City council votes in favour of SmartTrack funding plan
Posted November 8, 2016 7:25 am.
Last Updated November 8, 2016 10:54 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Toronto city council voted Tuesday in favour of a transit plan with the province to fund Mayor John Tory’s SmartTrack plan.
However, the vote didn’t come without a lengthy debate, in which many councillors raised concerns about how the city will come up with the money.
In a few weeks, city council will debate a series of potential new taxes and levies that could be used to pay for new transit and infrastructure.
Property tax hike needed to fund Toronto transit plan: councillors
Toronto’s city manager said the city is “grinding to a halt” as he presented a joint $7-billion transit plan with the province on Tuesday.
Peter Wallace said the deal, which includes SmartTrack, is what the city needs, adding the province will not renegotiate.
Under the proposal, the cost of the six new SmartTrack stations at Unilever, Liberty Village, St. Clair West, Gerrard, Lawrence East and Finch, will be $1.25 billion. The City will be on the hook for an estimated $834.5 million and the federal government, for some $417 million.
The plan also includes an Eglinton West LRT extension with eight to 12 stops between Mount Dennis and Renforth Gateway, an express Scarborough Subway Extension (SSE), developing the Eglinton East LRT extension; and the first phase of the Relief Line along Pape-Eastern-Queen.
City staff says only the Scarborough Subway and the Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension are currently funded, which means a hike in property taxes according to some councillors.
“The longer we delay, the longer we wait to build … the more costly it’s going to be, the greater the impact’s going to be on our economic growth, our social growth, our vibrancy in our city,” said Coun. Michael Thompson. “So, we need to at some point … make that decision that yes, there’ll be some amount of property tax increase.”
Coun. Gord Perks agreed.
“Anybody claiming this doesn’t have an impact on property taxes is just not being straight with Torontonians,” he said.
The province, which is contributing $3.7 billion to the transit plan, has given the city until Nov. 30 to finalize how much money it would commit to the project.
The mayor’s executive committee approved the deal last week.
For background on the transit plan, click here.
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City’s share of transit plan costs could be equivalent to 2 per cent tax hike
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