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The New Toronto: More Potholes, Dirtier Streets And Longer Snow Removal Waits/List Of

They really did go for the absolutely most painful cuts possible for the amount. Every single cut mentioned is from front line services. Absolutely nothing is being removed from administration. I can accept threats and bluster, but this is just inexcusable.
 
Exactly. Hasn't Miller learned anything? He's coming across as vindictive, childish and mean-spirited, just like his right-wing opponents on City Council. He complains about councillors playing games when they voted to defer the tax vote, but he's playing Russian Roulette, trying to provoke something.
 
People have to know - if they don't want to pay taxes, they don't get services. This is an excellent way to illustrate that very basic point.
 
I'd slash the fire department and shelter budgets in half, but they didn't ask me for suggestions...everyone has different priorites, so they chose to make only symbolic cuts.
 
Absolutely nothing is being removed from administration.
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I can't speak for the city, particularly since each department is staffed differently, but in big business overly reducing administration can cause a huge penalty in productivity in the frontlines for very little savings comparatively.

Generally the safe approach is to stay management heavy. In the event those couple extra $200k salaries that you didn't think you need actually have a huge productivity impact can be surprising and not cheaply fixed if it was a mistake. It's not cheap to fix because training for those jobs comes on the job and can take several years before the person is running with it -- particularly given dramatically reduced salaries compared to private industry.

Cuts to low level positions found to be a mistake are much easier to correct since training is often standardized and the potential employee list is much larger and quietly promote good prospects from lower levels in 6 months.


In private industry it is far more prudent to ask senior management to take a salary cut and give them a bunch of options instead. Of course, this is also how you end up with senior management raking in a ton of cash.

Don't know what alternatives exist for government. Of course, if there is obvious incompetence at administration in city hall then this was a great opportunity to get rid of them.
 
David Miller has really turned into a huge disappointment. What I find interesting with the cuts mentioned today, is that they've all been tailored for maximum theatrical effect. It's their intention to incite fear and anger in the populace.

If the city did a better job of maximizing efficiency and minimizing waste across the fucken board, they wouldn't be in this current predicament. They had a discussion on this today on City Online. A lot of interesting things were brought up regarding the dire state of affairs at city council.
 
nicetommy said:
What I find interesting with the cuts mentioned today, is that they've all been tailored for maximum theatrical effect. It's their intention to incite fear and anger in the populace.
Click to expand...

Yup! Unlike the people in neighbouring municipalities, you must pay extra taxes to cover provincial costs or you will live in a city with closed subways, weeds, dead gardens, grafitti, fewer library services, and so on.

The trouble is the city has demanded new taxing powers from the province and has received them. Now the province is telling the city to use them. That way, the province need not assume its responsibility to upload services that it dumped onto the city. The province keeps its taxes in check, continues to avoid uploading, and tells the city to use the powers that it demanded. The province is happy, taxpayers outside of Toronto are happy, and Toronto is screwed.


A recipe for disaster that is now well-baked.
 
The problem is that the taxation powers that the city has received are all pretty weak. It needs a sales tax or perhaps personal income tax.
 
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