I went to one of the budget consultation meetings that were hosted by the Mayor David Miller and Chair of the Budget Advisory Committee, Councillor David Soknacki Ward 43 Scarborough East, last Wednesday at the East York Civic Centre. I have to say that was one of the best consultation meetings that I have attended. It was a different format than the 'Facilitated Consultation' meetings that have become fashionable lately in the city. Rather than have presentation by the politicians from the platform followed collection, summarization and tabulation and subsequent presentation of the residents comments to the politicians; the Mayor or the Budget Chair or other Councillors who attended the meeting sat with the participants in small groups and discussed the issues directly. It was a dialogue rather than a series of monologues.

However, while the structure of the meeting was more open, the framing of the discussion was still constricted. There were two questions we were given to consider: how the city can manage its expenses, and, how the city can increase its revenue. The context of this discussion was the budget shortfall of $532 million that is due to programs that are provincial responsibilities that have been downloaded to the city. The question of how we can enhance services or programs that are a municipal responsibility was not presented. Thankfully people answered the question themselves.

The problem is that property taxes are increasingly being used to pay for programs that were downloaded by the province such as social housing and Social services. Property taxes can't and should not solve the downloading problem. It would take a 30% property tax increase to do that. The Mayor says he will limit the tax increase to 3%. That coupled with the growing pressure of increasing social service costs means that programs that are rightly the responsibility of the municipality don't get increases or get cuts.

The discussion of enhancing municipal services should not be shoved off the table by the ongoing municipal conflict. The Mayor and Council should also look at improving the services offered to the residents of Toronto. One example is the TCC proposal for the Sidewalk Cycling Counter Measure program would enhance the cycling safety and education services as recommended in the Toronto Bike Plan. The cost of this program is $100,000. Including this in the budget would result in a .005% additional tax increase bringing the total tax increase to 3.005%.

I am sure there are other services across the city that could use improvement or enhancement. If Council approved a 3.1% tax increase that would raise an additional $1.76 million. That could fund 17 programs of the same scale that the TCC is recommending. It would only add $2.00 to the average property tax bill.

The budget consultations were positive. The Mayor and Councillors heard from people that they want more from them than a discussion on how to get our city out of the hole dug for us by the province. Hopefully that has had some effect as they start the final budget reviews this week. For more inforamation on how to have your say in the budget process see the following article Bike Budget 2006: Chance to ask for cycling safety funds increase: Feb. 16, 2006