Toronto to consider $740M in major service cuts

CBC News  Posted:Jul 21, 2011

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's executive committee is set to consider cuts totalling more than $740 million to police and transit services, as well as public health and environment programs, according to a report in the Toronto Sun. Independent accounting and consulting firm KPMG identified the cuts as part of a sweeping review of the city's services ahead of a push to cover an estimated $744-million budget shortfall, the Sun reported Thursday.According to the report, the recommended cuts to the city's boards and agencies include:

• Reducing the size of the police force.
• Considering one-officer patrols in certain cases.
• Closing some library branches and reducing hours at others.
• Selling the Toronto Zoo.
• Scrapping the Toronto Atmospheric Fund, which provides grants to a host of environmental programs.
• Eliminating late-night TTC bus service.
• Eliminating public health community programs that fund AIDS prevention strategies.

Those cuts will be detailed in a report to be released later Thursday.  It will then be up to the mayor's executive committee, which meets next Thursday, to determine which of those cuts should be implemented. Once the executive committee makes those decisions, Toronto council will vote on the proposals in late September.

Ford guaranteed during his election campaign that city services would not be cut; but he suggested Toronto's budget woes could be addressed by cutting spending and waste at city hall.  Moreover, he said in an interview with Toronto radio station AM 640 last week that he remains committed to incrementally eliminating the land transfer tax, which nets the city an estimated $220 million in annual revenue. Thursday's KPMG report is the last of a series of reviews of municipal department spending. Dubbed the core services review, the exercise is meant to distinguish which services are either essential to the functioning of the city or mandated by law and which services are not. So far, the suggested cuts have included eliminating 2,000 city-subsidized daycare spaces, reducing the city's 70 per cent waste diversion target and merging the fire and EMS departments.