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Karen Stintz Says $5 Million Re-added to TTC Budget Will Not Be Going to Restore Service After All

Ford administration fires back at councillors who tried to reverse budget cuts.

By Hamutal Dotan • Photo by Harry Choi

Karen Stintz has told the CBC that $5 million re-added to the TTC budget yesterday during the budget debate will not be going to mitigate planned service cuts that are slated to hit approximately three dozen bus routes.

The money was part of an omnibus motion moved by Josh Colle (Ward 15, Eglinton-Lawrence) which reversed many budget cuts Rob Ford was hoping to include in this year’s budget—and it was earmarked specifically for service. The language of the motion, as proposed and passed by council yesterday: “That…the TTC budget be increased by $5 million to prevent service reductions” (see 1A(g) here). Colle’s intention in putting that money into the TTC budget, and council’s intention in endorsing that proposal, was specifically to stave off some of the proposed reductions to service levels. (“Some” because the full value of those service cuts is $9 million; councillors could only reach consensus on reversing $5 of that $9 million.)

So how can Stintz overturn the wishes of council? She can’t on her own, but the TTC Board which she chairs can. Council decides how much money to give its various agencies, boards, and commissions (which include everything from the TTC to the Police Service to Exhibition Place), but it does not have the authority to specify how exactly that money will be spent. That is up to the leadership at each organization—in this case, the nine member TTC Board. Councillors knew this when they cast their votes yesterday, but presumably their hope was by explicitly attaching a particular goal for this money—preventing service cuts—they’d be able to influence, if not guarantee, the TTC’s decision. Stintz, however, along with the vast majority of Ford’s allies, voted against the $5 million restoration.

Stintz told the CBC that the money would be used for buses, streetcars, WheelTrans service for dialysis patients, or some combination of the three. During yesterday’s budget debate Ford and his allies consistently returned to the question of how to pay for streetcars—Toronto has to replace its current fleet, at a cost of about $700 million—and had been pushing hard to have the entire surplus dedicated to that task this year, and in future years until the full purchase had been paid for. (This, in large part, is because the administration is opposed to using debt financing for this purpose.) Stintz’s announcement today, therefore, is a return to that theme, and one way the Ford administration is trying to push back against councillors who reversed the cuts they had been aiming for. Stintz, meanwhile, maintains that it would be relatively pointless to use the $5 million for bus service, since it is one-time money (insofar as it came from the 2011 surplus) and can’t be banked on for future years. It would, she told the Star today, just be delaying the inevitable.

The next TTC Board meeting will be held on Tuesday, January 31.

Comments

  • Guest

    weirdly, i actually agree with this. you can’t base service on one-time influxes of cash, because it plays havoc with scheduling and expectations of passengers. i’d rather see the money go to capital investment, station repair, new streetcars, etc.

    • Anonymous

      We need all that, but above all we need to use the fleet we have right now, to serve as many routes as fully as possible. As has been pointed out many times by many others all ready, just a year ago Ford with the approval of council blew the entire $300+ million Miller surplus to cover over his own failure to maintain reasonable levels of taxation, through a modest property tax increase, and by keeping the VRT. This was a one-time blow-out — exactly what Ford (and his echo Stintz) now insists is wrong. Now he, and his echo, got debt-pay down religion. Or is it just political grandstanding and blatant hypocrisy? Let’s find out if Ford is going to pay $8-billion cash upfront for burying the Eglinton LRT. He better hurry up and make it so, because this city is desperate for transit expansion, not shrinkage.

      • Anonymous

        I’m surprised that it needs to be pointed out, but the fact that Rob Ford did something in the past doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. It only means Rob Ford was a hypocrite when he did it.

        • Anonymous

          It all comes back to this: Toronto (and by extension, the TTC) has a Ford-manufactured revenue problem.

      • Nick

        Or $1.2 billion up front for its contribution towards the non-existent funding package for the gravy subway along Sheppard. Debt financing is what everyone does, and at less than 10% of operating revenue, it’s nothing compared to the mortgages that many of us are carrying (300% of “operating revenue” in many cases). Why wait? Maintenance costs on the old streetcars will surely soar, so might as well post a bond now, rates are low. That’s how capitalism works.

    • John Duncan

      The only reason why $9 million was cut in the first place is because Ford and his cronies decided to cut 10% of everyone’s budget with no rhyme nor reason this year. Council decides the amount of money it will transfer to the TTC every year. By Stintz’s logic, we should just shut down the TTC entirely because there’s no guarantee of any funding next year, depending on Council’s choices.

  • JeffreyM

    Why wouldn’t council provide the necessary funding next year? At this point in time we actually don’t know how much money the TTC will get next year at all. Maybe it’ll get the same amount but costs will go up. Maybe it’ll get the same amount but costs will go down. Maybe it’ll get more or less and costs could go up or down. Who knows.

    The budget was for 2011. Council directed the money specifically for the reversal of service cuts.

    In fact, the commission previously voted to not cut service in February explicilty because council might pick up the cost of service. Which they did.

