It’s fair to say that eyes rolled from Rexdale to the Rouge Valley when Mayor David Miller announced last fall that he would establish a Fiscal Review Panel. It was on the eve of the crucial vote on whether or not the city would go ahead with a land transfer tax and a vehicle registration tax – and whatever other merits it might have, it was clear that the panel’s main short-term utility was in making peace on a badly fractured council.

What a pleasure it is to report, then, that the product of that panel might just be Toronto Council’s best hope for political peace in the long term. The 86-page report by the six-person outside panel led by CB Richard Ellis President Blake Hutcheson may be the best analysis since amalgamation of the challenges the City of Toronto faces in getting, to use the tired phrase, its fiscal house in order. And it does so in a refreshing tone of ideological neutrality.

For instance, it recognizes the city has labour issues – but to the extent that the city’s unions and management have to work together to manage better; not to the extent that the city needs to perpetuate a labour war to contract out every service under the sun. The city should take a look at monetizing some of its assets like Toronto Hydro – not necessarily sell them off entirely and put power distribution into the private sector. But then again, it doesn’t rule it out.

In this respect, it’s a masterpiece of political diplomacy – the kind of document that allows Mayor  Miller to tout it as a vindication of good government at the same time it directs him to take a hard look at the parts of the city government that are demonstrably not working.

Further, it might just enable the left and right wings of Toronto council to sit down and have a proper debate about whether services are being delivered in the best way and whether this parking lot or that duplex ought to stay in the city’s real estate portfolio, without the conversation turning into the nasty partisan debates to which we’ve all become too accustomed.

Whether or not that’s what happens will depend on the behaviour of Toronto Council’s 45 members, of course. But initial reaction from the usually contrarian opposition tag team of Ward 34 (Don Valley East) Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong and Ward 16 (Eglinton-Lawrence) Councillor Karen Stintz is promising.

“It’s a well considered strategy for how we can do business differently in the city,” said Stintz. “I think it’s a unique opportunity for council to really pull together and recognize the fiscal difficulties that the city’s in and take action together.”

Added Minnan-Wong, only slightly more confrontationally: “It’s a road map for the rest of the term of Council. The real question is whether the mayor is prepared to start on that road.”

That will be the question. Miller made a point at the announcement, and later in an e-mail to Toronto Council, of extolling the glass-is-half-full aspect of the report.

The city, he insisted, is well managed, and is a great place to live, and isn’t in crisis.

However, Miller also made it clear that he’s open to dealing with all of the recommendations in the report – recommendations that include “monetizing” Toronto Hydro, studying what could amount to contracting out certain city services, and supporting the tolling of highways in Toronto as a part of a regional road-tolling initiative.

And most important – he agreed to meet with the panel once a year, to update them, and us, as to how well the recommendations are being implemented.
So with any luck, we’ll be treated some healthy and productive debate in the years to come, and better city management as a result. It’s about time.