Torontonians will get another chance to have their say on the 2024 budget starting Monday

Toronto.citynews.ca
Jan. 22, 2024
Melissa Nakhavoly and John Marchesan

The City of Toronto will open its doors Monday for two days of public consultations on its 2024 budget.

The City has proposed a 10.5 per cent property tax increase for this year, the largest hike the City has seen since amalgamation. However, that number could be much higher depending on whether the federal government makes good on the $250 million needed to house asylum seekers. If the federal government does not provide this funding, the City will be forced to bring forward an additional Federal Impacts Levy of six per cent.

For the last week and a half advocacy group Progress Toronto has been staging training seminars to assist Torontonians in making their case before the committee on hot-button issues such as affordable housing, transit and public safety.

“People have been struggling across our city with housing that’s too expensive, transit that never comes on time, with services that are inadequately funded, with potholes, etc., etc.,” said Saman Tabasinejad with Progress Toronto.

“For many years we’ve been as Torontonians, as residents of this city, that we can have low taxes and services that we need and rely on and that just hasn’t been the case.”

When it comes to transit, the budget proposed a freeze on TTC fares this year while allocating just over $1.2 billion toward public transit.

Tabasinejad says while they’re pleased with what has been presented so far, there are still improvements to services that they are hoping to address during the two days of public consultations.

“The Scarborough busways are still not being funded and that would save folks that are using the Scarborough busway or who have had to find an alternative to the RT 20 minutes a day. That is something that we need to see movement on from the city as well as the province,” she said. “We need a higher target in terms of acquiring affordable housing and preventing renovictions.”

The city is facing a budget deficit of nearly $1.8 billion. Officials say staff were able to find over $600 million in cost savings for 2024.

“This budget is not by any means perfect but we really need these other services as well to be introduced and overall I do see this as an opportunity for the city to grow,” said Tabasinejad.

The budget committee meetings on Monday and Tuesday will be streamed live on the City Council YouTube channel.

The final budget will be released on Feb. 1 and brought to City Council for approval at a special meeting on Feb. 14.