It's the National Post, but there might be a couple nuggets of value.
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City kowtowing causes fiscal woe
Terence Corcoran
National Post
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
The essential cause of Toronto's fiscal crisis isn't lack of taxes. It isn't even the spending. It's the grand operating culture at City Hall, the great control apparatus that the Mayor and the city's ruling power establishment refuse to tackle.
In the days before last week's Black Friday budget cutbacks, which Mayor David Miller said would damage Toronto's "quality of life," news folk were bombarded with a "Media Alert--Photo Opportunity." The Mayor, said the urgent message, would be visiting the Port Lands area to unveil the latest Filmport real estate development on city property.
That was on Wednesday, and it went well. Nobody mentioned the life-diminishing cutbacks the Mayor would make two days later, nor the subsidies the city is giving to Filmport, nor the mysterious contract the city signed to get Hollywood to build the largest sound-stage in North America on prime downtown real estate.
The Filmport project is representative of the city's operating style, one that focuses on government control, ownership and management, all the while catering to special interests.
Whatever losses in quality of life Torontonians endure as a result of the $83-million in annual cuts to snow removal, tree plantings, road work and swimming pool hours, nothing, it seems, is going to diminish the quality of life for Toronto's film industry.
Nor is anything going to diminish the quality of life of city employees. A few hours less work here and there, but the basic infrastructure of benefits and wages remains untouched.
I'm not suggesting city employees should not be well compensated. I'm talking about perks and benefits unseen by 99% of the people who pay the city's property taxes. Since 2000, wages and benefits paid by the city have increased by almost $1-billion a year, or 35%, to $3.7-billion -- an average of more than 7% per year.
An example of a city perk-run-amok would be the Sick Leave Benefit Plan. Under union contract, city employees are "credited" with a maximum of 18 days sick time per year. If the employee doesn't get sick, unused sick leave can be accumulated from year to year, up to a maximum of 130 days. This great scam is now carried on the books of the city as a liability of $308-million. In the past five years alone, the sick leave benefit for people who don't get sick has grown by $60-million.
The sick benefit provides another insight into how the city operates. A separate sick leave benefit reserve fund was set aside to at least cover part of the liability. There was once $100-million in that fund, but in 2005 the reserve had been depleted down to $77-million. As the liability grew by $60-million, the reserve fund was depleted by $25-million, opening up an $85-million hole in the future liability faced by city taxpayers.
To keep the sick leave fiasco and other union devices in place, the Mayor is going to cut city services. Nothing will be done to bring in major reforms. The city's golf courses will close one week early. City efficiency figures show 200,083 rounds of golf played on the courses in 2005, for an average cost per round of $23.97. Such precision. But the big question is:What is the city doing in the golf course business?
The cut in sidewalk snow removal and some garbage pick-up services is another petty short-term political move that avoids the large long-term solution. Parts of Toronto already do not get sidewalk snow removal service -- the result of earlier budget assaults on taxpayers. In fact, there is a bylaw that forces some city residents to clean their own sidewalks -- although it would be illegal for them to collectively contract the service out to private operators.
The biggest symbol of this malfunctioning city is the Toronto Transit Commission. The system is controlled by politicians, city council members who become transit "commissioners" who preside like a board of directors over every nut-and-bolt trivial decision at the TTC and pretend to make sober decisions on transit. While the TTC spends hundreds of millions building and maintaining streetcar services that are uneconomical, and billions on subways that lose money, and negotiates labour deals that drive costs up, the commissioners mire themselves in minutia and local politics.
A typical TTC meeting item: "Chair [Adam] Giambrone moved that staff be requested to report back at the end of the year on the status of the project to replace temporary hand-written signage at collectors' booths. Commissioner [Bill] Saundercook moved that staff include in their report examples of signage and wayfinding from other cities."
No wonder Mr. Giambrone said the scale of the city's budget problems came "as a shock" to him. And no wonder that as Toronto grapples with its budget crisis, it tackles everything except the real causes of the crisis.
© National Post 2007
