🔭 PLATFORM VIEW: Mitzie Hunter’s comprehensive, fully-costed platform with a balanced budget

🔗 LINK:

🔧 DOABLE? Yes.

💰 COSTED? Yes.

✨ OVERALL: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½ (4.5 out of five)

If I could wave a magic wand and change anything about this mayoral election campaign, it would be introducing some kind of requirement that any candidate who wants to have their name on the ballot on June 26 must first submit a budget document exactly like this one, from Mitzie Hunter.

Because if they get the job, this will be the job.

The new mayor will spend much of their time building and shaping the annual operating budget, making sure it both delivers on their various campaign promises and is balanced, as it must be.

I have my concerns about some of Hunter’s proposals. There are some very risky moves built into this budget. Hunter, for example, proposes a large-scale raid on the city’s various reserve funds, bringing the balance in theoretically-available reserve funds down from $1.13 billion today to $687 billion in 2025 — nearly cutting in half the “rainy day funds” available to the City over three years. What if it keeps raining?

And that comes before she takes $813 million from the City Building Fund — about 70% of the projected year-end balance through 2025.

And THAT comes before assuming an extra $100 million a year in land transfer tax revenues. And before banking on $189 million in “investment income” — hope the market is kind to us.

And THAT comes before a creative accounting plan where the city will borrow $1.8 billion against other reserve funds — effectively lending money to itself, backed by reserves that are generally not legally available for operating budget use. The City will pay back the loan to itself over ten years, starting in 2025.

(There’s some precedent to this self-loan plan — it’s what John Tory did in 2015 to deal with a $130 million loss of provincial revenue.)

Does Huner’s plan set the city on a sustainable fiscal course? Not even a little bit.

In 2026, the city would be looking at a situation where reserve funds are heading toward zero, capital projects that would have been funded via City Building Fund revenues are at risk of delay and/or cancellation, and annual loan repayments are eating away the ability to continue to provide services.

What it succeeds in doing, though, is buying Toronto time to negotiate a better deal with the provincial and federal governments, in concert with other municipalities. It also, I think, would be a pretty solid piece of evidence for those in Ottawa and at Queen’s Park that City Hall has turned over every rock in the search for sustainability, and shown that sustainability is not currently possible.

Hunter’s property tax approach is novel, pitching a 6% increase for 2024 and 2025, with a new program offering a rebate of 50% of the new amount to households with a combined income of less than $80,000.

I like programs like this because they’re a good counter to sob stories about how property tax increases will lead to grandma and grandpa getting pushed out of their home. But I worry that the net effect of the rebate — Hunter pegs the cost at $36 million — will mean the 6% property tax increase in 2024 effectively only matches the revenue the city would get from an inflationary increase. (Assuming inflation is still running pretty high by next year.)

An extra point or two could have created more breathing room and helped to lessen some of the reserve fund draws.

One more thing: Hunter proposes raising a bit of revenue by charging lobbyists $100 a year to register. That’s change we can believe in. Hell, make it $200.

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.