A panel discussion with guests: 

• Matthew Blackett
  Publisher & Creative Director, Spacing magazine & spacing.ca
• David Michael Lamb
  City Politics Reporter, CBC Radio News
• Neil Thomlinson
  Chair, Politics and Public Administration, Ryerson University

 Moderator: Chris Holcroft, world19
 

Click on photos for larger images:

This public forum, sponsored by world19, was held on Wednesday, Oct. 17, 7:30 pm at the Swansea Town Hall.  A hundred people were present.  Mayor Miller attended the latter part of the meeting. A discussion amongst panelists was followed by questions and comments from the audience.  The evening concluded at 9:45 with impassioned words from the Mayor in support of the city and its future.

The purpose of the meeting was to provide information, stimulate thinking and start a discussion about Toronto and its needs and potential in the near and distant future.

Summary of panel discussion

 1. Ingredients of a great city

• Drawing in part from ideas presented by Joel Kotkin in his book, The City, ‘great cities’, i.e. liveable cities share a number of characteristics in common – typically including interesting/iconic structures, safety, financial health/economic activity, and ‘quality of life’ which can be hard to define but typically includes things like transit, air quality, employment opportunities, tolerance and diversity, etc.

• adding to the Quality of Life list - great cities also include preservation of great public spaces – parks, clean water, clean environments, social cohesion

• to thrive, a city needs to be able to both produce and distribute wealth effectively

• some, such as Richard Florida, includes tolerance, amenities and infrastructure in his list of ingredients for great cities

• when you look at such lists, there’s little that local government doesn’t have its hands in

• Florida also suggests that successful cities are creative cities – cities that once may have relied on manufacturing as a base are/will be reliant upon knowledge production/creative invention as a source of wealth and potential

• but most cities, such as Toronto, may continue to represent both sectors and creative cities take time to seed, but right now we need to respond to the fiscal situation

• the expectations of and pressures on municipalities have grown through the years – municipalities and their basic source of funds, i.e. property tax was never intended to support the breadth and depth of needs that it is now accountable for

2. How to fund a great city

• there is no argument that Toronto does not have access to the financial resources it needs to prosper as a city

• a big part of the problem is related to the Harris download – no other province faces the download/upload issue as Ontario does

• in trying to determine how to pay for a great city, Crombie’s words were invoked, reflecting the sentiments of many, suggesting that taxes on property should pay for services to property and taxes on people should pay for services to people – in other words, that services for people should represent progressive taxation and those who have more should pay more – this suggests, given the structures that constrain  Ontario’s cities today, that cities need to find a way to institute some form of progressive taxation

• when looking to how other great cities find their resources, there are many ways -e.g. Hong Kong sells air rights to build up and so requires that as part of such developments, subway stations are built below – there was an attempt to do this in Toronto with the redevelopment of Union Station –but it failed

• Chicago and NYC have their own sales tax

• also some form of road toll/congestion tax is more and more common around the world as a means of generating funds and limiting carbon emissions

3. How to fund Toronto

• debate at city hall has been quite narrow given the range of revenue options that might be explored

• uploading from the province is necessary but is not fast enough to solve the immediate budget problem

• propert y tax cannot keep up with the growing population and its needs

• there is wealth in Toronto but it has to be harnessed in some way for its potential to be realized

• ideally municipalities could levy an income tax, but this is not realistic in our legal/political situation, so options for revenue generation might include an increase in property taxes, along with selective user fees designed to change undesirable behaviours, e.g. charges for extra garbage, and leveraging of private $ could be considered with care

• cities such as Stockholm seem to have successfully instituted congestion fees though they were first met with resistance – a modest congestion fee could raise a lot of $ and if it were dedicated to easing congestion through e.g. development of mass transit, it could be a good thing

• private $$ can be used very effectively and not lead to loss of public control – e.g. Chicago and Millennium Park development – very tight rules for corporations but they raised $250 million regardless

4. Next steps

• city needs a vision – whether  it’s top down, bottom up, or both – right now it feels as though the city is without a clear vision of its potential and a way to get there

• in the short term, city is facing a $500 mil shortfall and none of the mayor’s opponents have suggested a viable alternative to the two taxes suggested

• the idea that there is ‘waste’ is an agenda – there’s lots that can be examined in this large institution, but there’s really no ‘big’ answer to the $500 mil question

Audience discussion highlights

• interest in how to influence long term visioning of city – ideas discussed included the role of the Official Plan and the need to press Council and Mayor for secondary plans; also some feel the city needs an inspired vision to be brought forth from the Mayor and city hall; and then, that both top-down and bottom-up processes are needed and at the moment the community councils are ineffective as voices of the community

• concern over ‘value for money’ – though there are those who accuse city hall of ‘waste’, the $500 million shortfall is real and immediate and none of its opponents have been able to come up with an alternative solution; the ‘waste’ idea can be seen as an agenda, the city is a large and complex institution and value audits are tricky things, there’s no single big answer hiding out there; there are often public processes in place, but often people don’t pursue them as much as they could

Mayor Miller’s Comments

• the Mayor spoke with passion and certitude in support of the city he obviously loves and wants to see reach its fullest potential. He was clearly comfortable on his home turf, commenting that it was nice to be back where he recognized everyone in the audience.
   

• and he did not mince words in dispelling the notion that there is sufficient waste waiting to be found at the city that could remedy the present crisis, referring to it as a ‘fundamental lie’.

• he elaborated on his vision of the city as a great city with much untapped potential