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John Tory wears short pants on Torontos 2017 budget

Lets pause for a moment on the image the mayor used to describe his relationship to the premier: hes a man in short pants.

Thats the figure of speech Mayor John Tory chose to frame this years budget narrative: hes got big dreams but no power to leverage the dollars needed to pay for them.

This story has an element of truth. The premier rejected Torontos request, under the City Of Toronto Act, to charge road tolls on the Gardiner and DVP.

But budgets reveal the truth about a governments priorities. After failing to get permission to charge road tolls, the mayor simply ran out of gas. His battle was a worthy one, but when he lost it, his lack of appetite for paying for the services we need was revealed.

Instead, hes demanding more money from the provincial and federal governments while declaring this years balanced budget a victory. Its not.

Remember that picture of a financial iceberg that the city manager keeps showing? It illustrates Torontos $33 billion in unfunded capital projects, most of it for repairing existing transit, housing and other infrastructure. Lets look at what these unfunded necessities mean in concrete terms.

In a city with skyrocketing rents and the highest child poverty rate in Canada, we will be closing social housing units because they are uninhabitable.

Instead of building more social housing, we are spending $2 billion and counting to re-build a highway that cuts us off from the waterfront when other cities are tearing theirs down. We are also building a one-stop subway Rob Fords legacy whose price tag keeps rising.

Neither decision gives us value for money.

We have a city government that will increase some user fees for essential services like water and garbage collection but refuses to increase residential property tax rates by more than 2 per cent (that is, by more than inflation) when other cities are using this option to pay for the things that matter.

Instead, council is balancing the 2017-18 operating budget by dipping into reserve funds and drawing on rising land transfer tax revenues that are the result of Torontos speculative housing bubble. Neither is a long-term solution.

A majority of councillors refuse to heed City Manager Peter Wallaces warnings that the current course of action is unsustainable.

We live in a big, complex and unequal city whose residents need more buses on more routes, more recreation programs at lower cost, more affordable child care spaces and more supports for people who are homeless. And thats the short list.

Instead of tackling those needs head on, city council is arguing about whether cuts to staff in overcrowded shelters will be minor or not.

Were calling it a victory when cuts to grants for child care are reversed, but the 18,000-family waiting list for subsidized child care continues unabated.

We have city councillors who continue to claim that efficiencies can be found and we just need to tighten our belts, but then they engage in late-night negotiations to avoid any reduction in the street sweeping budget.

Two years after raising everyones hopes by approving a well thought out poverty reduction strategy, council is nowhere close to investing whats needed in any of the measures laid out in that plan. Its one of many plans that remain unfunded because council has yet to find the collective resolve to use the tax options already at its disposal to pay for city renewal.

Its time to shed the short pants. The mayor and council have to make some adult decisions about what not to spend money on, what to spend money on (like funding plans council has already committed to) and then settle on how to pay for it. Thats what grown-ups do. They set priorities and invest in those priorities.

Next years budget is an election-year budget. Lets hope its also a making-good-on-Toronto-priorities budget.

Council and Mayor Tory have the power to make this a reality. Every year that city council refuses to collectively harness its power, the people of Toronto lose and the problems that plague us are left to get worse.

Sheila Block is a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Ontario office.

news@nowtoronto.com | @nowtoronto

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