Time to pay for the city we want

The newly unveiled proposal to build a sprawling park in Toronto’s condo-cramped downtown should have been a high point of John Tory’s mayoralty. The idea of 21 acres of green space over the rail corridor between Bathurst St. and Blue Jays Way promises a much-needed respite from the concrete and glass that dominates our increasingly dense downtown.

Yet it was hard to take the suggestion seriously. On the same day the proposal was made, TTC chief Andy Byford issued a letter explaining that the mayor’s call for a 2.6-per-cent budget cut across all departments would make it impossible for the city to maintain even the current level of transit service, never mind the $215 million planned for urgent improvements to the system. How, then, are we expected to afford a park that could cost upward of $700 million?

The two stories juxtaposed provide yet another stark illustration that the city’s ambitions are totally inconsistent with its fiscal policy.

Toronto has a pressing revenue problem. We cannot afford to continue to drain money from reserves meant to maintain services through hard times or rely on a red-hot real estate market that won’t last forever. Nor can we find savings through efficiencies that would even begin to address the yawning gap. If we are going to fund the key infrastructure projects necessary to create a livable, equitable and economically viable city, new means of generating revenue are urgently needed.

As the city manager has said time and again, current property and land transfer taxes alone cannot pay for desperately needed transit expansion, repairing Toronto’s decrepit public housing, realigning the Gardiner Expressway, building green space downtown, and other vital initiatives. A recent staff report pegged the total value of Toronto’s unfunded capital work as high as $29 billion.

Tory says he understands the need and will bring in new “revenue tools” this fall. Many such tools are available to the city and have been widely studied, including a tax on alcohol and tobacco, a parking levy, entertainment tax or development charges, among others. Whatever his choices, the mayor must stick to his commitment and deliver bold measures in the lead-up to next year’s budget.

The alternative is not merely stagnation, but decline. In order to make the cuts Tory has requested, for instance, Byford says the TTC would have to implement “unpalatable” measures such as fare discounts, cutting service and delaying the opening of the Spadina subway extension. Still, the mayor warned Byford last week that if the TTC can’t find the cost savings he is demanding he will send in a task force to do so.

In a meeting with the Star’s editorial board last month, Mayor Tory spoke about the necessity of such cuts. He said that before the city asks Torontonians to pay more, it must show residents that it has done everything in its power to trim the fat (or, in the parlance of another mayor, stop the gravy train). But that approach too often has the opposite of its intended effect: Cuts damage services. Poor services diminish public confidence in government. The lack of trust makes new taxes a tougher sell.

The need for new infrastructure investments could hardly be clearer to the many Torontonians who spend hours every week stuck in traffic or overheated subways or an increasingly claustrophobic downtown. Promised funds from federal and provincial governments will not be enough. Nor will current revenue tools. City bureaucrats have been perfectly clear on this. If we want a livable city, no amount of nickel-and-diming will do. Sooner or later, we simply have to dig a little deeper and pay for it.

In order to create a better, more livable city, Mayor John Tory and council must look at new means of generating revenue