The "People" Of Toronto Speak Out But Comrade Miller Not Listening

And are to be congratulated but it might be interesting to see who they voted for in the last municipal election........

A city on the edge?
With Toronto mired in red ink, the unmentionable has been mentioned, but surely all is not yet lost
April 23, 2007

City about to go broke, staff say; Youth shelter users to rally at city hall

April 20.

Royson James reports that Toronto has a $600 million problem and may have to start cutting services next year. In another article, we are told that not-for-profit groups need $67 per bed per night to provide shelter for young people. If one does the math, that amounts to $2,010 per month. The amazing thing is that the $2,010 that Toronto would pay for each shelter bed would finance a half-million-dollar high-end luxury condo.

This solution to the housing problem is socially and fiscally crazy, but nobody in this city seems to want to even discuss sensible alternatives. Traditionally, the people now living in shelters and hostels have lived in rooming houses, but Toronto loves to hate rooming houses and has let them go into severe decline, while at the same time promoting a massive expansion of hostel beds at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars per year. The city's housing budget is now second only to its police and transit budgets.

There are some very good alternatives. In San Diego, leading architect Rob Quigley redesigned the rooming-house concept and 5,000 well-designed units (not beds) were built. Certainly Canada's architects could vastly improve on that design and units could be created without massively overspending tax dollars.

Larry Chilton, Toronto

City about to go broke, staff say

Column, April 20.

If columnist Royson James really does believe that the $71 million owed to Toronto by the province "is peanuts" and that $2.9 million for more staff for Mayor David Miller and renovations to his office is "a minor spending decision," I suggest James has been at city hall for far too long. Has he never heard of the expression: "Take care of the cents and the dollars will look after themselves"? Clearly Miller and many council members have not.

Out here in the real world, many citizens know that Miller has been spending taxpayers' money like a drunken sailor on an offshore-leave binge. Look around you at dual street signs, dozens of metal statues of sunflowers, parks workers dozing in vans at many parks, lengthy painted barriers at public-works sites like the R.L. Clark Water Treatment Plant.

What is really needed is a Toronto Star investigative series into things like how much city workers earn, by position; how much taxpayers are on the hook for their pension payouts; how many millions of dollars are being raised in taxes from the eyesore skyscraper condominiums being erected everywhere; if there is a better way to pay for snow-clearing than having people sitting around playing cards all winter waiting for the white stuff; how much Toronto is paying to have a kilometre of road resurfaced. Oh, and why no one has ever been charged for a computer-leasing scandal that cost us millions.

New taxes are not the answer. Running the city by carefully guarding how every cent of taxpayers' money is spent is the answer.

Pauline Dalby, Toronto

I read with shock today of the fear of potential bankruptcy of this city, which is home to nearly 3 million people. What was disconcerting is that the message is being trumpeted by people who should know better. The very idea that they would even use the term suggests that they know neither their responsibilities nor how to do their jobs.

Bankruptcy is the preserve of mismanaged businesses, ventures that have tried and failed. This city has been in business for more than 200 years and failure is not an option. When Councillor David Shiner says that we are potentially bankrupt because our expenditures are greater than our revenues, what I understand is that we are living beyond our means. For that I blame our elected officials and civil servants who manage the budget.

It's not rocket science that some cuts will be necessary and, yes, maybe some tax increases. We live in the real world and such things happen. Grandstanding to get more funding from the Ontario and federal governments has had limited success up to now.

Let's live within our means in a city with responsible and accountable officials who can demonstrate what they do to manage the budget, not that they are overcome by it. If they cannot do that, they have no business collecting a paycheque at the expense of businesses and homeowners who know what a balanced budget is.

Fred Enzel, Toronto

I find it unconscionable that Toronto city councillors would vote themselves a raise after the last election, knowing full well the dire straits that the city's finances are in. Aren't we all in this together?

What they need is incentive pay. Perhaps we should legislate no raises in years when property taxes are increased, and raises only by the same percentage as taxes go down. Perhaps then they will be motivated to find alternative solutions to these problems.

Arlene Tober, Toronto