🔭 PLATFORM VIEW: Josh Matlow’s “Fully-Costed and Fully-Funded Plan for a City that Works.”
🔗 LINK:
🔧 DOABLE? Yes
💰 COSTED? Yes.
✨ OVERALL: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½ (4.5 out of five)
I am, at this point, probably grading on a bit of a curve. If you’re a mayoral candidate who has provided anything that even resembles a proposed budget, you get four stars! At least!
There remains no excuse for candidates not to provide a complete costing of their promises and how they’ll fit into the city’s budget, but so few candidates have failed to deliver. As far as I can tell, the only candidates who have cleared this very clearable hurdle are Chloe Brown, Mitzie Hunter and — the latest addition, and probably a bit late to the party, if we’re being honest — Councillor Josh Matlow.
Matlow’s math isn’t quite as comprehensive as I’d like, but this is still an impressive piece of work that would serve as a credible foundation for a mayoral budget proposal.
Matlow proposes raising about $599 million worth of operating revenue by the 2026 budget year. You know they were serious about using exact numbers because they resisted the temptation to just round it to $600 million. That includes $234 in annual revenue from the “City Works Fund” — a 2% property tax levy, $200 million from a Climate-Action Fund sourced from a Commercial Parking Levy, and $115 million from a “Community Health & Safety Fund” derived from a police budget freeze.
I am still a bit fuzzy on how exactly freezing the police budget generates new funds.
Matlow also books $568 million in one-time revenue resulting from savings related to changing course on the Gardiner East project. That would appear to be a reasonable high-level estimate based on a staff report from earlier this year showing a $650 million budget for remaining work related to the hybrid Gardiner that has not yet been contracted. Another $148 million has been contracted but not started.
Matlow adds up his various platform promises — several of which I’ve reviewed here — at $479 million annually in 2026.
His capital numbers are a bit harder to parse, but they appear to add up too. He calculates that his promises, including the Waterfront East LRT and the Eglinton East LRT, will require $370.5 million in annual funding. (He’s also proposing one-time capital costs of $300 million to seed fund his public housing strategy, and $58.6 million to fund the temporary Scarborough busway.)
That’s $100.5 million a year in recurring capital costs. When added to the operating budget promises, that works out to $579.5 million — leaving about $19.5 million in wiggle room when compared to his annual revenue estimates.
Isn’t it nice when the math all works out nicely? Satisfying! This is a very good document and confirmation that Matlow is a serious candidate in a field with too many unserious candidates.
UPDATED WITH CORRECTION, June 16 at 4:48 p.m.: An earlier version of this review suggested some one-time capital costs in Matlow’s plans were actually recurring annual costs. It’s been updated to correct the record. As a result, the original rating has been updated from 4 stars to 4.5 stars.
PLATFORM VIEW is a daily(ish) feature by City Hall Watcher on Substack Notes. Got a request for a candidate policy proposal I should review? Let me know.
