Category Archives: The Toronto Sun

2016 Budget Launch

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So yesterday, led by the new city manager, Peter Wallace, staff delivered its 2016 Preliminary Budget presentation at a special meeting of the Budget Committee. My impressions? lookoverthatwayYou’ll have to find out here at Torontoist. While you’re at it, give a read to Neville Park and Sarah Niedoba and Catherine McIntyre. Rather hear words than read them? Brian Kelcey talks about the 2016 budget with Matt Galloway on Metro Morning.

While city staff seemed to be offering up the opportunity to finally have an adult conversation about the kind of city we want to have, and how we’re going to pay for that, early signs coming from the mayor’s office and the point people on his team are not encouraging. Budget Chair Gary Crawford pushed a paper clip motion at committee to see if they can find enough coins under the cushions at City Hall to pay for various initiatives. “Council can make investments and still keep increases at [the] rate of inflation,” Crawford insisted at a press conference after the budget presentation. No, it can’t. That’s pure budgetary fiction.

Councillor Justin Di Ciano, a member of the budget committee, perhaps summed up this approach best and emptiest when he essentially strung together meaningless words and spun a meaningless anecdote for 2 minutes, absolutely devoid of any substance, and echoing Mayor Tory’s campaign chant of ‘prudence’. These people, the mayor’s people, are zealously determined not to have any sort of serious conversation about the direction the city has to go.

The reality on the ground may have other ideas. Mayor Tory (and other so-called ‘fiscal conservatives’ on city council) may have finally painted themselves into too tight a corner. Things cost money. That money has to come from somewhere. Empty rhetoric has been tapped dry. Big investments and ever shrinking revenue sources simply don’t add up.

Councillor Gord Perks begins the conversation this city needs to start having.

— ominously submitted by Cityslikr

Hear, Hear To More Misuser Fees!

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WasteCollection

There was a heated debate yesterday at city council over the above diagram. Heated, in as much as somnolence can be thought of as hot. Like, a nice warm afternoon nap under a cozy duvet in the middle of July with the white scorching sunlight blistering through the window.

What we’re looking at here is part of the city manager’s 2016 budget presentation to the Executive Committee. The rate supported budget, more specifically. The solid waste budget, more specifically still.

This particular graphic shows the estimated diversion rate of a single family household in Toronto. The big bin on the left breaks down the percentage of household waste into categories. 38% for both green bin organic waste and straight to the landfill garbage. 15% recycling, 3% yard waste, 2% electronic waste, 1% household hazardous waste. Then there’s the 3% ‘other’ which, if not any of the above, if not even electronic or household hazardous waste, I have to ask, What the fuck is it?! I mean, am I being too squeamish? Just what other kinds of stuff are people tossing out to the curb?

On the right side of the top photo are the 4 sizes of black, straight-to-landfill (in theory) garbage bins households can opt for, the cost for which rises, the bigger you go, and not proportionately so. disgustingFor good reason. This is the type of waste we should be minimizing, diverting away from. It’s expensive to deal with. It’s environmentally problematic. It’s largely unnecessary waste, profligate, if you will. Wasteful waste.

So owners of the bigger bins pay a lot more, perhaps not on the immediate face of it but through hugely different rebate rates, ranging from a 96% rebate on small bins to just 24% on the extra-large ones. That meant, this year, people using the small garbage bin paid $10.63 a year to have their garbage collected while anyone insisting on the extra-large black bins got dinged $343.60 for the same service. Unfair! as some claimed? No. It’s a financial incentive, a nudge, to use the parlance of the times, for people to stop loading up with the garbage garbage, the garbage that’s most costly for the city to deal with.

Now here’s the kicker. Those 4 black bins in the diagram at the top of the page show an interesting, pertinent and enraging thing. Aside from a statistical flip-flop between the medium sized bin owners and their small bin counterparts, the bigger the bin, the less actual garbage garbage goes into them. That is, the bigger the bin, the less recycling, the less separating of waste there is.

According to city staff, on average, extra-large black bins are filled with 77% of crap that could be tossed elsewhere, the blue bins, the green bins, etc. Over 3/4s of the average extra-large black bin consists of stuff that shouldn’t be there! illegaldumpingIf it weren’t, those people could get smaller black bins and pay less to have them picked up.

Yet some people find the price disparity outrageous! Some outraged city councillors put their names to misleading and misinformed op-ed pieces in local rags, indignant at what they already pay, and now further incensed of a proposed 3% increase in 2016.

Property taxes are meant to cover costs for essential city services, such as police, fire fighting, public works, water supply and sewer services. This proposed garbage tax increase is not only regressive by punishing low- and middle-income families, it targets residential property owners who are doing an excellent job in exceeding the city’s waste diversion rates.

So says Councillor Cesar Palacio. Except that it doesn’t.

