Mayor Rob Ford’s recipe for a tax freeze includes feasting on surplus cash inherited from David Miller, boosting user fees for city services and making a host of budget cuts that were relatively minor compared with what some expected.

“This is the beginning of a new era,” Ford said Monday at the launch of 2011 operating and capital budget deliberations. “I am committed to putting the hard-working taxpayers of Toronto back at the centre of everything that we do. We’re all in this together and, together, we will succeed.”

The staff-crafted, Ford-guided operating budget is not the bombshell many expected when the penny-pinching conservative succeeded Miller.

But what amounts to a breather budget sets the stage for a bloody battle over deep cuts for 2012. Ford threatened to fire managers who thwart efforts to find savings during a wide-scale spending review to begin after this budget is put to bed.

This year’s $9.3 billion blueprint would reduce operating hours for some bus routes, hike TTC fares, close a library branch at Metro Hall, send some refugee claimants to motels rather than homeless shelters, reduce a fund to help tenants fight bad landlords and end a downspout disconnection program that has 13,000 Torontonians on its waiting list. Also vanished: plans to build a glittering waterfront ice rink complex.

So-called “service efficiencies” total $57 million.

A further $23 million would be raised by boosting user fees, details of which could be released as early as Tuesday. They are expected to include a 3 per cent increase for swim classes, ice time and virtually all other city recreation programs.

Last year, Miller hiked user fees by $16 million. He was derided by Ford as a spendthrift during an election campaign that saw the Etobicoke councillor promise deep spending cuts with no service reductions.

Ford is achieving a relatively bloodless balanced budget and tax freeze only by applying every penny of $706 million in one-time windfalls, including a $268 million surplus from 2010, to the operating budget, with none of it going to debt reduction or reserves.

Myer Siemiatycki, a Ryerson University political science professor, called the budget a risky move for Ford, who steamrolled to victory Oct. 25 saying Toronto has a spending problem, not a revenue problem.

“I think that will be interesting, to see if this going to be the end of the Rob Ford honeymoon with those who elected him,” Siemiatycki said, noting in particular the big jump in user fees. Proposed hikes in garbage and water rates have already been announced.

“He’s thrown a bit of a curve” at those who voted for, and also those who voted against, a “single-minded cost cutter,” he said.

But Ford can assure supporters he filled in the $64 million hole created by scrapping the vehicle registration tax, while cutting public transit.

“This is a win for the car,” Siemiatycki said.

Speaking to reporters before the release of the operating and capital budgets, Ford put on notice the leaders of city departments and agencies whose response to his call for a 5 per cent spending cut was a demand for an increase.

Police Chief Bill Blair last week asked for a 3 per cent increase in the police service’s $882.2 million budget, saying any cuts would take officers off the street.

The board of health is asking for a 1.5 per cent bump to help fight bedbug infestations. The library board wants to increase its spending by 2.6 per cent.

“Unfortunately a few of the city’s arm’s-length agencies chose not to meet their objectives,” Ford said. “Their managers and their boards and directors decided their interests were more important than the taxpayers’ interest.”

He said work on the 2012 budget will begin in March, virtually as soon as this year’s plan is passed, and “outside experts” being called in to review spending will pay special attention to managers of those bodies.

“If they are unable to manage effectively in the best interests of the taxpayers, then we will have to find new managers that can,” said Ford.

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He softened his rhetoric toward Blair after meeting with him later.

Ford repeated his intention to eliminate in 2012 the half-billion-dollar “structural deficit” that has plagued Toronto in recent years — a feat that will be all the tougher with no surplus money carried over.

City departments and agencies will make their pitches to the budget committee this week. Torontonians will get a chance to have their say during public depositions Jan. 19 and 20.

Council will debate and vote on the operating and capital budgets at the end of February.

Cuts proposed in the draft 2011 budget

Reduce late-night, off-peak and weekend service for bus routes on 48 routes with low ridership, with resources “reallocated” to busier routes.

• Save $225,000 by providing “alternate models of shelter service.” City treasurer Cam Weldon said the savings would be achieved by putting up refugee claimants in motels. Councillor Gord Perks said: “Essentially what they’ve done is taken the food out of the equation. If you’re homeless and you wind up in a shelter, there’s a meal available.”

Save $100,000 by closing the urban affairs library branch at Metro Hall and moving the collection to the Central Reference Library. The library board voted last week to avoid this cut, but city staff are recommending to the budget committee and council that it be made anyway.

• Save $4 million to $5 million a year by cutting some 13,000 Toronto households from a city program that disconnects their downspouts for free. Homeowners can hire somebody to do the work $400 to $500, said Toronto water general manager Lou Di Gironimo. Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker says if the program has to end, it should be phased out, calling it unfair to cancel a service to families who have been sent a letter promising it will be done.

Cut $100,000 in funding for “tenant defence” from the shelter, support and housing administration budget. The city’s Tenant Defence Fund supports tenant groups that are challenging their landlords’ applications for rent increases, the demolition of their buildings or the conversion of the buildings to condominiums.

Save $70,000 by not renewing Toronto’s support for the C40 international climate change secretariat in London, England. This was expected, as it is another participating city’s turn to provide the funding.