Mississauga BILLIONS in Debt - the Sequel

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This is a hand-out first used Nov. 1-06, at the All-candidates meeting.
It notes what should be headline news by the media is sweeping under the rug, as well as the other items noted - Hazel's law suite - the Mayor's complete failure to create transit for Mississauga.

Will people take notice?
Not likely - even if they do see it and wonder they will be too afraid to question the great & powerful Hazel McCallion.

But the fact is Mississauga's finances have been mismanaged and the future generations are being stuck with a huge tax bill as Hazel McCallion did years of no tax increases just to get elected. Talk about EGO!

For shorter versions that explain the financial mess Mississauga is in,
they can be found in Councillor Newsletters
(interesting on how some look so much the same - yes?);

Carmen Corbasson - Ward 1 - Spring 2010

Patricia (Pat) Mullin - Ward 2 - Spring - Summer 2010

Carolyn Parrish - Ward 6 -Spring 2010

Nando Iannicca - Ward 7 - Winter 2010

The power point report made by
City of Mississauga staff at the
Budget Committee meeting - June 15, 2010

The full powerpoint staff presentation can be reviewed here.
Key words - short fall.

If you want to see the City's budget book for 2010 (on their web-site in sections) - click here.

For shorter versions that explain the financial mess Mississauga is in,
they can be found in Councillor Newsletters;

Carmen Corbasson - Ward 1 - Spring 2010

Patricia (Pat) Mullin - Ward 2 - Spring - Summer 2010

Carolyn Parrish - Ward 6 - Spring 2010

Decisions, decisions . . .

Would you spend $23.52 per year to head off mountains of debt? Mississauga
is coming to the end of its glory days where rapid greenfield development
and an expanding population kept our coffers full to overflowing. Development Charges paid for new infrastructure as the City streets and facilities
expanded.

Mississauga went through an amazing period of such rapid growth, it boasted
zero property tax increases from 1992 to 2001. During those years, the tax
base remained stagnant even as the cost of living gradually increased.

A huge boost to the City’s reserves came in 2000 when debt-free Mississauga
Hydro became an arms-length privatized company called Enersource. $300
million in assets were transferred to City reserves as well as another $20
million from the sale of 10% of the company to Borealis (OMERS). That
reserve, plus all the compound interest accumulated in that account, has
been used both for operating budgets ($116 million over 5 years) and for
infrastructure projects. That fund will run out in 2011.

Our Financial staff recommended a solution to our anticipated reserve fund
depletion in 2009. They suggested a 5% reserve fund surcharge and 1% for
ten years thereafter. With compounding interest, they predicted a rebuilding
of reserves – recognizing that the City’s debt-free status would end in 2012
when borrowing for infrastructure would become necessary. Their estimates
would have put the accumulated fund at $785 million – more than enough to
cover the estimated $75 million per year needed for infrastructure renewal.
1% on the City Budget is actually 0.28% on your overall property tax bill since
the City portion of your property taxes is only 28% of the whole bill. A 3%
surcharge on next year’s budget for example, would therefore translate into
an actual 1.4% increase.

Council voted only 1% in 2009 for this infrastructure reserve and zero for
2010. In the 2010 budget deliberations, Council decided to eliminate all
surcharges for that year and passed a 2.3% Budget increase. I did not
support that budget because it did not recognize the City’s need for planned
allocations for future infrastructure and renewal. In fact, financial staff have
suggested a 3% surcharge in the City budget (0.84%) on total property tax
bill will be needed in the 2011 Budget to play “catch up” on the original ten
year plan described above.

Without an infrastructure reserve fund, borrowing was predicted to begin
late 2011, or early 2012. Taxes then would have to increase to service the debt
which is estimated to be $75 million for infrastructure renewal per year.
Do we want to build our own reserves for infrastructure replacement and
maintenance by setting aside adequate infrastructure reserve money each
year or do we want to pay to finance external debt? Residents of Ward 6 have
an opportunity to sit in on the Budget discussions in the Council Chambers
or watch them on Cable 10. I would appreciate receiving your comments by
email or phone.

I have been fundamentally opposed to zero tax increases and artificially low
increases that put us further and further behind on the responsible planning
required to “run the City like a business” and to address the very real
demands created by aging infrastructure in a maturing city. It’s crucial to make
decisions today that will benefit the citizens of Mississauga tomorrow and for
many years to come.

Nando Iannicca - Ward 7 - Winter 2010

the City simply because all too often
politicians throughout the world focus
solely on the short term defined by when
the next election might be. The short
sighted and unsustainable policies has
created what I refer to as the
biggest Ticking Time Bomb we face.

