Brad Bradford says if he’s elected the next mayor, he plans to modernize the city’s budget by pulling it out of the 1990s.
The mayoral candidate says he plans to separate the operating and capital budgets in order to fix what he calls Toronto’s structural budget problem and attempt to address $1.6 million deficit that the next mayor faces in 2027.
As Bradford explained, he would end the cross subsidy which he claims sends hundreds of millions of dollars each year from the operating budget to pre-pay the capital budget.
“A real separation of the operating and capital budgets, not just a separation on paper or in a slide deck, a real one,” he said. “Both are essential but they require a different approach. The operating budget runs the city, the capital budget builds it. Operating has to balance every year, that’s the law and I’m going to follow it. But the capital budget, which we use to pay for the infrastructure, it gets paid for over the life cycle of an asset, the same way a family pays for a home.”
The announcement follows up on his previous pledges of a one year property tax freeze and a commitment to keep future tax hikes below inflation while conducting a line-by-line review of City Hall spending that would not affect frontline services.
He also unveiled a plan to establish a municipally-owned utility called Toronto Water to not only reduce water bills by $300 a year but also find savings that would then be used to build and fund future infrastructure projects.
In a statement, incumbent mayor Olivia Chow called Bradford’s debt scheme “reckless,” likening it to using a credit card to pay for his promises.
“He is asking taxpayers to pay interest to big lenders and keeping secret which city services will get slashed, and how big the bill will be when the debts come due,” she said in a statement.
Torontonians will go to the polls to select a new mayor and city council on Oct. 26.
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