Here's the good news: the odds of land-transfer and vehicle-registration not passing at this point are miniscule, if as appears likely the alternative really is massive service cuts like those elaborated. These measures will have the desired effect of scaring waffling councillors into voting 'yes,' and only another vote or two are required. You'd be hard-pressed to find 23 councillors who would really vote for service-level apocalypse.
I'm also hopeful that Miller, calmed down by a vacation, will take the opportunity to very directly and factually explain what's going on and why that is to the people of the city, and challenge his opponents to come up with a better idea.
The other good news is that, a few dead-enders like Rob Ford aside, the consensus on council is for more money somehow--either through uploading or new taxes. There's no conservative rump suggesting a half-billion dollar budget cut. So, with no or little uploading, it should be easy to get the taxes through.
With that said, I'm really pissed off by the TTC over this. While obviously the funding levels are not and haven't been high enough, this has been a ten-year crisis, with plenty of time to come up with some creative thinking to soften the blow. What happened to the ballyhooed TTC plans to lease air-rights to its surface-level station properties, which happen to sit on some of the most valuable land in the country? Last I checked the Eglinton bus terminal was still fenced off, St Clair still a one-story shed, etc. etc. And why has contracting out some TTC functions been treated as heresy? Surely there are things within the organization that could be done cheaper. There's no magic bullet here, but things could have been done better.
As the election and budget vote near I am planning on doing a mass email to a long list of my Toronto friends urging them to vote for a candidate who will do something for the city, and to write their councillors about revenue tools. It's not much, but I am desperate to do something and have been rather unsatisfied with responses to letters I've sent to my MPP and the Premier.