Oh yes, close libraries too.
Sounds like the gravy train was carrying a lot of kids.
Seriously, this is what happens when you make wild assertions about cutting taxes and maintaining services.
During his campaign Rocco Rossi, now a PC candidate, pointed out there wasn't a gravy train to cut. To balance the budget meant a radical rethink; Rocco was right.
http://bit.ly/rphMsT
City council should consider cuts to the library system, eliminating late-night TTC buses, selling or closing the Toronto Zoo and Riverdale Farm, and cutting the number subsidized child care spaces, Toronto's top bureaucrat says.
In a report on Toronto's "core service review" released Monday morning, city manager Joe Pennachetti also endorsed a host of other cuts and service changes proposed by consulting firm KPMG earlier in the year.
If all of them were implemented, Pennachetti wrote, the city would save $100 million in 2012.
That is far less than the $774 million Mayor Rob Ford has insisted the city needs to find to balance its budget. Even though the true budget gap is less than $500 million because of surplus funds and other revenues, the recommendations suggest that most of the shortfall will not be covered through cuts.
3 comments:
Most major cities need a radical rethink in order to stay solvent for the long term. Most city politicians spend most of their time squabbling over how many millions should go to subsidized housing, bike paths or other eco-crap when they are spending tomorrow's revenue to do any of it.
Why is a city as big as Toronto subsidizing ANY daycare spaces? Why isn't the zoo and farm self-sustaining? People pay to go there after all. Shouldn't they be able to work under a budget that's about what their annual ticket sales are? If you can't afford a fully climate controlled penguin enclosure, don't build one.
At the federal and provincial level it's difficult to justify increasing taxes and user fees due to public cynicism. Why can almost every major city hike property taxes 3-7% a year and we all just take it as a given?
No level of government increases their take of my revenue pie more than the cities and they still whine to the provinces every year for more.
Absurd.
Mark, fair enough. And a stripped down city can work, especially if there is a significant charitable segment in society -- the Lincoln Highway was built by private subscription. Still, that's a radical rethink of Canada. Indeed, some might point out Canada is not economically sensible at all -- it only works because government subsidized a national railway etc. Cheaper by far to go north south than east west. But that's another issue I suppose.
Daycare sport are safe from cuts now.
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