City cuts would save less than $30 million

The proposed cuts Toronto’s council will endorse or reject on Tuesday would save the city only about $29 million in 2012, the city’s top bureaucrat has revealed.

City manager Joe Pennachetti’s revelation on Monday came hours before left-leaning and centrist councillors tabled motions to save some programs and services targeted for cuts, from Community Environment Days to the Christmas Bureau to horticultural initiatives.

Council’s debate will resume Tuesday morning. Councillors will vote Tuesday afternoon.

Pennachetti had said his suggested cuts would have saved about $100 million. But Mayor Rob Ford and his executive committee voted last week to avoid or defer many of them. Others will be considered later by city agencies.

Pennachetti and Ford say the city faces a $774 million budget shortfall — though Pennachetti said last week the shortfall was actually $500 million to $600 million.

Regardless, councillors’ unwillingness to support widely unpopular service reductions means much of the gap will likely be filled using the proceeds from user fee increases, staff buyouts and layoffs, a property tax hike, and other sources of savings and revenue.

Council received one piece of good revenue news in a report released during its special meeting on the city’s “core service review.” The land transfer tax brought in about $50 million more than expected in the first eight months of 2011.

Left-leaning councillors seized on the windfall as proof the city’s fiscal state is less dire than Ford argues.

Ford began Monday’s meeting with another plea for immediate and bold action to cut costs, arguing that residents do indeed support his government-shrinking agenda.

“Taxpayers of this city — overwhelming, wherever I go, as of yesterday, as of last night (and on) Saturday — they have told me, I’m talking ... nine out of every 10 people I meet say, ‘Rob, stay the course.’ ”

Ford’s executive voted last week to send some of Pennachetti’s proposals back to city staff for study.

Councillor Janet Davis, a Ford critic, proposed Monday that council not even allow staff to consider the privatization of city daycares and nursing homes.

“I don’t think we should be putting our seniors through this, to leave them wondering whether their homes are going to continue to exist, or that some private operator is going to buy the homes. ... And on child care, same thing. You want to tell 3,000 parents that their child care centre is going to be potentially contracted out?”

Councillor Mike Del Grande, the conservative budget chief, expressed frustration with colleagues who proposed taking possible cuts off the table, telling them they were not helping to find solutions to Toronto’s systemic budget woes.

“Your motion doesn’t really doesn’t address a large, comprehensive problem, does it?” he told Councillor Sarah Doucette after she proposed a focus group to explore turning the High Park Zoo and Toronto Island Park into conservancies. “I mean, you can do little tinkering, but it doesn’t really address the heart of the issue.”

Pennachetti and other city officials did not provide specifics on some of the proposed cuts. He said, for example, that the city had not yet decided which museums it would close if council endorsed a proposal to shut down the ones “with the least attendance.”

Ford critics have argued for weeks that council has not been given enough information to endorse cuts. They were joined Monday by a Ford ally, Councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby, who cited news of the land transfer tax windfall in arguing that councillors should know how much revenue the city expects to take in before it decides to axe services.

“It is our job to make the tough decisions. I’m prepared to make them. But I want the full information before I make them. And I don’t feel I’ve got it here.”

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Source: Toronto Star