Today, an independent panel is adivsing the City of Toronto to take on a number of drastic measures in order to right the city’s economic ship. from the Star:
A panel of independent experts is suggesting a revolutionary overhaul of the city of Toronto’s operations, including higher residential property taxes, a parking lot tax, regional road tolls, selling of surplus city lands, improving city worker productivity and raises for some politicians.
The report released this morning by the six-member panel recommends:
- Trading the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardiner Expressway to the province in exchange for a share of regional road tolls;
- Getting the province to provide $200 million of annual funding and long-term, stable financing to Canada’s most populous city;
- Selling off some of the city’s estimated $18 billion in real estate assets to help slash its debt load;
- Giving pay hikes to members of city council’s powerful executive committee.
The report notes than 90 per cent of city jobs are unionized and represent about one-half the city’s budget. That leaves little room for flexibility, but panelists said the city could do a better job at the bargaining table and improve relations with workers to help reduce the burden on taxpayers.
“These (moves) can clearly put the city on the right track of fiscal responsibility and economic sustainability,†the panellists wrote. “Attaining this state will allow the city to embark upon … small initiatives to massive new social and economic projects.â€
photo by Miles Storey
14 comments
Does anyone know if the report is going to be released to the public?
yes it is. not sure where.
I think you’ll need to do some Google searches for it.
You can find it here:
http://www.toronto.ca/mayor_miller/index.htm
Cheers to you Brad!
Careful, Glen. You just cheers-ed a real, live city bureaucrat.
“Giving pay hikes to members of city council’s powerful executive committee.”
Oh no. No no no no. They can have the same as the others – call it compensation for their constituents for becoming part of the Hive Mind.
Well at least now the Miller group can blame “the report” when they stick us with more service charges,taxes and tolls.It will be interesting how the mayor implements this direction without a citizen tax revolt.
they should have a look at the union payrolls, i am sure the average wage for city employees is higher than that of most of the residents paying taxes that go to those high wages and insane benefits. I know someone working for the municipal government that gets insane amounts of sick days and over time that is unheard of in the private sector. And it is impossible to get fired so everyone is super motivated to be productive.
So now its the reports fault. Some peoples inability to smell the coffee is pathological.
Why is it that this mayor and his advisors are always of the opinion that by rising taxes it is the only solution to the cities cash flow problem?
Here are some of my ideas that I think would work.
1) Sell 1/3 of the Real-Estate holdings for cash.
2) Tender all union labour positions to the private sector and give the union members the opportunity to re qualify for their positions. If they are qualified fine if not give others an option for the position.
3) Tender to the private sector all road repairs and other outside service work
4) Tender out all administrative positions at city hall.
By changeing the process and entitlement of work for a select few, efficantcies with in the work place will evolve must faster with the elemination of a stagnet mindset.
The proposals from the BLUE Crew are just band-aide for the staus quo and the status quo is not sutainable going forward. Unfortunatly the Miller team will never get it untill Toronto throws the Miller team out of office for good.
Are you not then building a massive human resources department ?
Have you even read the report, Robert? There are all kinds of non-tax, imaginative, revenue-raising recommendations included. And there is recognition of the need for change to the City Hall culture as well as proposals to effect that change. The report is being well-received from all sides.
Does anyone have a link to this report for all to read?
The third comment has a link to the report.