Don’t settle for mediocrity

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. Everybody wants a great city, but apparently nobody wants to pay for it.

Such are the eternal truths of life and municipal politics, confirmed yet again this past week as Toronto’s budget committee approved a budget freeze for next year.

This, as a host of community leaders have already pointed out, is a recipe for stagnation at best, painful cuts to a range of city services at worst. It would mean standing by while Toronto Community Housing continues to close more units, public transit deteriorates and social services fray at the edges.

It’s a vision that should be unacceptable at any time, and is especially deplorable at a time when Toronto and the region are by most standards booming. It amounts to voluntarily clamping financial handcuffs on the city.

The recommendation for a freeze follows a report from senior city staff that lays out the stark choice facing the politicians whose job it is to make these decisions.

The report from city manager Peter Wallace and chief financial officer Rob Rossini makes clear that the city can balance its operating budget ($10.5 billion this year) only if it cuts services or raises property taxes higher than the rate of inflation, which Mayor John Tory has promised not to do. There is, they say with masterful understatement, “a mismatch between service aspirations and revenue generation.”

Even worse, for politicians who want to keep postponing the day of reckoning: the city is bumping up against its borrowing limits. It can’t, in Wallace’s words, keep “kicking the can down the road.”

What to do? The good news is that the real budget process for next year doesn’t start until the fall and so there’s time for a real discussion about what kind of city we want to be.

The choices are clear. There’s cutting back, with all the damage that goes with that. There’s raising the city’s debt ceiling, i.e. raising the limit on the credit card and kicking that can a bit further away.

And there’s finally coming to grips with the fact that Toronto needs more revenue to meet its growing needs and finance its ambitions. And the logical place to find it is by raising property taxes beyond the rate of inflation, about 2 per cent right now.

So far the mayor and council have done everything they can to avoid facing this possibility. They’ve raised a host of fees and relied on windfall takings from the land transfer tax, which has soared along with property prices.

They’ve also tried to bring in other “revenue tools,” most notably tolls on the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway, but been slapped down by Queen’s Park. And they’ve rattled their tin cup with other governments, seeking more money for transit, housing and infrastructure.

Ontario and Ottawa should cough up more for Toronto, but the city should also come to grips with the inescapable reality that city homeowners pay the lowest property taxes in the GTA. At a time when house prices are going through the roof, they can afford more than the inflation-capped increase that Tory (and others) have promised.

Of course some people are house-rich and cash-poor. But there are ways, if the will is there, of crafting policies that would capture more of the wealth in the city. Some have argued for a fairer type of property tax, with variable rates making sure the greater burden falls on more valuable homes. That’s an idea well worth exploring. And seniors can be helped by deferring payments until their homes are sold.

All this is possible — if Torontonians truly want a better city and the politicians have the courage to ask them to pay for it. Settling for freezing things in place and standing by while the city deteriorates is the worst choice of all.

Freezing Toronto’s budget is a vision that should be unacceptable at any time, and is especially deplorable at a time when the city and region are by most standards booming