By flip-flopping on tolls Premier Kathleen Wynne has robbed Toronto of badly needed revenue, prolonged gridlock and undercut the city’s independence and decision-making ability, says the city manager.
Peter Wallace’s withering assessment of Wynne’s surprise decision to block tolls is in a three-page letter to Mayor John Tory and the 44 councillors sent Tuesday and obtained by the Star.
While bemoaning Toronto’s lost fiscal opportunity and flatly rejecting Wynne’s argument she has replaced the lost revenue, he urges council to keep pushing the province for road pricing.
Tolling the Don Valley Parkway and Gardiner Expressway, approved by council in December after Wynne said she would not block tolls, would have helped bridge the big gulf between the city’s limited means and considerable ambitions, Wallace wrote.
Tolls were to “provide stable, significant revenue sources to invest in transit and transportation polices and, importantly, to shift the burden from property tax and transit riders towards user fees for roads.”
Wynne announced last week, amid strong opposition from 905-belt MPPs whose constituents would have paid to use Toronto’s highways, she will not pass toll enabling regulation. The premier suggested she would instead double gas tax revenues for municipalities including Toronto — but Toronto had been told it would get both.
Wallace says gas tax revenues — he predicts an extra $158 million per year — are “helpful” but also unpredictable because they fluctuates with gas use. Also, they won’t necessarily rise with inflation and could be cancelled by this or a future provincial government.
“This incremental investment is welcome, but is not a direct substitute for toll-based or other direct city revenues,” wrote Wallace, estimating that future tolls set at the “cost of public transit access” would İmajbet have earned the city $250 million per year.
The city could have borrowed against future toll revenues for capital projects, but can’t do that with unpredictable gas tax money, he continued, urging a halt to plans for another $5.6 billion in incremental capital investment.
Toll benefits would not have been solely financial, Wallace says, noting “road pricing provides important opportunities for congestion management.” Also, TTC users cover a very significant portion of the cost of that service while road users pay a much smaller proportion of the major costs of road maintenance and rehabilitation.
“The asymmetry is not sustainable or fair,” writes Wallace, who was previously head of the Ontario civil service.
He notes toll provisions have been in the City of Toronto Act since 2006 and argues Wynne’s refusal to pass enabling regulations “greatly challenges (him) in advising city council with respect to its decision-making authority” while “Toronto’s dependence on provincial revenue authority and capacity is further entrenched.”
Wallace concludes that the city should “continue to make the case for municipal finance reform and access to appropriate user fees, including road pricing in a manner consistent with the provisions of its governing legislation.”
Wynne characterized her change of heart as an unwillingness to let people pay tolls before public transit alternatives — SmartTrack and Regional Express Rail lines — are built. However, in discussions with her office, Toronto officials had agreed her regulations could stipulate no tolls until those lines were in place.
“I know that people are having a hard time keeping up with the rising cost of living. I hear it from people everywhere I go,” Wynne said last Friday.
As for toll opponents in communities outside Toronto, “Any leader who doesn’t listen to those voices, doesn’t listen to the team . . . isn’t actually leading,” she said.
A furious Tory responded he was tired of being treated like “a little boy going up to Queen’s Park in short pants,” to ask for powers in the City of Toronto Act only to be blocked by the province.
Wynne on Monday seemed to placate Tory somewhat by appearing to open the door to helping to pay to fix crumbling Toronto Community Housing units.
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