So we all know this story now. Our mayor tried to get some new taxes passed, failed, and threw a hissy fit threatening to shut down the Sheppard subway line and several TTC bus lines.
Let's review:
1 - Our city council gives themselves hefty pay raises a little while ago, even though we're facing this great budget crisis.
2 - The day after Miller tells us about the great budget crisis, the city "spends $1 million to hire bylaw officers to oversee dogs in off-leash parks."
3 - City councilors not only got a nice raise, but they also have huge expense accounts that they abuse regularly!
4 - And finally, today I read that the number of TTC employees making over $100,000 is now 277!
I know that even if the city corrected a lot of these mistakes, we'd still face a huge budget shortfall. But I think our mayor's approach of complaining + raising taxes is the wrong one. The steps should be taken in this order: A) Get spending under control and do a top to bottom full audit of the city's expenses, B) Pressure the province to upload the costs downloaded by the PCs, and then, only then, consider option C) Raising taxes if we're still short.
I believe that most Torontonians will not stand for a tax hike as long as we continue to see the taxes we already pay wasted so egregiously.
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The Toronto budget is routinely audited externally. Those that call for an audit routinely miss this point. A further audit would only waste more money.
ReplyDeleteToronto is in a terrible financial situation for several reasons. First is the downloading of services. Without this, the city would be running a balanced budget.
But the biggest problem has been the issue of rising commerical property tax rates during the Lastman era. To keep residential property tax rates artificially low, commerical property taxes were hiked. This had caused businesses to leave Toronto for the suburbs. It also caused residents to leave the city due to a poor employment situation causing a huge loss of revenue for the city. The City has a plan to reduce commercial property tax rates over the next 15 years, but they might not be able to do so if residents insist on keeping their property tax rates so low.
I think that there should be a routine purge of expenses. I think that that is the only way that we can decide what the most important services are, and make sure we find as much cost-saving as possible.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing is that when a target is given to a particular group, it has to be abided by.
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