The Reality Of Maxing Out Your Visa

We hear a lot of crap from Mayor Miller about new waterfront developement and beatifying the city as his accomplishments but he fails to mention that the city has no money to maintain our existing assets.

Forget building parks: City is $422M behind
New waterfront parks would be great, but there's little cash to maintain them, or aging ferries and docks, audit finds
January 24, 2007
Jim Byers
CITY HALL BUREAU CHIEF

The city wants to add hundreds of hectares of new parks and public spaces, but the people who run Toronto's parks department say they don't have enough money to properly maintain the facilities already in place.

City staff haven't finished their work, but a partial audit of parks, forestry and recreation department property has already revealed a $422 million backlog in repairs, department general manager Brenda Librecz told a meeting of city council's parks and environment committee. On top of that, the city's renowned ferry boat system and the dock walls they use might require $300 million more, she said.

"There have been zero dollars allocated for new parks on the waterfront," Librecz said. She's had encouraging talks with city budget officials, but nothing firm has been promised.

It's the same with the city's urban forest.

Councillors have talked about doubling the percentage of the city covered by trees as a way of battling climate change, but Librecz said that, too, costs money. The city has thousands of trees to trim and maintain every year and there's already a backlog of a year or more on city tree work orders.

They are problems that create challenges for Mayor David Miller and council.

Miller wants to develop a climate change plan for the city. During the election campaign he pledged to spend $17.6 million over the next four years on beautifying the city. He also pledged to build 300 hectares of new public spaces and parks along the waterfront by 2010.

It's one thing to build new parks, such as the Port Union park on Lake Ontario in Scarborough or the new HTO park planned for the Harbourfront area next summer. But officials say that means money has to be set aside for things like watering plants, painting buildings and repairing park benches.

"If we don't have the resources, we'll be robbing Peter to pay Paul," Librecz said. "And that would mean cuts across the system, and if we don't maintain the waterfront parks we build the public will be discouraged about new parks."

Librecz said city decisions sometimes have hidden financial costs.

"Not using pesticides is great, but it costs a lot more to maintain the turf and natural areas," she told committee members.

Councillor and committee chair Paula Fletcher asked that staff look into establishing a waterfront parks maintenance fund to take care of the parks that will be coming on stream.

Staff said the $422 million maintenance backlog Librecz talked about covers an enormous variety of city facilities, including hockey arenas, swimming pools, outdoor ice rinks, park buildings and even public washrooms. The city owns 7,390 hectares of green space, as well as 1,470 parks (and those are only the ones with official names), 734 sports fields and 220 kilometres of trails.

Librecz told the Star the city's aging ferry boat system and the vast dock walls along the waterfront also need attention. "The Trillium, one of our boats, is almost 100 years old. And those ferries carry something like a million people a year."

Librecz said a portion of the dockwall system near the Harbourfront music garden collapsed two months ago.

"There was a piece of it we found that had the year 1843 written on it," she said. "I don't think the dock walls have ever been rebuilt. They're at the end of their life cycle and they have to be audited. We have to send divers down to have a look at them."

Librecz said her department has a number of other challenges, including keeping developers and residents from illegally dumping on city property; especially up around Sewells Rd. in northeast Scarborough.

"We've talked about maybe setting up a kind of park ranger service program to be our eyes and ears" in the area, she said.