Budget committee spares few community services from cuts

2012 budget. Toronto’s budget committee has started to give its final word on the 2012 budget. Image/BANK OF CANADA

The budget committee voted to spare two pools from closure - one in executive committee member Paul Ainslie's Scarborough ward, and another in executive committee member Jaye Robinson's ward.

Those motions came on the fly at the committee meeting. The committee also voted as expected to use higher than anticipated assessment charges to finance 68 student nutrition programs and to maintain recreation programming in community centres operating out of schools.

But the committee is sending recommendations to demand that Toronto Public Library find a 10 per cent cut - a move that the city's chief librarian Jane Pyper said would mean cutting hours across 54 branches. The committee also recommended putting a higher-than-anticipated surplus into a rainy day fund.

The city's operating budget has come in at $154 million, as compared to previous estimates pegging it at $139 million. And assessment is $8.8 million higher.

But staff didn't recommend using the windfall to ameliorate cuts coming down the line, recommending that just $2.5 million go toward preserving services.

And they also served notice that the city will be looking at further cuts in 2013 and 2014. Assuming transit fare increases, as well as tax hikes and user fee increases, the city will still have to fined $174 million in cuts in 2012 and another $80 million in 2014.

The move drew criticism from councillors opposed to Mayor Rob Ford's agenda, who repeatedly referred to both the budget and the mayor as "radical conservative."

Parkdale-High Park Councillor Gord Perks said the budget points to a secret agenda to permanently reduce the size of government.

"If you look at the forecast that staff are putting out, the cut that we have to make is smaller than the result of last year's tax freeze and cutting the vehicle registration tax," he said. "We'd be out of our hole right now if we hadn't frozen taxes. This is a deliberate attempt to destroy public service and to mislabel that as being a necessary financial correction. We have a great city and there's been a deliberate attack on the services that people care about."

Perks and other councillors in opposition said that council would eventually amend the budget.

That was something that Ford allies didn't discount. Budget committee vice chair Doug Ford told reporters that he anticipated some jockeying back and forth at council to come up with a workable compromise.

"There will be some jockeying - we're only a couple of million dollars away," said Ford. "We put forward a great budget. A couple of million dollars is all that's separating the two parties. We aren't that far away - I'm sure we'll be able to come to a good conclusion."

Ford characterized the budget that his brother mayor launched in the fall as a "staff budget."

"I think everything's open for give and take," he said. "This is the staff's budget that they brought forward to the mayor's office, and from the mayor's office we look at the needs and make a decision."