By Halima Mautbur
Centretown residents, unlike those in other areas, told the city to raise their taxes but not cut a penny from their social services to pay the $109-million budget shortfall.
“I don’t want my city to do anything but get better, and I’ll pay more taxes,” said one resident at the public consultation meeting at City Hall earlier this week. The comment drew loud applause and cheers.
The meeting was one of nine consultations held to discuss the city’s 2004 budget problems. More than 100 people filled the meeting room, with some sitting on the stairs.
Several left early, however, when city staff began to answer questions with technical language, while others hissed and booed.
Kent Kirkpatrick, the city’s general manager of corporate services, explained that the city must balance higher property taxes with service cuts. The city needs to save $80.5-million between these two areas.
Some of the proposed service cuts have suggested reducing the number of ambulances, long-term care beds, homeless shelter beds, fire stations, transit routes, recreation programs and water treatment safety procedures.
The majority of those in attendance voted for zero cuts to services by choosing the highest tax increase scenario of 9.7 per cent.
Diane Holmes, councillor for Somerset Ward, says that this hasn’t been the typical vote.
Most of the other consultations held so far have voted for a 6.3 per cent tax hike, with service cuts of $27.5-million, she says.
The other options presented were for three and zero per cent tax hikes, each paired with successively increasing cuts to city services.
Holmes also says that residents may realize that property tax levels, which haven’t risen for nearly a decade, cannot continue at the current levels.
But not everyone feels that these consultations and talks about general budget cuts are useful.
“I was really disappointed,” says Sandra Abi-aad, a Centretown resident and member of the board of directors for the Sussex Annex Works (SAW) Gallery. “I didn’t realize that it would be going over the entire budget, I thought it would be more focussed.
“But when you walk into a room and there’s just piles and piles of paper for you to go through, it’s a little discouraging right off the bat…it’s basically a crash course in accounting.”
She says she expects cuts to city services and programs, and doesn’t have much hope for arts funding, which she came to support.
Terrence Quinlan, another Centretown resident and professor at Algonquin College, also says there will be service cuts. But he says the consultations have allowed his voice to be heard.
“I hope that the city will have a firm vision of what their constituents want, and what services they want to see remain, and really get that message and act on that message,” says Quinlan, adding that he hopes the politicians won’t “side-step (the) issues.”
Ultimately, Abi-aad says that it all comes down to imagination.
“I think people will always be really innovative and ingenious in the way they overcome budget restraints . . . you make the best of it, and in some cases you get the most creative things coming out of constrained circumstances.”