[URBAN NOTE] The city budget: not as bad as feared

[rfmcdonald]

The general consensus is that the Toronto city budget for 2011 announced yesterday isn't nearly as bad as people had feared it would be. That'll be one year's grace; 2012 will be tough, and the requests by services like the police and the libraries for increased funding were met with Ford's statement that if the chiefs couldn't limit spending he'd put in new heads.

The staff-crafted, Ford-guided operating budget is not the bombshell many expected when the penny-pinching conservative succeeded Miller.

But what amounts to a breather budget sets the stage for a bloody battle over deep cuts for 2012. Ford threatened to fire managers who thwart efforts to find savings during a wide-scale spending review to begin after this budget is put to bed.

This year’s $9.3 billion blueprint would reduce operating hours for some bus routes, hike TTC fares, close a library branch at Metro Hall, send some refugee claimants to motels rather than homeless shelters, reduce a fund to help tenants fight bad landlords and end a downspout disconnection program that has 13,000 Torontonians on its waiting list. Also vanished: plans to build a glittering waterfront ice rink complex.

So-called “service efficiencies” total $57 million.

A further $23 million would be raised by boosting user fees, details of which could be released as early as Tuesday. They are expected to include a 3 per cent increase for swim classes, ice time and virtually all other city recreation programs.

Last year, Miller hiked user fees by $16 million. He was derided by Ford as a spendthrift during an election campaign that saw the Etobicoke councillor promise deep spending cuts with no service reductions.

Ford is achieving a relatively bloodless balanced budget and tax freeze only by applying every penny of $706 million in one-time windfalls, including a $268 million surplus from 2010, to the operating budget, with none of it going to debt reduction or reserves.

Changes to the TTC have caught a disproportionate amount of attention, with a planned increase in token fees from $2.50 to $2.60 and in Metropasses (cards allowing for free unlimited travel for a month) up five dollars to $126. There are also going to be service cuts, with no routes being cut altogether but some low-usage routes seeing their hours reduced (my 26 Dupont will have no runs after 10 pm, for instance).

So far, so good. But when 2012 comes ...