Councillor David Shiner said it was one of the hardest meetings he’d ever been a part of, even though by the end of it the city’s largest department voted to make no decisions. Instead the public works department voted to leave a raft of proposed service cuts up to Rob Ford and his executive committee.
The six councillors in charge of public works convened a special committee session Monday to discuss the Core Service Review, a report released last week by consultant group KPMG. The review identified services ripe for reduction or elimination, including water fluoridation, recycling, snow plowing, street sweeping, bike infrastructure, and hazardous waste disposal services like the Toxic Taxi and community environment days. By cutting back on these services, KPMG estimated the city could save $15 million.
Ultimately the councillors did little more than discuss the review, spending the entire day listening to speeches from the public and city staff, and then voting to send KPMG’s recommendations on to the Ford’s executive committee without any significant changes. Even perennial Ford opponents Gord Perks and Mike Layton went along with the vote.
“We did make decisions,” argued Shiner. “The tough decision is to keep things on the table.”
Community and environmental groups that attended the meeting accused public works of ignoring the long-term impact of scrapping services like toxic waste disposal.
While the committee did ask city staff to provide more information on the effect removing fluoride from the water supply, public works chair Denzil Minnan-Wong said there wasn’t time to do much more than that.
“If we were to go into looking at health implications and social implications [of service cuts], we would be here in 2020 and still be waiting for reports to be written,” said Minnan-Wong. “We just couldn’t be ready for this budget cycle and the reality is we have to be ready this budget cycle.”
“Everything is on the table” has become mantra at City Hall ever since Ford started looking to make budget cuts to confront a projected $774-million shortfall next year. The message from the mayor’s allies is clearly that no service is safe and all recommendations from KPMG will be considered.
But councillors on the right and left blew several holes in the KPMG report Monday, with Perks pointing out that at least seven of the services the consultants recommended cutting wouldn’t generate savings until 2013 and will have no impact on next year’s budget.
Three-quarters of the services recommended for cuts, including water and solid waste, are paid for by the public on a per usage basis and cutting them will reduce both revenue and spending, meaning it won’t put a dent in the shortfall.
By proposing cuts to recycling programs for apartment buildings, KPMG evidently missed the fact that the city is legally obligated to provide blue bin service to residents.
And in a bit of good news for cycling advocates, Minnan-Wong suggested KPMG’s proposal to reduce the scale of bike infrastructure next year isn’t even possible because most of the money earmarked for cycling is part of the capital budget. The purpose of the review is to trim the operating budget, a separate category.
Councillor Adam Vaughan, who is not on the public works committee but sat in throughout the day, described the review as “fantasy exercises” and called on Ford to put forth a clear plan.
“Everything seems to be on the table for a day, a week, or a month, and then everything’s off the table,” he said. “So make your recommendations, pull stuff on and off the table, make promises, break promises, but end of the day it’s time for the mayor to present a budget.”
