I find it hard to have sympathy for Toronto City Council asking the federal and provincial governments to pay a large chunk of the $170 million costs of the ice storm damage in late December and the rain storm last summer.
It makes the city seem so juvenile, so adolescent, begging with its hand out, telling the big guys up the street that it can’t manage its own affairs.
Toronto’s 2014 budget calls for spending $9.5 billion. One per cent of the budget is $95 million, so the $170 million the city has its hand out for – $105 million for the ice storm and $65 million for the summer rain — is two per cent of the city’s budget. Has the city cut its spending so close to the line that it doesn’t have the flexibility to cover two per cent of its budget by itself?
Everyone knows unexpected emergencies happen. Given the wild swings in Toronto weather in recent years — think of those 41 days in 2005 when the heat was over 30°C or the all-time July high temperature of 37.9°C in 2011 — you would have thought city council would put reasonable money into the budget to cover emergencies, but it has only been able to scrape together $29 million for the extreme weather events in 2013.
Maybe it is climate change denial. Whatever, it’s hard to call this good budgeting.
Most large organizations have sizable enough reserve funds to pay for the roof that suddenly needs fixing or the furnace that breaks down or any of the other of life’s challenges, but apparently Toronto City Council isn’t one of those.
The city manager has recommended as part of the 2014 budget that a measly $12 million be put into an extreme weather reserve fund, but that’s just a proverbial drop in the bucket. There’s more room to meet the financial challenge. As the city manager reported, the property tax increase recommended and adopted by the executive committee is less than the rate of inflation — apart, that is, from the property tax increase money required to support the Scarborough subway fiasco.
City council doesn’t want to pay its own way. Instead, it is wallowing in the culture of entitlement, the same sad phobia that clouds its approach to public transit. Call it a gravy train of entitlement. Council won’t raise taxes to pay its own costs but wants the other levels of government to raise taxes and then shell out the cash. It’s the same strategy Mayor David Miller unsuccessfully tried on the federal government to increase city revenue.
This culture surely must change if city council is to regain credibility in speaking for those of us who live and work here.
When you don’t focus on good governance, you miss the important issues. Rob Ford has been the biggest problem in this regard. Good governance is the last of his concerns, and it looks like he is dragging most of the councillors along with him. Where are the voices creating the higher moral ground?
The irony is that council has declared the city a “disaster area.” The declaration is made for the purposes of the Ontario Disaster Relief Assistance Program when it could have more properly been made for lack of good governance.
And the next nine months, from now to the municipal elections on Oct. 27, will give us more of the same. The Ford brothers think the most important issue is getting re-elected, so they talk about it all the time, and there seem to be a number of other councillors who also think their election should occupy most of the city’s public space.
Sorry, that’s not what’s needed. We need leadership and a sense of responsibility for the public good from our elected officials. I’d like to charge every elected person at city hall $1,000 every time they publicly talk about elections before Sept. 1, in the same way the bylaw now in place says election signs can’t be put out until a few weeks before voting day.
I suspect that fine would raise enough money to pay for the storm damage and create a good reserve fund to take us to a future where the city can act like an adult and stand on its own feet.
Post City Magazines’ columnist John Sewell is a former mayor of Toronto and the author of a number of urban planning books.
