Thread by @GraphicMatt

Toronto Council meets today! It’s a very special meeting to approve the 2022 budget. I’ll have tweets and jokes and commentary in this thread.

You can watch the livestream here:

I previewed the budget in @CityHallWatcher this week, looking at how the budget has changed since 2019, the first year of this term. The pandemic made for some interesting shifts in spending — but a lot of it is temporary. graphicmatt.substack.com/p/chw162?r=moiu

If you want more charty budget goodness, @jpags and @NathanPilla have you covered, with five charts to explain the city’s fiscal situation. thestar.com/news/gta/2022/…

My Star column this week is also about the budget, arguing that, beneath pandemic stuff, this budget is another status quo budget. It’s been a decade since T.O. had a budget process that wasn’t immediately constrained by property tax demands. Not ideal! thestar.com/opinion/contri…

Of course, not everyone agrees with my take on the budget.

Mayor Tory kicks things off by saying he hopes the tone of the discussion in the budget debate today “reflects the fact that this has been another extraordinary year.” Thanks Budget Chief Gary Crawford, who has now handled 8 budgets. That’s definitely a post-amalgamation record.

The mayor also makes his standard conflict-of-interest declaration. Because of his involvement in the Rogers trust, he won’t vote on any budget matters related to telecommunications or other Rogers biz interests.

The mayor, again, has designated the agenda item about tax rates as his first key item, meaning Council will be forced to lock in the property tax levels before they debate services. This is a strategy pioneered during the Ford administration, as explained in Mark Towhey’s book.

Councillor Gord Perks takes a shot at asking if the mayor would consider allowing council to debate property tax rates at the same time as they debate service levels. Tory says no, he likes it better when they do the property tax item first.

Council votes 21-4 in favour of asking City Manager Chris Murray to give ‘em a presentation about the budget before they debate it.

The budget presentation spends a lot of time reiterating the need for the provincial and federal governments to give Toronto $1.4 billion this year. If money doesn’t come through, city will make deep cuts to capital spending.

The Gardiner project as a whole is a gigantic part of the budget, so, presumably, yeah, major cuts to capital would impact it.

On the property tax item, Councillor Mike Layton moves for staff to provide an updated long (longer) term financial plan with the 2023 budget process that’ll include recommendations on paying for state of good repair and other unfunded projects and programs.

“I think if you asked any Torontonian on the street if things have improved over the last couple of years — notwithstanding the challenges of COVID — I think they’ve have a challenge to point to one particular thing,” says Councillor Layton.

Council votes to ADOPT the recommended 2022 property tax rates 21-2.

For residents, the 2022 increase will work out to about $93 per household per year for the budget increases, and 48 bucks per year per household for the City Building Fund. That’s based on a home with an assessed value of $697K.

Councillor Mike Colle asks reps from the Toronto Police Service about the cost of dealing with the recent anti-vaxx protests. Police rep says responding to first two weekends of convoy protests cost the cops about $6 million.

After members of council pepper staff with budget questions, we reach the lunch break. Back at 2 p.m.