To be Fair
While there have been budget increases in Toronto, that both exceed inflation and not directly related to amalgamation; including some I disagree with; I think its necessary to be fair and allow for how many increases in cost were either unavoidable or were very good uses of funds.
Let's start with the biggest cost, servicing the City's debt.
Post amalgamation, the City, unlike every other forced amalgamation received no grants to cover the cost, only a 200M provincial loan, repayable with interest and that really only to cover 1-time costs.
At the time of amalgamation, the City was carrying just over 1B in debt.
But, it was already, from day 1 in the hole. Due to past downloading, and past inadequate tax increases, was already short in the range of 200m PER YEAR in its operating budget.
An amount was covered up first by the provincial loan; then by drawing down reserve funds from water to welfare to parks.
Many services were cut to the bone, parks services lost over 33% of their lawn-mowing staff; and over half of the gardeners (who grow and plant flowers); the TTC was already deeply cut, was was deferring essential maintenance.
Thus debt continued to rise; the budget was balance partially by provincial bail-outs by largely by shift capital costs into the borrowing budget instead of the cash-from-current budget.
City debt went up every year under LASTMAN AND MILLER and has now reached 2.7B.
Your debt-servicing costs, despite low and falling interest rates are up (in part because the City's credit rating is down) and you are looking at more than 100M in annual budget pressure that wasn't there before, just to service the debt.
As reserves have declined, that money becomes part of the 'hole' as the reserves are no longer available to be raided. Hence why the funding gap never seems to shrink.
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But there were also significant increases in cost due to amalgamation.
You might imagine there would be savings, and there were some.......
BUT
East York and Scarborough Library staff, fire fighters, parks workers etc. all made less than their Toronto and North York counterparts.
You didn't really expect the higher paid staff would take a pay cut did you?
Of course not. So that now forces wages up.
Thousands of workers get increases that exceeded inflation by more than 20% in some cases as they play catch up to their better paid brethren.
While there were fewer top managers; those at the top all got vast pay hikes; this was understandable if not helpful. They now commanded much larger departments. Instead of comparing themselves in pay to departments heads in Mississauga or Winnipeg, they now compare themselves to Chicago, or even New York. Accordingly, most of the savings from fewer planning or parks commissioners are eaten up by much better paid commissioners.
Then there is the matter of service levels.
Pre-Amalgamation Recreation service levels and fees were ranked like this, roughly:
1. Toronto (gold-standard programs, no fees)
2. North York (gold-standard programs, some fees)
3. Scarborough and Etobicoke (bronze-standard programs, high fees)
4. East York and York (Bronze or Copper programs, where available, high fees)
York didn't even have a recreation centre!
Similar examples could be found in Library Services, Social services, and even the Fire dept.
The service levels did not get compromised all the way down.
Only recreation, really, didn't get raised to the top.
Recreation was essentially harmonized at the North York level.
Fire has been upgraded to the highest level of service.
etc.
Outside of the old Toronto there were next to No BIAs, a smattering in Etobicoke, and the Yorks; none in Scarb. or NY.
Now Eco. Dev is managing 60+ BIAs.
Take a look at Streetscaping Costs which went from 2M per year, to over 5x that as more BIAs pay for decorative lights, trees, benches, etc.
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Let's remember that if we looked strictly at property tax, even with Miller's slightly above inflation increases, if you average those with Lastman's tax freezes, total property tax residentially has rise less than 2% per year since amalgamation. Add in that business taxes went up less if at all, as the City seeks to reduce business property taxes, and you are looking at shrinking revenue vis-a-vis inflation.
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Then there are the service increases.
After much bitching, the City has restored skating to its pre-amalgamation season in the old City of Toronto.
It has added new Rec Centres in St. Jamestown and south Etobicoke; and is currently building the new facility for York (old City of).
The lawn mowing and flower crews were restored, one of Miller's first 'Clean and Beautiful City' acts as people rightly said the place was looking unkept.
Special beautification projects were added, from that Island @ Jarvis and Richmond to planting trees in road side boulevards.
There is the matter of infrastructure that's getting older and in need of work.
The Fire department service is up; so is Eco. Dev; and the Library, the great success story having done this on very little money is also improving service levels.
While the TTC service levels in Vehicle Kms are WAY up.
This is not just about the 30min. service guarantee. There were many bus routes that before amalgamation had lost whole service periods. No Sunday Service, no Sunday Evening Service, No Saturday Evening Service, no Late Night service.
All of these have now been restored.
Don't forget that Low-Floor buses (provincially mandated) have lower capacity that the old GMs; as a result, it takes more buses (and drivers) to move the same number of passengers, in fact about 12% more. Just for status-quo service.
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Now that said, that have been some wastes of money; what else is new?
The use of consultants to write multi-million dollar reports that any person with an iota of common sense could have written, in-house, if needed, for free is an abomination.
Highlights in this area:
Aquatics strategy:
(report summary, if the pools were better, more people would swim)
Shade in playgrounds Report:
(summary, if there are no trees around, we should plant some)
State-of-Good repair, parks reports
(summary, if its broken, maybe we should fix it)
We did not need expensive consultants for this!
There are some other things we could do better through automation, or less bureaucracy.
But alot of other cost were programs people wanted: Green Bin; apartment recycling etc.
And these had the effect of driving costs way up.
Yes garbage-pick up was 1/2'ed.
but bi-weekly recycling eats up that savings.
And green bin is completely new staff and processing facilities.
The City never paid for apt. garbage service in the burbs; so apartment recycling is just a net new cost with no off-set.
In summary while there has been some waste, and while some workers may be compensated on the generous side, most of those costs were unavoidable, and occurred pre-Miller.
The budget growth needs to be offset by new revenue.
and the pressure isn't done yet.
Just wait; with youtube videos of kids breaking into swimming pools in the middle of the night; the pressure is on to restore the old City of Toronto policy that pools are open till 3am or use falls below 6 people.
More budget pressure on the way!
Never mind maintaining all those new waterfront parks!
