Think bigger, Mr. Mayor

Mayor John Tory deserves major credit for proposing a long-term solution to Toronto’s chronic underinvestment in transit by charging tolls on the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway.

Too bad the mayor isn’t bringing the same bold vision to making sure the city has adequate funding for its ongoing annual expenses.

Instead, once again the city is patching together a budget for the coming year that risks leaving some important services underfunded. Somehow the city will have to come up with an extra $104.5 million to make sure its $10.5-billion operating budget comes out even and it can pay for commitments already made by city council.

So, as in previous years, there’s bound to be a combination of higher fees, clever financial juggling and selective cuts. In other words, city finances will remain in a straitjacket, with little room for significant improvement in services in such badly stretched areas as the Toronto Transit Commission.

That’s because the mayor has ruled out the most obvious source of extra revenue — an increase in property taxes beyond the rate of inflation. His proposed budget jacks up basic property taxes by just 2per cent, in line with the increase in the cost of living. Instead, he’s turning to other measures, such as a hotel tax and ending a break on tax on vacant properties.

That may well be the safest way to go politically. Tory has repeatedly pledged to cap property tax hikes at the rate of inflation, a promise he repeated on Wednesday during a meeting with the Star’s editorial board. Raising property taxes any more, he argued, “is going to impose a hardship on people.”

But it’s perverse at a time when the city of Toronto has both the lowest property tax rate in all of the GTA and property prices that keep defying gravity.

An awful lot of homeowners in the 416 are sitting on little goldmines. Just last month, the average house price in the region hit $776,000, an increase of $144,000 in just one year. In other words, the typical home went up in value by $12,000 every month.

Obviously, that money doesn’t go into anyone’s pocket unless they sell their home. And there’s no assurance that prices will continue to soar. But it’s hard to argue that most Toronto homeowners couldn’t afford to pay a bit more property tax, especially when their counterparts everywhere else in the region are shelling out substantially more.

Instead, the city proposes to struggle along for another year using the financial equivalents of chewing gum and string to keep the whole enterprise together.

But it’s far from the best way to run what has become one of North America’s biggest and fastest-growing cities. The plan by city manager Peter Wallace involves deferring debt payments and contributions to capital improvements at Toronto Community Housing, which closed hundreds of units this year because it couldn’t afford repairs to ensure it offers decent housing to its 110,000 tenants.

It also means the TTC will continue to fall short on basic things such as making sure subway cars have working air conditioning in the middle of summer. And it will likely mean selective service cuts such as closing pools and chipping away at services for the homeless.

Not a crisis, in other words, but not what a city like Toronto, and especially the city it aspires to be, deserves. The mayor and council would do better by taking a more ambitious approach to delivering day-to-day services, as well as to big long-term transit plans.

The typical home went up in value by $12,000 every month