Despite months of meetings and hundreds of consultations with citizens who have packed City Hall over the past few weeks to discuss potentially widespread cuts to city services, people are no closer today to knowing what services the Mayor or city leadership believes the city should stop delivering.Beginning Thursday morning, the Executive Committee met for 22 hours, until 8 a.m. Friday, hearing from hundreds of citizens, but took no votes on cuts.
On Friday at 1 p.m. an exhausted-looking Joe Pennachetti, the city manager, told bleary-eyed reporters in the city council members lounge that he now will take everybody’s advice and put together a report to go to a special meeting of Mayor Rob Ford’s Executive Committee on Sept. 19, and then to a special meeting of city council later in September.
“I will now prepare a consolidated report. “I will look at specific opportunities for efficiencies outlined by KPMG, by the standing committees, and by the public consultation. I will incorporate the comments from the deputants of the last two weeks and most importantly from yesterday and last night.”
Mr. Pennachetti said he will also write a special report he called a user-fee review. “This is not about individual new fees but a consistent approach for user fees, to ensure council makes a decision about what services should be funded through user fees.”
The city manager also plans service efficiency studies of such departments as facilities and real estate, the fleet, police, the TTC and the library system. The studies “will become part of the recommendations I make to meet the 10% target that I set.”
Councillor Mike Del Grande, the city budget chief, who joined Mr. Pennachetti at the briefing, pleaded with reporters to explain the schedule to the public. He declined to give specifics on where the Mayor’s team is leaning on service cuts, but did suggest a few creative ways to raise money.
“I went to the Riverdale farm,” Mr. Del Grande said. “There aren’t any metered parking [spots]. So we could look at something from the parking authority, to move those funds through to the farm. People could provide a loonie or a toonie. There are seven personnel at that location. There is a coffee shop,” which he suggests could be contracted out.
“They’re hatching eggs,” he added. “There may be an opportunity to breed the animals and sell them to a local farm.”
Any service that “is breaking even or operating in the black, there wouldn’t be a need to touch it.”
He got defensive when asked about the city’s 99-branch library system, which consulting firm KPMG singled out as a chance to save money.
“There may be a misconception that the budget chair hates libraries,” he said. “I go to libraries. I have a grand-daughter who participates in library programs.”
But, by contrast, not everyone uses swimming pools, he added.
“If we build a swimming pool out of everyone’s tax dollars, is it fair to have that senior subsidize the people who use this pool? We said right from the start that everything is on the table.”
Asked about suggestions by the public that maybe the city doesn’t have quite the shortfall that officials have mentioned, Mr. Pennachetti was clear.
“I hate the term, but it’s Read My Lips,” the city manager said. “The budget shortfall is $774-million,” which he called, “the largest budget shortfall since amalgamation.” He added, “We don’t have the one-time revenues, like the province bailing us out for the TTC. And we don’t have reserves.”
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Source: National Post
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