Mayor Rob Ford’s promise of a property tax hike of 1.75 per cent next year likely won’t be met because of the Scarborough subway and other proposed measures, budget chief Frank Di Giorgio says.
Di Giorgio said Thursday city staff has been fine tuning the 2014 capital and operating budgets ahead of Monday’s budget committee meeting and that he told the mayor the property tax hike will like go north of two per cent when he met with him on Wednesday to go over the figures.
“In my view it’ll be difficult to meet the 1.75-per-cent target that we originally set at the beginning of the year given that there were a number of factors that developed over the year like the subway,” Di Giorgio told reporters.
Some of the contributing factors pushing the tax hike over two per cent are the 0.5 property tax increase for the Scarborough subway and Ford’s promise to reduce the municipal land-transfer tax by 10 per cent. The land transfer tax provides about $345 million a year to city coffers.
The mayor’s reaction was not good, he said.
“His feeling is the moment he was pushed aside the gravy train got back in action,” Di Giorgio said.
“It’d be fair to say he’s a little bit upset,” Di Giorgio added. “The mayor’s a fighter. He’s looking forward to battles in the future.”
City staff will present the proposed 2014 capital and operating budgets at Monday’s budget committee meeting, which begins at 9:30 a.m. at city hall. A one-hour technical briefing is scheduled at 12:30 p.m.
