jje1000
Senior Member
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
http://www.torontosun.com/2011/10/20/toronto-services-board-budget-approved
And an insightful comment that gets everything into perspective:
Toronto Police Services Board approves budget
TORONTO - With very little public debate Thursday, the Toronto Police Services Board approved the 2012 budget.
The serene vote followed weeks of public budget bickering and sets next year’s cop budget at $936.3 million - up $6 million from this year’s budget.
That’s a far cry from the 10% cut mandated by Mayor Rob Ford and the city budget mandarins but Chief Bill Blair and the board maintain the budget is going down.
Blair and board members say their target for cutting costs was $93 million - a number that doesn’t factor in the $25 million increase in labour costs from the collective agreement approved earlier this year.
Based on those numbers, the board has a 4.6% or $43.1 million decrease and resolved to achieve the rest of their 10% target in time for the 2013 budget.
Dr. Alok Mukherjee admitted the dollar amount of the 2012 police budget is larger than the 2011 police budget but refused to call that an increase.
“There is a net reduction of 4.6%,” he said.
The only anger evident at the board table Thursday was from Councillor Frances Nunziata who blasted critical council colleagues for complaining about the budget.
“Unfortunately there are critics out there who are criticizing the board and I say to these past members, especially members of council that sat on this board previously, they sat on this board and they did not bring a budget to the city with a reduction, it was always an increase,” she said, a none-too-subtle jab at Councillor Adam Vaughan.
“To criticize this board for bringing forward a reduction is very hypocritical and I’m very frustrated with past board members making these comments, they did absolutely nothing and they don’t have a solution.”
Blair described the budget process as “long and difficult.”
“I think we have now come to a budget which reflects a very sincere effort to manage our costs and reduce cost in every place we could,” Blair told reporters.
The service will continue a hiring freeze into 2012 and bring in an outside consultant to conduct an organization review of the service in time for the 2013 budget.
Councillor Chin Lee said cutting the police budget isn’t easy but stressed members had to look at the facts.
“To run the police department is not a matter of blindly saying I’m going to cut 10%,” Lee said. “In the end we have to ensure that the city is safe.”
Lee said during last year’s election he promised people he would look for savings, not cut blindly.
“I did not promise that I would find the gravy,” he said, referencing Ford’s campaign pledge. “I did not promise no service cuts, guaranteed ... so don’t ask me to deliver something I did not promise.”
http://www.torontosun.com/2011/10/20/toronto-services-board-budget-approved
And an insightful comment that gets everything into perspective:
So, instead of a $93m cost savings we're now shelling out 6m more for those power-tripping overpriced traffic cones.
That's a $99m difference.
Four times the "gravy" Ford has found to date and expended most of his political capital on
More than double the cancellation costs for the transit plan.
1.5x the gap opened up by cancelling the VRT, which was quite possibly until now the stupidest budgeting decision to have come out of city hall in years.
And, a thousand times bigger than the catering costs to council that everybody makes such a big fuss over.
And finally, considerably more costly than Miller's concessions during the strike a few years back.
And why? Ford rode into city hall on a wave of violent anti-union sentiment. Yet, faced with the opportunity to "stay the course" to use his own words, he crumbled and gave the unions exactly what they wanted. Each and every Torontonian household now faces a $100 tax hike - 3% or so - just to pay for the police to slop gravy out of Ford's special entitlement trough.
I can only hope that somebody has learned a lesson about voting for a slogan.