On December 15, Toronto’s staff recommended budget will go before city council, with spending estimates on both the capital and operating budget.
It will identify a gap between the services that city staff is recommending and the revenue currently available to pay for them.
The city manager has indicated that, unlike in other years, city staff will not recommend how to close the gap between expected revenues and expenditures. They will leave that to politicians, which will make for a fruitful and interesting budget discussion.
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It is always important to look for ways to improve the delivery of public services. However, we have to remember that former Mayor Rob Ford’s quest for gravy bore little fruit. The core services review resulted in a confirmation that the vast majority of city services are either legally mandated or considered traditional services like parks and recreation.
There is one exception to note. The police budget continues to be the fastest growing cost for city services. The proposed budget from the 2016 Police Services Board will increase expenditures by 2.7 per cent bringing it up to a billion dollars. And, recent media reports suggest that there is
room to increase efficiencies in the way policing is delivered.
Continued reliance on gapping — the term used for leaving city positions unfilled to balance the budget has got to stop. It was always a short-term measure and it means staff are not available to provide the city services that we rely on. The 2015 budget relied on gapping for
$127 million in savings. The complexity of communities’ needs are increasing, requiring increasingly sophisticated services. These are impossible to deliver without sufficient staffing.
