Budget chief may step down after city passes amended budget
Posted January 18, 2012 1:22 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Toronto’s budget chief may leave his post after the city’s budget was amended Tuesday, a move that restores nearly $20 million in proposed service cuts that include the TTC, subsidized daycare and shelters.
Coun. Mike del Grande told CityNews his health has suffered in the position, and he is looking for new options.
“We make changes at the halfway mark and it would be better for the budget to do it sooner rather than later,” del Grande said at City Hall.
“It’s a grueling job. If the mayor needs me, we’ll talk about it – it wasn’t a job for life,” he laughed.
“I don’t have a problem doing another job or being a regular councillor. It’s up to the mayor if he wants to make a shuffle. I think I’ve done a good job and the mayor’s office is very happy with me.”
On Tuesday, rookie councillor Josh Colle introduced a motion to save $15 million in proposed cuts, and successfully directed some of the $154 million surplus in 2011 to pay for them. The vote passed 23-21. About another $5 million was restored in the $9.4 billion budget by other motions shortly afterward.
“The Ford administration was about reducing the size and scope of government activity,” political analyst Alejandra Bravo told CityNews.
“When the people of Toronto saw the service cuts in the budget, they contacted their councillors – and that’s what we got: a 23-21 rejection of those cuts.”
Bravo pointed out that losing a budget vote at the provincial or federal level would trigger a non-confidence vote, possibly causing the government to fall.
“It’s a rejection of [Mayor Rob] Ford administration’s vision. The fact that it failed signals trouble to come.”
Coun. Giorgio Mammoliti, a staunch Ford ally, told CityNews on Wednesday he was “pissed” at losing the $15-million from the surplus, and will propose that council be cut in half next month.
TTC chair and Coun. Karen Stintz posted on Twitter on Wednesday that the money that will be going to the TTC won’t be recommended for bus routes slated for reduced services.
The $5 million that was added Tuesday should go to Wheel-Trans, she said.
The money “is not sustainable funding & won’t be recommended for bus routes that will have to be cut again next year,” she tweeted.
Stintz was responding to a tweet from Coun. James Pasternak, who had asked the money preserve bus routes in his ward.
