Mayor Rob Ford will probably have a difficult time persuading a majority of councillors to vote for the budget cuts suggested Monday, even though he believes they are “just scraping the surface.”Some of the centrists who hold the balance of power on council balked Monday at city manager Joe Pennachetti’s recommendations to proceed with many of the cuts suggested earlier by consultants from KPMG. If all of the recommendations were accepted, which appears unlikely, the city would save about $100 million in 2012 — not nearly enough to balance the budget.
Pennachetti’s report to Ford’s executive committee recommended eliminating late-night TTC bus service and 2,000 subsidized child care spaces; reducing city grants; lowering standards for snow-clearing; curtailing environmental programs; selling or closing Riverdale Farm; and selling, leasing or otherwise ceasing to operate the Toronto Zoo.
Pennachetti also suggested that council “consider” perhaps KPMG’s most controversial suggestion: library closures and reductions to library hours.
Centrist Mary-Margaret McMahon said she would have a hard time voting to axe “quality of life” programs. “I’m not prepared to cut things that make our city great,” she said.
Ana Bailão, another centrist, said Ford has a fight on his hands. “We have everything from affordable housing to daycares to libraries and things that impact our very neighbourhoods, like street cleaning . . . It concerns me,” she said. “There’s important services in here that I think a lot of people in the city of Toronto are going to be standing up for. And absolutely I will do that.”
Councillor and landscape painter Gary Crawford, who tends to vote with Ford, was “shocked” that arts grants landed on the chopping block and said he is working with the mayor’s office to find alternatives.
Councillor Mike Del Grande, the budget chief, acknowledged “there may be items (in the report) that there is no political will to do.” But he challenged his colleagues to suggest ways to replace any savings taken off the table.
The $100 million in potential savings is far less than the $774 million Ford has insisted the city needs to find to balance its budget. Even though the true budget gap is less than $500 million because of surplus funds and other revenues, the recommendations suggest that most of the shortfall will not be covered through cuts.
Pennachetti has ordered all city departments to cut their budgets by 10 per cent. Also ongoing are a consultant-aided review of how to make city services more efficient and a review of program user fees that is expected to send them skyrocketing. Ford also said he is considering a 2012 property tax hike of between 2 and 2.5 per cent.
And more than 1,100 of the 17,000 city staff eligible for a buyout have applied. Assuming the city grants 70 per cent of the applications — those with duties deemed essential won’t get the package — the annual budget savings would be about $59 million per year, Pennachetti said.
Speaking later, Ford noted the savings projected from Pennachetti’s recommendations fall far short of the projected deficit and suggested the city needs to cut much deeper.
“This is just scraping the surface right now,” Ford said.
His endorsement of even Pennachetti’s suggestions would represent the abandonment of one of the central promises of his mayoral campaign: that he would find enough wasteful “gravy” to repair the city’s finances without cuts to services.
“We have a mayor who said, ‘Trust me, I know where the money is, we will have no cuts.’ These are hundreds of cuts to everything Torontonians hold sacred,” said Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker, a regular Ford critic.
“Every single thing that we hold sacred in this city is being ripped apart in this report by a man who promised us that there would be no cuts. So he lied to us.”
Ford said, as he has consistently, that he is advocating “efficiencies,” not cuts. He said De Baeremaeker would “literally turn around, raise taxes 35 per cent, thousands of dollars, and put people out of their homes.”
Among Pennachetti’s suggestions:
• Clearing snow from city streets at a “minimum standard,” and reducing the level of snow-clearing and grass-cutting in city parks.
• Eliminating the windrow-clearing program, in which snow deposited by snow plows at the end of suburban residents’ driveways is cleared by a second plow.
• Considering eliminating or reducing a program that provides dental care to the poor.
• Eliminating the Christmas Bureau, which helps non-city organizations, such as the Star’s Santa Claus Fund, distribute gifts to needy children.
• No longer giving out four free garbage tags.
• Eliminating community grants of less than $10,000, and to programs where the grant amounts to less than 5 per cent of the budget.
• Eliminating Community Environment Days.
• No longer picking up animals from owners who want to surrender them.
• Reducing the level of “proactive investigation and enforcement” done by licensing staff.
• Attempting to sell, lease, or come to some other new arrangement at three city arts facilities: the Sony Centre, the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts and the Toronto Centre for the Performing Arts.
• Reducing the development of new affordable housing.
• Closing the least-visited city museums.
Pennachetti’s recommendations go to Ford’s executive committee next Monday. Council is expected to pass a final 2012 budget in January.
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Source: Toronto Star
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