The bills are now coming due as the Mayor of Mississauga has been running the City of Mississauga into the ground and they are in the BILLIONS! This issue is starting to come to light and it should be considered to be understated and under reported at this point - the worse is likely still to come.

For decades Hazel McCallion has clearly been putting off important work to keep taxes down and do recall for some 10 years has not raised them, in order to prey on peoples greed, so they would vote her back into the office of Mayor. So rather than create a real fully functioning City, one that has true mass transit (a rail system), she created a cheap knock-off that is starting to fall apart around her. She has not been called the Queen of Sprawl for nothing. Sprawl being the sum total of all the wrong kinds of planning, especially creating subdivisions that will become slums and largely abandoned when the effects of the End of Cheap Oil will take place.

Preying on voters greed Hazel McCallion promised to not raise taxes, this meant not providing services that a city - communities should. Like providing its own garbage pick-up, a service transferred to the Region of Peel and off the City of Mississauga tax bill, BUT at what true cost? Well we know now, no matter how good you are at juggling the books at some point the bills all come due and they will only get bigger over time. The American dream has turned out to be a cancer, suburbia can not survive without cheap oil and that is coming to an end. To play the game of home in the suburbs, often called monster homes as they are too large for most people, requiring tons of furnishings just to fill the rooms and then there is the endless home improvements in hopes of increasing the homes value - all of this takes so much money that most people are very much in debt to buy the opium of the American dream. (It also take huge amounts of Cheap Oil) So a politician who irresponsibly campaigns for election, based on a platform of no tax hikes is just get people to put their own desires before the community's needs - GREED VOTERS. The Mayor claimed to be creating community's that would last and now we see they are going to fall apart unless huge amounts of money is poured into them as the Mayor was not a responsible business manager. A responsible business manager would never have let the financial affairs of a city get so out of hand. Mississaugans have been betrayed as the city they though existed, does not, but really they have only themselves to blame, after all how could Hazel do what other mayors could not? Magic? Yes, we know the Queen of Sprawl has developed the hell out of Mississaugans lands to fill the City's treasury, funding her financial illusion - one that did not put enough funds away for maintaining the Mississauga in the long term.

Most politicians have the common sense to get out while the going is good and things are still working as they should, politicians are also gamblers. Any gambler will tell you that if you stay at the gambling table too long, you will loss everything and for a politician it means all the problems that were swept under the rug, come to light and they sink - while they are still in office and a chance they could be held accountable for their past sins.

Hazel McCallion has had the support of the Mississauga News in not having the facts about politics in Mississauga being published, so Mississaugans think they have been living in a magical kingdom and unprepared for the level of financial incompetence they will have to deal with. Especially from a lady who claimed to be running the City of Mississauga as a business. Well many business people will drive their company into bankruptcy and still make a personal profit - wonder if that is what Hazel has in mind?

Still what is most disappointing, is that the local media - the Mississauga (Missing) News - has started to report this like no one saw it coming before. As the Mississauga (Missing) News does not do in-depth reporting about City Hall matters, we have been kept in the dark for far too long, now it will cost us billions.

The bottom line is that Hazel McCallion was so greedy regarding her political legend, she put the whole City of Mississauga in financial & physically at risk. Remember urban sprawl kills, harms our health and rips the lungs out of children.

Up-dates on this here.

Mississauga needs to spend more than $1 billion to rebuild its infrastructure over the next decade and it's going drive up your taxes no matter how the bill gets paid.

The City recently assessed what it will cost to replace $5.8 billion worth of roads, bridges, buildings, sewers and for major equipment like fire trucks over the next 30 years. The analysis shows there's a significant gap between the funds the City has set aside for the jobs and the expected cost, Director of Finance Rob Rossini told city council Wednesday. [1]

The City has set aside $543.8 million from development charges and other reserve funds to pay for improvements over the next decade, but must find another $500 million to do everything. [2]

Rossini said the City, which is debt-free, will issue debentures to pay for upgrades to the infrastructure, especially the roads that are 68 per cent of the problem.

Rossini laid out two scenarios for dealing with the issue. In the first, the City spends all of its reserve funds to finance the work, including most of a $327 million fund it established when Hydro Mississauga was turned into a private company. Then, the City borrows the rest of the funds. That scenario would see taxes rise by one to 1.5 per cent annually to repay the debentures, beginning around 2010.

The second scenario would see the City spend all of its reserves except the hydro fund. Then, "we would become our own banker," borrowing money from the hydro fund.