  • Anonymous

    councillor_stintz@toronto.ca
    416-392-4090

    I’ve emailed.

    • http://www.facebook.com/gerry.valentino Gerry Valentino

      Me too.

      • Ed

        Me too.

  • W. K. Lis

    All the councillors on the board of the TTC, except one, voted with Rob Ford on the budget amendment specifically to add the $5 million. That means they listen to Rob and not the TTC riders.

  • R_belitinikov

    then we will delay the inevitable year by year until the next municipal election. And in the meantime we’ll be taking names – Stintz, Ford, Ford Part 2, Denzel, Mammoliti. Do you get the feeling that the next municipal election won’t be the collection of non-events and non-entities that the last election was? And I thank the Mayor for what he is about to do to voter turnout. Go on back to Etobicoke, Rob, and leave the adults to manage things downtown.

  • Anonymous

    Council was pretty clear. The money was “to prevent service reductions”. If Sintz wanted extra moeny for Wheeltrans instead, she should have proposed an amendment accordingly.

    We can’t have council saying a department should spend the money on one thing and then have a single councillor get it spent on another.

    • http://twitter.com/TeaPartyTO TeaPartyTO

      “We can’t have council saying a department should spend the money on one thing and then have a single councillor get it spent on another.”

      Uhm, where did you get that?

      The TTC Council will have to VOTE on it. The vote will be to not use that $5 million earmark for maintaining bus routes…but instead go where it should be going: STREETCARS.

      So how will the TTC council vote on this?

      These are the councillors on the TTC board who have overwhelmingly voted in FAVOUR of Ford in 2011

      Karen Stintz
      Peter Milczyn
      Vincent Crisanti
      Frank Di Giorgio
      Norman Kelly
      Denzil Minnan-Wong
      Cesar Palacio
      John Parker

      …and the one who voted against Ford (a lot) in 2011

      Maria Augimeri

      LOL!!!!

      JOSH COLLE, REQUEST DENIED!

      • Anonymous

        Where did I get that? If you read the article, it states that the city Council voted to increase the TTC’s budget by $5m to *restore service*. Yet Karen Stinz seems to think the TTC comission can ignore Council’s wishes, and spend the money on whatever they deem fit.

      • Anonymous

        “where it should be going: STREETCARS.”

        Paying off the new streetcars is a manufactured dilemma. Cutting service is a real dilemma.

        • Anonymous

          Toronto had already done an initital payment (to cover design/start-up costs). No more money is due until delivery starts.

      • Guest

        I love tea parties too!!! I didn’t know they had them in Toronto. My personal favourite is earl grey.

  • Guest2

    Maybe we shouldn’t listen to Stintz, since it isn’t certain that she’ll be on council in future years.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Vote-Ndp/547678963 Vote Ndp

    And why doesn’t the TTC have longer articulated buses in the fleet like Ottawa, Mississauga, Hamilton, Vancouver and smaller cities like Halifax have them. More people can fit into an articulated bus with one driver hence savings and reduced overcrowding. But the Ford camp wants to look for short term solutions that we’ll pay for in the long term. Here’s a memo that should shock everyone: http://www.transitstop.net/ttc%20vehicles/GM%20Artic.jpg

    • Anonymous

      Artciulated buses take more room in the garage – room the TTC doesn’t have. You’d have to convince Rob Ford to spend money on new bus garages…

    • Anonymous

      The TTC used to have articulated buses, about 15 years ago. They got rid of them because they were enormously more expensive to maintain than regular buses.

      • Eric S. Smith

        The particular articulated buses that the TTC ended up with had corrosion problems, but they were almost irreplaceable on Finch, and the first attempt to get rid of them had to be abandoned, with rebuilds extending their lives into the 2000s.

        Ottawa’s fleet, which included ex-Toronto buses, was similarly driven right into the ground, finally replaced by a modern fleet that was itself problematic and recently upgraded in a rare bit of intelligent deal-making by Ottawa city council.

        • http://twitter.com/mark_dowling Mark Dowling

          Eric S Smith – interestingly the rumours from Ottawa Transpo workers (i.e. not the management who advised the replacement) are that they had just figured out the bugs with the junked artics and the replacements (with EPA 2010 engines and emission controls) are temperamental and require more maintenance time because of the emissions controls. Like I said, rumours, but…

    • http://twitter.com/mark_dowling Mark Dowling

      @Vote Ndp
      The TTC is planning an artic purchase according to recent commission documents.

      @tomwest
      I believe Mount Dennis yard (the last one built) has some provision to house artics.

  • KJ

    can we just decide not to use her salary for her salary?

  • Anonymous

    Ironic – the ‘Tea Party’ would have hated Earl Grey.

  • Noah Body

    I thought that the 5 million was going to come from future fuel savings?

    • Anonymous

      That’s a different $5 million, which they found earlier and which helped them delay the implementation of some service changes and reduce the number of routes to which they will apply. Three dozen routes are still slated for reductions, though.

  • Hollow Island

    It should be illegal to have a TTC board that is devoted to making the TTC worse.