Toronto is poised to approve its largest property tax hike in decades

Toronto's month and a half long budget process will come to an end today, and it could see councillors approve the city's largest property tax hike in over 25 years.

Councillors will dig into Mayor Olivia Chow's first budget this morning and have the chance to change her proposed 9.5 per cent property tax hike. But if councillors want to do that, or add anything new to the $17-billion spending package, they'll need to find offsets.

In an interview on the eve of the final debate, Chow said she's comfortable with the number and that it will help the city shore up fraying services like transit and the city's state of good repair.

"I think the rate is just right," she said. "I'm hearing that people understand that we need to get the city back on track and invest in services — basic services."

The budget process officially kicked off in January when city staff presented their draft budget, which included a proposed 10.5 per cent property tax hike. Chow brought that number down by a full percentage point after weeks of public consultations and recommendations from council's budget committee to keep a focus on affordability for residents.

The mayor said Tuesday that she will support a number of motions that will pump additional funds into city services on the chopping block, such as snow windrow clearing. That service cut would impact 262,000 suburban homes and Chow said she's heard seniors are concerned about it.

"I'm hearing the seniors saying we're going to have difficulty shovelling the snow," she said. "So, we will support restoring it. A lot of councillors are hearing from their constituents."

The mayor also reversed course Tuesday afternoon on the contentious debate over the Toronto police budget. After weeks of pushing against it, Chow says she will back a bid to increase the nearly $1.2-billion net budget by $20 million, instead of the $7.4 million in her draft spending plan. 

Those funds will come from the provincial and federal governments, she said. 

"That gives me confidence that we don't have to go and cut other services to provide extra support to police because that's not what I want to do," she said.

But Coun. Jon Burnside said he thinks the mayor was under pressure from councillors and city residents to increase police funding. With 22-minute response times to priority calls, this is about addressing service levels, he said.

"You can love the police, you can hate the police. But when you need the police, you need the police, and 22 minutes is unacceptable," he said.

Coun. Brad Bradford said without the additional funding, the service's ability to recruit more officers will be limited.

"We need to make sure that they have the resources so they can do the hiring so we can get more bodies online," he said. "That's going to be really important."