It’s either layoffs or major tax increases: Ford

[mentalfloss]

It’s either layoffs or major tax increases: Ford

Layoffs are looming for city workers, Toronto’s cost-cutting mayor warned Friday.

Unless more staff starts volunteering to take buyouts, Mayor Rob Ford said his administration can’t avoid penning pink slips.

Reluctant to take that hard road, “I don’t know if we have a choice,” he said on The Roundtable, with SUN News co-hosts Pat Bolland and Sue-Ann Levy, the Toronto Sun’s veteran city hall columnist.

Blaming “the previous administration” driven by council left-wingers with a “culture” of milking taxpayers to finance special interest programs, Ford said he wants to work with city worker unions and avoid axing staff.

“Right now it’s a mess we have to clean up,” he said.

“I want to work with the unions, but if they hold us hostage ... like they did two years ago with the garbage strike, I’m not going to stand for that,” Ford said, warning: “Don’t put a gun to our heads because that’s not going to work.”

Ford has vowed to trim $380 million in spending to reduce the 2012 budget gap of $774 million, “and if we don’t do anything, we’re looking at 30-to-35% tax increases,” he said.

Taxpayers have repeatedly told him they want “a safe city,” which resulted in a contract settlement with Toronto Police that included a 2.8% wage hike retroactive to Jan. 1. The deal, reached in May, boosts officer and civilian salaries by a total of 11.5% over the next four years.

Ford said workers such as grasscutters should not expect the same salary as a cop, Ford said. “It’s not the same job.”

He said residents are also pressing for other essentials, including contracting out garbage pickup — which is predicted to save $6 million a year after District 2 west of Yonge St. goes that route — “fixing potholes” and plowing snow.

An analysis of that program will be undertaken to determine the next phase, contracting out private trash pickup east of Yonge, Ford said.

He later said the city is examining cuts in other areas, including “should we own theatres? Should we own the zoo?”

It’s either layoffs or major tax increases: Ford

 

[petros]

He later said the city is examining cuts in other areas, including “should we
own theatres? Should we own the zoo?”

Privatization is always the answer.

 

[mentalfloss]

Privatization is always the answer.

I might actually agree with those moves, but I still don't think that would bring in much revenue for the city.

What really upsets me is this obvious strawman that everyone is falling for.

Fire a significant amount of people or we raise taxes by 35%.

This is clearly a ploy to simply get rid of public services and have less government intervention.

 

[petros]

No-one is willing to say "we're ****ed" and they will dance around like bugs around a light bulb giving all sorts of excuses for the hacking and slashing that is due to come our way.

 

[mentalfloss]

I think I found a new game to play for the next hour or so..

Can YOU balance the budget

 

[petros]

I think I found a new game to play for the next hour or so..

Can YOU balance the budget

If you cut 75% of what is listed you get a balanced budget.

 

[mentalfloss]

Here's what I cut:

City Surplus and Revenue
EXHAUSTED - I took all the revenues listed

Property Tax and TTC
Employed the maximum increase for property tax (10%) and TTC (25 cents).

On average that's $250 - $300 more annually for property owners, which I think is reasonable. And the TTC price hike will be forgotten in 3 months anyway. The lay person has come to expect TTC raises as "normal" by now.

Public Works
No cuts - people will appreciate that these services are kept.

Economic Development
Made cuts to both BIAs and trade activities. Businesses will always find a way to survive and they get enough revenue from the HST boost we gave them last year.

Community Development
A real black mark that would get me some grief, but I went for the $16 million sale of child care centres. Keep in mind these are just the building assets and should have no influence on the service itself.

Planning and Growth
No cuts were made

Government Management
All three of these sources can be privatized without any ill effect on the public.

Executive
As much as I would hate to do it.. The Zoo will have to go private. Also, reduction of two-officer patrols to one-officer patrols is perfectly acceptable and will save us a whopping $200 milliion.


All in all, budget deficit for 2012 has been reduced from $774 million to $2.6 million.

I left the remainder for us to rout this obese putz out of office and that should take care of the most useless gravy.

 

[petros]

Also, reduction of two-officer patrols to one-officer patrols is perfectly acceptable
and will save us a whopping $200 milliion.

I've seen how that cut works. You get two cop cars showing up for one call and then a third usually shows up to watch the show.

$195Million for cops? OUCH!!

 

[DurkaDurka]

I think I found a new game to play for the next hour or so..

Can YOU balance the budget

I could only get the deficit down to $107,000,000 before I got a little too uneasy with some of the cuts that would have to be made.

Regardless, there is going to be some angry cops & citizens after this is all said and one.

 

[petros]

**** is hitting the fan.

 

[damngrumpy]

The problem with lower wages from privatization is that people are not making enough
to continue to pay the taxes on their homes and when that happens the costs go up for
everyone else. The problem is not programs or the the ability of the the system to function.
The problem is the short term thinking and planning of politicians who only have vision to
the threshold of the next election. They implement programs and improvements with that
in mind. The problem is that some twenty or thirty years later there is no plan for the on
going financial management of the system they have created. Job cuts, and or tax
increases are the result. If people knew the anticipated future costs and the plan built in
realistic increases sound decisions could be made years earlier, to prevent the current
problems.
In any case, the taxpayers will pay either with increased taxes, or by virtue of unemployment
insurance, assistance or retraining programs, and in the final tally you still need police and
other services. The employees are not the problem, the politicians and highly paid poor
planners are the problem. Ford will solve his problems by creating a series of blunders that
someone else will have to clean up, again by layoffs, hiring, and higher taxes that is the long
and the short of it, because no one has the vision to plan a long way ahead, Its all short
term including Ford's solutions.

