Toronto City budget cockups

Posted on | July 17, 2007 | 1 Comment

******* RANT WARNING ****** RANT WARNING ****** RANT WARNING *****


Careful folks, I’ve got a migraine and I’m going to use it. Nothing like a bad mood to inspire me.

Toronto’s Mayor and his backers want to increase real estate taxes and institute a vehicle license plate tax in an effort to cover a short fall in the budget.


I normally don’t react in a knee jerk reaction to this type of stuff – I understand you have to pay for the services you receive. But after chewing over the subject this during the weekend, I’m hopping mad. Although I don’t own property, and don’t plan on buying any, nor do I own a car, I think this proposed increase is way out of line.

First some background:

The new taxes were to generate approx. $300 million dollars in additional revenue for this cash strapped city. Mayor Miller wanted a 2% tax slapped onto the purchase of homes and $60 per year for vehicle registration. This may not sound like much, but it pushes the purchase of a home way out of the reach of the working poor, plus the $60 per year for vehicle tax will make it increasingly difficult for – again – the working poor – to afford a car.

Those reasons aside, to request any increase at this time is outrageous. City Hall needs to look inwards to shave off the bloat in it’s budget before it starts going for the easy money grab route.

Look at the increast in the operating budget – its increased over $1 billion dollars in the last 4 years. Not million, billion.

City Hall’s budget:
2004 operating budget $6.7 billion
2005 operating budget $7.1 billion
2006 operating budget $7.6 billion
2007 operating budget $7.8 billion

Operating costs for this city are skyrocketing, yet we are seeing a decrease in services yearly.

Miller claims the city is the cleanest it has ever been – beg to differ! Litter is not being picked up, garbage containers (WHEN YOU CAN FIND THE F’N THINGS – NOTE TO CITY HALL WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO OUR LITTER CONTAINERS?????) are often full to overflowing, nothing is being done.

Parks are in a mess. I watched as 5 city workers planted a small cement container with about 2 dozen plants – 5 workers for this little job? And in the mean time litter was blowing across the park and none of them bent down to pick up the trash.

The man who cuts the grass in the park behind where I live drives over the litter and spews it out into hundreds of little pieces of litter. Cans? He gets out and kicks them aside. Lets not talk about the half ass cutting job he tends to do. He gets over $17.00 an hour to do this job.

Pools and other facilities are being closed.

Taxes uncollected, tickets not being handed out….

I would like to know why blatant parking violations are ignored in this city. Double parking is now the city wide sport. We have a joke here that you can park anywhere (even on a busy street and block traffic) as long as you a) have your blinkers on or b) have a handicapped parking pass. Police stroll by and ignore this. Another joke is the city could be in the black just by going after the illegal parking offenses.

I read a report during the winter about uncollected fines sitting in the millions. If this is correct – go after the offenders and contribute towards the budget shortfall. The fines cover more than parking violations. It covers polluters, traffic offenses etc.

To add fuel to my anger I dug up the following:

The Mayor and his staff had a 3 hour meeting to “figure out how to schedule budget meetings & to get to know the city’s senior staff by their first name.” If you can’t figure out how to schedule a budget meeting by the time you get to this level, you have no business being in government. And staff by their first name? How about the old fashioned way, when you see them, say hello and introduce yourself. That was a wasted 3 hours of work.

This year the 44 city councilors voted themselves a 9% salary increase. Way to go! Show that money grabbing spirit! Councilors’ annual earnings increased to $95,000, and the Mayor’s
to $160,000. Now I don’t begrudge the Mayor a good salary, but pile this on top of the 40% increase in his personal budget, office renovations $600,000 plus another $1.5 million plus for more office reorganization, and a further $3 million for City Hall renovations and you get the picture.

Let’s talk perks for the councilors. One person said a cut in the perks would be symbolic – NO not symbolic. It would send a clear message that waste is not allowed. I don’t care if it only amounts to $1 million dollars a year – that’s still a lot of money.

Here is a sampling of their perks:

Toronto Transit Commission passes – most don’t use the ttc -they are driven in by city limo drivers who are paid by the public
Golf fees for city golf courses
Box tickets to games, plays etc
Zoo passes
Free parking
Passes to Casa Loma
Free lunches
plus assorted other perks
Councilors are making plenty – pay your own way.

How about a very close look at the budget to find out why it is increasing so dramatically. Surely there must be a reason. I tried to get a copy of the budget but all i could get were pretty glossy budgetettes with huge pie charts explaining the basics. These amount to the cheerleaders rah rah for the budget and offer no strong analysis of the wheres and whys of the spending.

There must be a series of reasons as to why the budget has careened so far out of control. How about we look there first, then as a last resort discuss raising taxes.

****Rant Over ***** Rant Over **** Rant Over *********

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Category: Politics, Rants, Toronto, Utter Stupidity

Comments

One Response to “Toronto City budget cockups”

  1. Rusty
    November 26th, 2008 @ 2:34 am

    EXCELLENT BLOG!!!

    Let’s vote Miller out of office! I bought a house in Etobicoke before the amalgation, which I so regret voting for… and taxes and city budgets have been going up and up ever since! They told us it wouldn’t cost us a penny more, what a pack of liars! The 9% raise for mayor and councilors was greedy and irresponsible. Let’s call it what it is… it’s corruption!

    Now they’re asking for a yearly licencing fee for cats, even if your cat doesn’t go outside, to help offset their higher salaries and over-spending. They’re talking about sending people door to door to SEARCH OUR HOUSES and fine us! I’m not making this up. The Toronto city council is looking more and more like the Third Reich!

    Spread the word. Let’s vote them all out of office next election, ESPECIALLY MILLER!