It was a slow start to budget deliberations as a divided council began the task of making decisions on proposed service cuts on Thursday.
Decisions were made on just over half of the proposed list of 54 service cuts needed to maintain Mayor Joe Fontana’s tax freeze for another year.
“This is meant to be a discussion and a collaborative effort,” Fontana emphasized, but from the start it seemed like something far more contentious.
The longest debate centered on a permanent reduction of $1 million in the city’s annual contribution to an affordable housing reserve account used to fund new construction.
That cut would have emptied the account by 2015.
Ward 5 Councillor Joni Baechler says “That certainly paints a picture that’s pretty shocking, I guess, for those in the community who are on waiting lists for affordable housing.”
But the mayor argued there are more creative options available, “The solution is not always money. It’s how we work together in order to help the most amount of people.”
In the end that funding was not cut, and annual walkway sweeping in parks and downtown sidewalk snow removal were also spared.
However, funding for the MainStreet London program will be cut, it’s the end for the double decker bus tours and there will be less street sweeping.
Baechler says “This just flies in the face of everything that we’re talking about in terms of livable cities.”
With council roughly halfway through the process, the proposed tax rate sits at 2.7 per cent or about $63 on the property tax bill for the average home.
On Friday, council will need to make even bigger decisions on cuts to policing, the library and bus routes.
Issues that will still need to be decided include what to do with $95,000 saved by ending the green bin garbage pilot project and whether London and Middlesex Housing Corporation should use a $500,000 surplus to cover a recommended service cut.
After the first day of discussions the mayor says it’s still too early to tell if the tax freeze will continue into 2013.