 

[petros]

Passing the buck doesn't solve any financial crunch. Offsetting your costs to balance a budget is a bull**** manoeuvre that still puts it all on the backs of the people in one way or another.

 

[mentalfloss]

Cash-strapped Ford off to Queen’s Park

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, facing a huge budget hole in 2012, is off to Queen’s Park on Wednesday morning to meet with Premier Dalton McGuinty.

Ford asked for the meeting. A senior provincial government source said he is “looking forward to hearing what (Ford) has to say.”

Ford is on record asking the province for more than $150 million in specific projects, including roadwork and increased child care subsidies, plus half the TTC’s $429 million annual operating costs.

Since the mayor’s February request, the city has plunged into 2012 budget deliberations, with Ford floating the possibility of deep service cuts and staff layoffs to erase a projected shortfall of between $443 million and $774 million.

Ford, a provincial and federal Conservative, seemed to be finding early common ground with the Liberal premier after McGuinty agreed to revise the provincially funded Toronto transit expansion plan and acted on council’s request to make the TTC an essential service.

But after McGuinty rejected Ford’s funding request, the mayor told a radio host: “If they choose not to help us, then I have no other choice but to get out, as I call it, Ford Nation, and make sure they’re not re-elected in the next election.”

Last month, as the Ford administration was buffeted by gaffes and public backlash to proposed spending cuts, senior provincial Liberals told the Star they hope to capitalize on the mayor’s fumbles in the Oct. 6 provincial election.

Ford, who has had trouble finding private-sector money for his promised Sheppard subway extension, is expected to try to deliver Toronto seats now held by Liberal MPPs to the Ontario Progressive Conservatives.

Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday said he doesn’t know what’s on Wednesday’s agenda, but noted Ford wouldn’t be the first Toronto mayor to go to Queen’s Park asking for cash to help balance the budget.

Holyday said transit money is one possible request, along with funding to help get homeless residents into shelter.

Councillor Shelley Carroll, the budget chief under former mayor David Miller — who sometimes balanced the budget with a cash injection from Queen’s Park — said she would ask McGuinty for only one thing. “It’s what council directed — ask all three parties that, if they should hold office after Oct. 6, they return to the tradition of the province paying half the operating budget of the TTC,” Carroll said.

“Right now, we’re expanding transit and we have no idea how to pay the operating costs once it’s built.”

The other roughly $215 million would be funded equally from the city tax base and the fare box, she added.

Toronto News: Cash-strapped Ford off to Queen

 

[CDNBear]

That's what happens when you take over for a socialist that hands out money and contracts without a second thought of the future.

 

[mentalfloss]

That's what happens when you take over for a socialist that hands out money and contracts without a second thought of the future.

The City has not seen out-of-control spending

Comparison of spending increases, 1998 to 2010. (Not including debt charges which, as mentioned, the other governments tend not to make principal payments on.)

From 2003 to 2010, the City’s Net Operating Budget—the portion paid for by property taxes—increased from $2.9 billion to $3.6 billion. Or about $100 million per year. The budgetary magic of the David Miller era was pulling in some $500 million in transfers from the provincial government to fund (often provincially-mandated) programs and adding another half-billion in rate-supported programs. But even then, the city’s year-to-year spending increases still fell below the rate-of-growth for other levels of government..

(whom if I remember correctly are a wee bit to the right of them 'socialists')
​

Toronto's Budget: This isn't about austerity | OpenFile

 

[CDNBear]

Up 100 million a year, as the economy was tanking?

Good thinking there I tells ya!

I guess that makes Bush' budgetary policy good thinking too.



Tony's 50 shouldn't even be a blip on your radar.

 

[mentalfloss]

These are all different scenarios with various spending rates.

Let me know when you want to get serious about it or if you just enjoy the arm chair analysis.

 

[CDNBear]

Two can play at the childish neg rep game pumpkin.

These are all different scenarios with various spending rates.

Keep the xcuses coming.

Let me know when you want to get serious about it or if you just enjoy the arm chair analysis.

Yes, that coming from you, is as hollow as the culvert under my driveway.

You aren't capable of serious discussion, your ideological bias prevents it.

Let me know when you grow out of it, and I'll give you more respect and less of a hard time.

 

[mentalfloss]

What's my ideological bias?

 

[CDNBear]

What's my ideological bias?

Your ideology is decidedly left. This is made abundantly clear in your posts during the election, and after Ford took office.

Not only are you openly repulsed by the 'right', you lower yourself to childishly mock them and call them vile names.

Your fained compliments about Tony here, were as hollow as the bulk of your posts.

The "I'm objective" facade you try and portray, long since slipped off.