Earlier in the article, Councillor Palacio claimed the city was thinking of doing away with the garbage bin rebate subsidies. That doesn’t appear to be true. Budget Chief Gary Crawford suggested that they could ditch the subsidy on just extra-large bins. You know, the ones owned by people who, in fact, weren’t ‘doing an excellent job in exceeding the city’s waste diversion rates.’ Just the opposite. People who could save themselves all that money by taking a little time to sort through their shit and put it in the right bin rather than dump it all in the biggest one they have and let somebody else do it for them.

I’m paying big bucks for this big black bin, dammit. So, I’ll recycle what I want, when I want. tossoutthewindowIncentive, my ass. It’s just another tax grab as far as I’m concerned.

Actually, no. Let’s call it what it really is when you have the option to do the right thing that comes with an added bonus of saving you money but you choose to do otherwise, taking the easiest path of least resistance and contribution. A misuser fee.

Shame on any councillor who actively pushes against the application of this kind of levy.

— self-righteously submitted by Cityslikr

Half Measures

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Earlier this week, I wrote a little something something about the “incrementalism” of Mayor Tory, as mostly supporters of his might call it. babysteps“Small, tangible actions that add up over time to real progress,” according to Siri Agrell, director of strategic initiatives in the mayor’s office.

Yesterday, in his State of the City speech at the Economic Club of Canada, Mayor Tory unleashed some of that incrementalling with a surprise announcement of a .5% Capital Building Fund levy to be added to our municipal tax bills beginning in 2017. Additional money that will be dedicated to alleviating some of our much needed capital infrastructure in transit and housing. Capital investment, currently unfunded to the tune of $20 billion or so, portrayed as a menacing iceberg in City Manager Peter Wallace’s powerful presentation to the Executive Committee on Tuesday.

Woah!

Could it be, might it be this mayor finally gets it? The news from the new city manager that the city is, in fact, revenue starved got through his low-tax mantra haze? capitalicebergFrequent critics of the mayor, Metro’s Matt Elliott and the Toronto Star’s Edward Keenan, folks I rarely have policy issue beefs with, were more than cautiously optimistic about Mayor Tory’s seeming about-face. A new era of forward-thinking might just have been ushered in at City Hall.

I don’t know, though. Call me skeptical.

Incrementalism or a half measure?

In presenting staff’s 2016 budget, the city manager forcefully opened the door to a much needed, larger discussion about how Toronto funds the kind of city it wants. Let’s talk first about the things we want to do, want to build and then proceed to the way we plan on paying for it. For too long, it’s been done the other way around. Here’s what we’re going to spend and here’s what we’re going to spend it on. (Steve Munro does a much more thorough job explaining the process than I could.) emptypocketsMoney for our civic aspirations has remained in short supply.

To my mind, rather than seizing the opportunity presented to him to lead that vital conversation, Mayor Tory’s sudden jerk in the right direction, nipped it in the bud. See? I listen. I respond. I am doing something.

But just how much exactly is he doing by floating this .5% capital building fund levy? Concluding a lengthy Twitter essay (yes, such a thing does exist), Councillor Gord Perks suggested that at its height in 2022, after a 5 year roll out, the levy will bring in about $65 million a year. “The $65 miillion tax increase proposed by @JohnTory will only cover 1/20th or 5% of our unfunded capital.”

Is that somehow supposed to show the other levels of government that the city has finally put on its adult breeches and is prepared to pony up and pay its way? Here’s a nickel on the dollar. We’re good?

Underwhelming, I’d call it. Mostly for show. It’s hard to imagine it really addressing the city manager’s call for a serious discussion.

While applauding the mayor for proposing the levy, Sheila Bock of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives urged council to think bigger, revisit the revenue toolbox it has at its disposal. comingupshort“These untapped powers provide the city with a menu of options that could raise more than $400 million annually,” she wrote. Remember that Vehicle Registration Tax that got repealed a few years back? Generated about roughly the same annual amount as the mayor’s levy will in 2022.

Too rich for Mayor Tory’s taste, it seems. Little steps instead. Walk before running. “Small, tangible actions,” like his director of strategic initiatives might call them.

Or, as some of us less persuaded might see it, blunting any chance at forward progress or real change. The fact that the mayor vigorously denied the levy was actually a property tax increase in order to keep his campaign pledge of maintaining property taxes at or below the rate of inflation suggests that he’s not really prepared to take on the hobgoblin of misguided, small-minded Fordian penny-pinching ways at city council. babyfalldownHis initial attempt at implying his levy was simply replacing the Scarborough subway tax that was set to end in 2017 (spoiler alert: It isn’t) also doesn’t augur well for the strength of his convictions on revenue generation.

So yeah, I continue to see the glass half empty in terms of Mayor Tory’s motives with this move, half empty like the gesture it is, a mere token. Should he be applauded for giving the impression of being almost, kinda decisive? I don’t know. It’s been pretty much his approach to governance since day 1. Nothing about this strikes me as new or encouraging. A small step when what’s required is a big, bold leap.

— unconvincedly submitted by Cityslikr