some horrendous waste of money. I heard Canadians were nice and generous but this is borderline insane!
ReplyDeleteRez.
Hey man!
ReplyDeleteNot my money in this case haha I don't live in Toronto no more :P
Nah, onto the meat of things. Two disclaimers, first sorry it is long and second as always I enjoy looking at things from at the "macro level". Here goes:
- Apparently high pay for a (many top) city beauracrat(s) does not a huge budget deficit make.
We have to realise that Toronto is like an EXTREMELY large corporation (after all it just passed a budget of $7.8 billion). The people running the city have to deal with complexities that (are the same or) are probably even greater than a similar sized private enterprise. If we want our cities to have the best people there and hopefully getting the best results, we need to pay because these very same people have much higher paying jobs waiting for them in private sector if they so wish.
The City Administrator officer is similar to the Chief Administrative Officer in a firm, and how much do those people make?
At the same time, I'm all for wanting to get the best bang for all of our bucks regardless of whether it is the public, private sector or just individual spending.
But, we can't really go around classifying things as a waste if we've not really compared it to the alternative. In this case that would be private sector pay, and just the overall issue (i.e. with unions having the ability to be strong when dealing with government, they can negotiate relatively high wages for their lower skilled workers).
To this many might think that well, what the private sector does with their money is their business. The public sector on the other hand is spending "our" money. But, how is it really any different? Where does the private sector get their revenue from? Yeah we might more directly choose some of the goods and services, but really where did governments come from? They came from a collective need to have street lights, to have roads, to have a justice system, police, fire etc. etc. because it just wasn't being done well enough otherwise. We as a collective are then in fact asking for many of these goods and services.
Hopefully that is some food for thought! :D
To end off: seriously, TTC drivers making a 100 grand? Where'd you read this! Shite thats a lot eh :) Do you know how many hours they were working or anything?
Rez: It is indeed borderline insane.
ReplyDeleteSiyam: High pay does not indeed make a high budget deficit, but it helps. I guess I could have focused more on the fact that there's a city hall culture of not having to give anything up to fix Toronto's fiscal problems.
I agree that a CAO in a 7 billion dollar corporation would get a huge salary, but in the private sector you'd have we're not talking about the private sector.
I believe in the concept that public service shouldn't be about money. A lot of people do give up lucrative private sector careers, take a huge pay cut, and still do a brilliant job in public service. That's the model I support, you're doing it because you believe in it, not because the salary is great.
If we go by your theory, the Prime Minister would be paid several million dollars a year, and we both know how that would go over :P
Your comment on getting the best bang for your buck is key. Looking at Toronto's sub-par city services and horrendous fiscal mismanagement, we really aren't getting the best bang for our bucks.
I don't have a problem with the city's stron unions negotiating high wages for their low skilled workers, I have a problem with the city's representatives being so damn weak that they don't have the balls to hire non-union workers at market level wages.
I agree with your words on the need for government and collective services. But once again, the job needs to be done well, and right now it isn't, yet the people at their jobs are receiving ridiculous wages (IMO).
As for the TTC drivers, it included overtime. The Star had an article on it, but it's in their paid archives now. You can check out this link though.
http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/english/publications/salarydisclosure/2006/index.html
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ReplyDeleteFirst off, I think that there is a need to differentiate between city hall, and the city's employees. The PM and the bureacracy. They aren't the same. We can't equate fiscal mismanagement by the cities councillors, to how much the city's administrative officer, or any other employee is getting paid. They certainly have some say in providing advice, but the decisions aren't made by them.
ReplyDeleteThe same applies when it comes to salaries, the deal that politicians make when they become councillors, MPPs or MPs is very different to a bureaucrat. They can come from any and all walks of life. They are there to change the country to fit their biases, their ideas. They are elected, they don't interview for the job. Neither are they required to meet some sort of "education, and experience qualifications". They do take a pay cut, and do a brilliant job in the public service. But, what they gain is quite different to a bureaucrat.
Many bureaucrats (especially at the higher levels) have skills that are readily transferrable to the private sector, and they also usually take a pay cut. I am not arguing that someone in bureaucracy should make as much as a CAO, what I am arguing is that they already are not paid upto par, and if we want to maintain quality in the public sector, then calling for reductions in their salaries doesn't make much sense.
But, this is all my opinion. If people decide that the social contract that you spoke of is appropriate and higher level public sector employees need to take more pay cuts then that is also fine. I would just say that people shouldn't be surprised if the quality declines.
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On the other hand:
I agree that in city hall we can see this trend of not wanting to give up anything to fix Toronto's fiscal problems. The only questions I would have are:
What would it take (in cuts, or increases in property taxes) to solve fiscal problems?
Why should there be less services, for higher tax rates in Toronto than other areas? Especially in light of the fact that when it comes to income taxes, Toronto dishes out some of the highest amounts as well?
As some newspaper articles mentioned, even symbolically they should have atleast given up some of their perks. Would have atleast shown that they cared.
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In terms of the TTC driver thing, I take it back. 100 grand is ludicrous regardless! haha.
You're right about the need to differentiate between city hall, and the city's employees, I rarely do that.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that to maintain a good level of service in the city, we do have to pay city employees fair wages.
I guess the reason these salaries seem ludicrous is because of the city's bad financial health, which the politicians are largely responsible for, not the bureaucrats.
In terms of proposals to restore Toronto's fiscal health, I like most of the ones proposed by the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation (CTF) in this report http://www.taxpayer.com/pdf/2006_City_of_Toronto_Submission.pdf
One thing that has become clear from your post and comment is that at the very least the city has not been thinking creatively about why contracts for some of the cities services cannot be given to companies which hire non-unionized workers etc.
ReplyDeleteSiyam
Unions... It's all the fault of the unions.
ReplyDeleteThe few perks the councillor receive (one of my friends is the councillor in our area) are minimal and if taken away will still not add up to the dollars needed. It's easy to blame Mike Harris, as it is to blame Bob Rae.
I like that the councillors immediately want to close pools, instead of blowing up the TTC (not actually) and privizing it. We need more routes, better service, lower fares and more people on it to make it viable like it is in Paris, London or Spain.
Just my thoughts...
Some comments.
ReplyDeleteTTC operator wages are in line with wages throughout Canada. Cities like Vancouver and Calgary, who have slightly lower costs of living when compared to Toronto (as shown in a Mercer study), pay their operators nearly identical amounts. The operators that make 100 000 dollars a year do so because they work extensive overtime. By extensive, I'm talking about 80+ hour work weeks.
Privatizing the TTC will not work. Public transportation in the North American context will never be profitable, at least not in our life time. In fact, the TTC is the closest a North American transit system comes to turning a profit, with fares covering 75% of the cost. With the exception of the bloor and Yonge lines, none of the routes the TTC runs turn a profit. Even with incredibly high ridership, lines such as the King and Spadina streetcar are money losing ventures. If a private company was to take over operation, they would undoubtedly cut service or hike fares to make money.