Devil in budget details

Arts

The Toronto Arts Council, the arm’s-length group that administers 750 grants totalling $10 million to individuals and mid-size organizations every year, is among organizations being hit.

Executive director Claire Hopkinson says she has yet to receive confirmation from City Hall, but she believes the Arts Council is in for a 10 per cent reduction in both its grant reserve and administrative budget.

“If it comes to that, it’s going to be an awful decision to make,” she says. “Ten per cent to our programs is devastating.”

Hopkinson warns that cuts to the TAC would threaten Toronto’s “arts ecology,” the kind of interdependence that sees unheralded artists use grants to develop their skills and eventually lend their talents to major arts organizations like the Canadian Opera Company or the National Ballet.

Estimated savings: $1.9 million

TTC

Rush-hour service on 52 bus routes is being reduced, as is off-peak service on 36 bus and streetcar routes. The results: longer wait times, more crowding and 3.7 million fewer rides on public transit. A 10¢ fare hike is also on the way in 2012.

“Fare hikes, provided they’re modest, are not a bad thing,” says transit expert Steve Munro. “Small ones will not affect people’s riding behaviour as long as service stays good.” But higher fares and worse service? That’s a recipe for driving down ridership, increasing gridlock and hurting the economy. Munro believes reducing service is a quick fix to save money, and is no way to tackle the city’s mounting transit and traffic problems.

Estimated savings: $14 million.

Wheel-Trans

Mayor Ford proposes revoking Wheel-Trans access for up to 800 dialysis patients who currently use the service to get to and from hospital treatments. The majority of them are over 65, and many face myriad health problems. A spokesperson for the Kidney Foundation says the organization is working with the TTC to find alternative ways to deliver the service Wheel-Trans has provided for roughly 20 years.

Estimated savings: $5 million

Libraries

No closures, but cuts are proposed to library hours. Sixty-one of the city’s 98 libraries are being asked to slash their operating time by a total of 19,444 hours, and the biggest reductions are at branches in marginalized neighbourhoods. While a library spokesperson says efforts would be made to keep programming at current levels, it’s difficult to see how library services that are particularly important to new immigrants and low-income citizens wouldn’t be harder to access. The library would also purchase roughly 100,000 fewer items in 2012.

Estimated savings: $17 million

Homeless shelters

Three city shelters are recommended for closure. Birchmount Residence in Scarborough serves older men; Downsview Dells in North York houses young men being treated for addiction; and downtown’s Bellwoods House serves elderly women with a history of mental illness. Their closure, to be phased in as clients leave the programs, would result in the permanent loss of 97 shelter spaces.

Estimated savings: $2 million

HIV/AIDS prevention

The budget’s proposal to eliminate two or three of the city’s 41 HIV/AIDS prevention programs dropped the same day as a Casey House report that found a shocking one in 120 adults in Toronto have now been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS.

It’s not clear which prevention programs would be shuttered. While most would remain in operation, Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam says ending any of them while HIV rates are on the rise in Toronto is dangerous. “The decision this council is being asked to make regarding HIV strategy will be felt and will have a devastating impact,” she said. “There’s a profound lack of insight in this administration about building healthy communities.”

Estimated savings: $157,000

City workforce

If all the proposed cuts go through, some 2,338 positions would be eliminated from the city’s payroll of about 53,000 employees. Roughly half the positions would be lost through attrition, but it’s unclear how many employees would actually receive pink slips. Union officials warn the city can’t cut that many positions without affecting service levels, while the Ford administration argues that privatization results in better customer service.

Are we screwed?

Toronto’s finances aren’t nearly as messed up as Ford would have us believe. Missing from the budget presentation Monday was an important figure: $139 million. That’s the sizable surplus the city produced this year. Some opponents, like Councillor Shelley Carroll, accused the mayor of deliberately hiding the surplus. She says that at least some of that money should go toward reversing the most painful proposed cuts.

“They’ve had to work so hard to create the crisis, they’ve actually pulled revenue out of this budget,” Carroll said Tuesday. “Do we really need to cut all the bus routes we’re cutting? Why are we denying frail and ailing dialysis patients access to Wheel-Trans when we have $140 million that we’re hiding from the budget?”

Origin
Source: NOW