As the Core Services Sideshow grinds to its foregone conclusion, it’s clear Mayor Rob Ford is less interested in slashing costs than slashing government.Now in its second week, the spectacle unfolding at City Hall is almost entirely divorced from reality at this point. The script, carefully prepared by the efficiency experts, offers alternatives, not recommendations. This is just Act One.
Though even the bean counters have found waste hard to come by, Ford himself continues to see it everywhere he turns: As recently as last week he was telling a radio talk-show host that “There’s tons of gravy.”
Monday’s session explored the possibility of eliminate licences for everything from small businesses to cats and dogs. These actually make the city a bit of cash, but they, too, are on the table.
As Ford ally and Etobicoke Councillor Peter Milczyn explained, “There’s a new paradigm now. We have to consider completely the fiscal implication of every decision. A culture change needed to occur at city hall, and now it can be seen among the staff and among council.”
That may sound reasonable. Who could disagree? But things aren’t always what they seem, a lesson His Worship has yet to grasp.
By coincidence, one of Waterfront Toronto’s newest jewels, Sherbourne Common, has just opened. It cost something like $28 million, which, the Fordians will insist, is way too much for a park.
But that’s only a small part of the story: In addition to being a fantastic new amenity that will attract visitors to this long-neglected corner at Sherbourne St. and Queens Quay, it is a major water-treatment facility. It will service the tens of thousands of residents expected to move into the area in the coming years.
Finally, the Common has created economic and civic value. Land that was overlooked, underused or even unused has now become attractive. The waterfront is evolving into a place where people will choose to live, work, play and pay taxes.
In this way, development worth more than $1.5 billion has been generated on the Toronto waterfront, with much more to come.
So what are the “fiscal implications” of such an expenditure? Would it have been better not to spend the $28 million (mostly federal money, anyway) and lose out on the development? Or does the prospect of increasing the city’s tax base and its urban appeal justify the cost?
No one doubts Toronto has a serious money problem. And most would agree that cuts could be made. But no organization — including the city — can eliminate a deficit by cuts alone. That leads to a downward spiral, a race to the bottom, that leaves everyone worse off.
Despite Ford’s stated belief that “Toronto has a spending problem, not a revenue problem,” the truth lies elsewhere. From its beginning in the 19th century, the city has been unable to raise the revenues it needs to provide the services its residents expect.
Constitutionally, Canadian cities don’t exist.
What Canadian cities need is a portion of the personal income tax. Of course, that will never happen. Also needed are road tolls and congestion and user fees, the sorts of things Ford’s hard-working Torontonians reject. These will all come to pass, however, as they must, but not under Ford, who will stifle any such effort.
His goal is less to make the city better than to make it smaller, to diminish the role it plays in our lives, whether at the park, the library, riding the subway or putting out the garbage.
At the same time, Ford admits we face property tax hikes of up to 3 per cent. Never will less have cost more.
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Source: Toronto Star
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