"Unfortunately, that option results in tax increases that are (slightly) higher and are required almost immediately, in 2006," Rossini said. [3]

Mayor Hazel McCallion said the City is "already in a very special situation" with no debt and "we want to make sure we're not flying by the seat of our pants," in future financial planning.

"We're trying to make decisions now for others who will follow, so they won't be faced with a (difficult financial) situation," the mayor said. [4]

[1] - I would be willing to bet the farm that Director of Finance Rob Rossini estimates for the City's financial future do not include the grand loss of our current economy due to the loss of cheap oil. This would make it next to impossible to pay for the upgrades to the infrastructure.

[2] - Boy are they off! These figures say they were only about haft right in their estimates and likely they are even more off.

[3] - They start out saying small tax increases, how long before they use the word BIG.

[4] - What a sick joke this is. Hazel McCallion is truly a one trick pony, stating that Mississauga has "no debt", therefore; we are superior financial planners & administers, whenever the City's finances are brought up and we are to just believe that is the answer to all questions & concerns.

The Mayor goes on to say - "we want to make sure we're not flying by the seat of our pants," in future financial planning", this sounds like she is clue less about the current problem and that it somehow sudden appear out of nowhere catching them all off guard.

"We're trying to make decisions now for others who will follow, so they won't be faced with a (difficult financial) situation," - so say the Mayor, those who follow the Queen of Sprawl are doomed from the outset, we now know that for sure. ]

Mississauga - Mississauga is unlikely to ever have a truly efficient public transit system, because the city wasn't developed with that in mind, admits Mayor Hazel McCallion.

"Back in 1974 we allowed a lot of cul-de-sacs and winding roads to be built. They're beautiful for residents to live and drive around in, but difficult for buses. That's the problem," said McCallion.

The mayor was responding to a staff report, presented to General Committee Wednesday, on initiatives to promote ridership on Mississauga Transit.

These include introducing a transit pass for University of Toronto at Mississauga (UTM) students, actively marketing the upcoming GTA farecard and pushing forward with the long-delayed Bus Rapid Tran-sit (BRT) project along the Hwy. 403/Eglinton Ave. corridor.

While the initiatives were well-received by McCallion and councillors, they weren't as sanguine about the overall future of public transit in the city.

"No matter how many buses we put on the road, they're going to have to fight with cars," said McCallion.

Ward 4 Councillor Frank Dale noted it can take up to two hours to travel across the city.

"Short runs are okay, long runs are not. I understand why people with cars will use them," he said.

Dale had some good news for commuters. After a flood of complaints, GO Transit is going to provide parking at its new Square One hub. Construction on the 200-car lot should be completed by next spring, he said.

While Mississauga Transit stacks up well against systems in suburban municipalities, it still has a long way to go before it matches the level of service provided in downtown Toronto, said Transit Director Bill Cunningham.

A ridership survey conducted last April shows 40 per cent of non-riders would consider using Mississauga Transit if there was a bus-only transit lane along Hwy. 403 to Kipling subway station, if they were provided with employer-subsidized passes and if there were bus-only lanes during rush-hours.

Ward 9 Councillor Pat Saito, however, isn't in favour of building more bus-only lanes because they're not used frequently enough.

"They have to be busy, otherwise it's one lane taken away from regular traffic," she said.

High occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes, such as those along Hwy. 403 through the city, do not work either because most of the time they're standing empty, said Saito.

According to the study, ridership growth will come mainly from three groups: secondary school students, GO Rail riders and GTA residents entering Mississauga for work.

(Mississauga) - It's refreshing to hear someone on City council admit that public transit here will never become the efficient operation that we need it to be.

It's important for her to tell it the way it is, without the hindrance of political spin that would make it appear that everything that happens within our boundaries is just peachy.

You don't have to look deep between the lines to understand that what she is really saying is that councillors and city planning staff blew it big-time back in the day when it came to mapping out the future of transportation.

The best we can hope for is that not in their wildest dreams did planners expect the population to become what it is. If they did, and decided not to do anything about it, that would surely be worse.

The result of the poor planning decisions are buses that seemingly travel around in circles and cars and trucks that clog narrow streets and roads.

Aside from the obvious problems these early decisions have created, the fallout is immense: just ask our school boards who still have to rely on busing students in a major urban centre.

At this point, there is none. Just keep filling your car up with gas, leave a little early and pray that you get to where you are going on time.

[ 1 ] - Vote Hazel McCallion & her Council out and build the transit solution put forward by Donald Barber - this is your last chance to get it right!