A transit levy, a parks levy, or neither: the budget's real fight arrives in the fall
With development-charge revenue frozen, the money for the capital plan has to come from somewhere. Staff will put two dedicated levies on the table.
The development-charge freeze settled where the capital plan's money won't come from. The fall budget session will open the harder half of the question, and the Bulletin has confirmed that staff will put two options formally on the table: a dedicated transit infrastructure levy, and a dedicated parks-and-recreation levy, each a separate line on the tax bill with a published project list attached.
The dedicated-levy model has spread through the GTA for a blunt reason: residents distrust general tax increases but will, polling and referenda suggest, pay for a named thing they can watch get built. The transit version would fund the Queen Street bus-lane completion and terminal expansions; the parks version, the rec-centre renewal backlog that every ward meeting hears about first.
The opposition case writes itself, and several councillors are already writing it: a levy is a tax increase wearing a lanyard, and stacking one on top of the assessment growth the DC freeze is supposed to generate asks residents to fund the same growth twice. The freeze's champions and the levy's champions are, awkwardly, mostly the same councillors.
Deliberations start in October. Between now and then, expect every number in this story to appear in a mailer, a town hall and at least one billboard. The Bulletin will publish the project lists behind both levies as soon as they are tabled, because a named tax deserves a named shopping list.
