The Villager

It would be nice at this point in the game to be able to predict what will happen when sometime next week Toronto Council votes on two new taxes - to say that David Miller has a strong majority of support for the program to see it easily through, or for that matter that he's so lost the confidence of his council that the taxes don't stand a snowball's chance.

July's sliver-thin vote to defer the debate until this coming Monday precludes any effective prognostication from the gallery. Council was effectively split up the middle on the matter, and the mayor's slim advantage then evaporated with the defection of now-former Executive Committee member Brian Ashton. For all intents and purposes, that split remains, and which side of the knife-edge it tumbles from remains anybody's guess.

But there are some developments this time that play slightly in the mayor's favour.

First and foremost, the provincial election is done. That election was the pretext that many councillors used to justify the deferral of the issue, arguing that passing the taxes in July would simply let the Liberals off the hook in October.

Well, the Oct. 10 election has passed. And in spite of all the heartily exhorted intentions, the push to make the provincial parties commit to a quick upload of the $700 million in estimated downloaded costs just never materialized. And with nary a word spoken about downloading, the Liberals - truly, the ones who instigated the debate by empowering the city to raise its own taxes - were returned to power, with a comfortable majority.

So at least inter-governmentally, the game is over.

And within the city, Miller made a move Thursday to try and end the game between councillors on the left and the right, announcing a six-member independent panel to review the city's finances. The panel, headed by respected commercial realtor Blake Hutcheson, has been given the job to determine whether or not Toronto's house is, in fact, in order.

That won't do much to quiet Miller's core of opposition - councillors like Denzil Minnan-Wong and Karen Stintz, who have concluded that the former New Democrat mayor is simply untrustworthy when it comes to dealing with Toronto's finances.

But for councillors looking for a way to tell their constituents that council is serious about earning the privilege to collect more taxes, the simple existence of the panel provides an easy refuge.

Will it entice enough of those councillors to tip things towards a yes vote? That's the question. Because the other factor - the real wild card factor in this equation - is the sheer political brutality that has characterized 2007 at Toronto City Hall. Even before the tax debate, Council has been in what seems a perpetual siege this year - Miller and his executive committee on the inside, and a toxic mix of middle-of-the-road pragmatists and disenfranchised right-wing councillors with nothing to do but heckle from the moat.

It's telling that the most hopeful sign of all for the mayor's side this week, was Ward 6 (Etobicoke-Lakeshore) Councillor Mark Grimes' compromise position.

The generally quiet and neutral councillor from south Etobicoke floated a plan that would make some significant changes to the land transfer tax - protecting first-time homebuyers who spend less than $400,000 on their dwelling, and cutting by half a percentage point of the land transfer tax on under-$400,000 homes.

In a season of dramatic flourishes, grand statements and pushed-to-the-brink ultimatums, Grimes' plan is a welcome return to the just-recently forgotten art of practical compromise at City Hall. If a decisive provincial election and a blue-ribbon panel on city finances aren't enough to push things over the edge, then maybe councillors like Grimes can find a manageable solution in the middle ground.

The only thing to do is stay tuned.