Hold The Line At 0% Increase In Dept. Budgets

That seems pretty clear cut so you have wonder why only nine of forty-nine City Of Toronto departments met that edict and do I have to tell you which departments are the worst offenders......list below.

Freespending city must stop blaming province
By SUE-ANN LEVY

As city manager Shirley Hoy contended at yesterday's 2007 $7.8-billion operating budget launch, all city departments and agencies were asked to flatline their budgets this year.

To contain yet another $500-million-plus deficit -- this year's is a whopping $562 million -- no city department was supposed to increase their budget demands one red cent.

What a laugh. Like most City Hall edicts, it seems this one too is made to be broken -- especially by Mayor David Miller, who as CEO of this city is fulfilling a vital mandate.

Miller's office budget will rise 29.7% this year to hire four additional staff to oversee those visions which allegedly keep on coming from his office.

His Clean and Beautiful Secretariat (a Miller fiefdom, if I ever saw one) will see a funding increase of 226%. For that price, I'm expecting not to see one bit of litter on the downtown streets by year's end. Funding for Miller's Waterfront Secretariat (another fiefdom) will jump nearly 31%.

The Municipal Licensing and Standards department? Its budget will rise 18%, no doubt to maintain a healthy roster of bylaw officers to ensure Torontonians play by the socialist's rules and pay up once new taxes, er "public policy revenue tools," are created under the City of Toronto Act.

"If departments were not able to do it (achieve a zero increase), they had to fully document why," said Hoy.

I'm guessing the city manager's office had quite a thick folder of excuses. Fact is, only nine of 49 city departments and agencies actually met the 0% target -- the mayor and his pet projects being the worst offenders.

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