Results tagged “budget”

Today is budget day at City Hall, and the mood is grim but determined. In the face of rising unemployment, swelling welfare rolls, and glum economic forecasts, the rock of weakening revenue and the hard place of increasing social service costs are squeezing the City hard. In a press conference this morning, Mayor David Miller and Budget Committee Chair Shelley Carroll reassured the public that no major service cuts were on the table and that many planned improvements (such as the Tower Renewal program, various environmental initiatives, and TTC upgrades) were going ahead as planned. Miller made a point of contextualizing the pressures the City faces, lambasting the federal government for failing to expand EI eligibility requirements, and reminding us that the hangover of Mike Harris's welfare offloading is being felt to this day.

Members of the Canadian Armed Forces marched in the Toronto Pride Parade yesterday, the first time that they have done so. This confirms, once and for all, that the massive international homosexual conspiracy does in fact attempt to recruit youth to their lifestyle. (Also, there is an enlistment bonus if you are willing to be gay in Afghanistan while carrying a rifle.)

TTC does end-run around Toronto Preservation Board. The TTC wants the right to redesign 63 of its 69 stations. Heh. We have 69 TTC stations. Never noticed that before. Heh.

A three hour Blackberry outage affected millions of people across North America yesterday, leading to much wailing and handwringing over the temporary unavailability of a technology that didn't even exist ten years ago. Truly we are a nation of whiners.

The last time we looked at accessible pedestrian signals (APS), those chirping and cuckooing crossing indicators for the visually-impaired, it was with some surprise at the city's claim that it simply couldn't afford to install APS at more than a handful of intersections each year. Instead of allocating enough money to improve availability of a fairly basic service to visually-impaired residents, the city instead looked for corporate sponsors to pick up some of the considerable slack, resulting in pedestrian signals "funded by IBM" and other organizations dotting the city, a virtual declaration that the city was abdicating its responsibilities.

In this occasional feature, two Torontoist staffers face off to debate an issue that is important to our city. We invite our readers to join in the debate in the comments section after the post.

David Miller delivered a balanced budget yesterday, thanks to higher property taxes, some fabulous new tariffs, and a one-time infusion of $150 million from the the provincial government. According to Miller, the property tax increase of 3.75% is in line with his commitment to limit raises to the rate of inflation (1.9% in Toronto last year), evidence that the mayor is either math-illiterate or assumes that everyone else is.