Mayor Rob Ford wants to cut $88 million worth of city services next year while squirreling away a $139 million windfall from this year’s unexpectedly high revenues.

Ford unveiled a “responsible” 2012 budget on Monday that doesn’t rely on such uncertain cash injections to balance the books.

Critics accused the mayor of cooking the books to “create a crisis” and push cuts that will inflict needless suffering. But Ford will fail, they predicted, to persuade a majority of councillors to vote them into reality.

Those cuts include closing some swimming and wading pools; eliminating programs for recreation, student nutrition, the arts and HIV prevention; reducing arena hours despite a dire ice-time shortage; extending allowable wait times for ambulance calls; shuttering three homeless shelters; and halting mechanical leaf collection and sidewalk snow plowing for many suburban Torontonians.

The city’s workforce would be cut by 2,300 positions, to 53,252, through attrition and a significant but undetermined number of layoffs.

On the revenue side, property taxes would rise 2.5 per cent, adding $60 to the bill on a typical $421,177 home; user fees for a host of city services would jump; and it would cost an extra dime to get on the TTC, including the 62 routes where, as of Jan. 8, riders will face longer waits for more crowded buses and streetcars.

“For the first time ever, folks, we will spend less next year than we did this year. That is unheard of,” Ford said of his budget.

It would indeed reduce gross spending by $52.1 million, to $9.355 billion. However, net spending funded by property taxes, as opposed to user fees or grants from other governments, would rise by $98.3 million.

“Our 2012 budget is a smart budget, it’s a responsible budget, it is a budget that slams the door on out-of-control spending — that’s what the taxpayers want,” Ford told reporters. “It is a budget that begins to rebuild our fiscal foundation.”

Added Councillor Mike Del Grande, the budget chief: “It’s too bad the rest of the world doesn’t have the courage to do what we are doing today.”

City staff say that, in line with Ford’s promise to balance the books without using unpredictable revenues, they broke with tradition and left out of the budget this year’s forecast surplus that will be carried over to 2012.

That $139 million, some of it from the land transfer tax that Ford has promised to kill, would be put into a “tax stabilization fund” for the future and also used to reduce the city’s debt, rather than to prevent cuts.

“It’s a ‘create a crisis’ budget,” charged Councillor Shelley Carroll, the budget chief under Ford’s predecessor, David Miller.

“In order to make true the mayor’s radical statement that Toronto has a revenue problem and not a spending problem, he has actually held money back — kept it out of this budget,” she said.

“They shrunk the revenue pie to say, ‘There is a crisis here.’ In fact, if you put back in some of that money, it could be used to stave off cuts that will hurt this city in significant ways.”

She suggested the Ford administration follow her lead and divert $90 million to a “rainy day” fund while using the remaining $49 million to maintain or improve city services.

Ford’s proposed budget does include a surplus — $83 million, carried over from 2010, Miller’s final year in office.

Voters chose Ford to replace retiring Miller just over a year ago, after the former Etobicoke councillor promised “services will not be cut, guaranteed.” In January, after taking office, he revised that promise to no “major” reductions.

On Monday, Ford predicted council will vote in January for his proposed budget, saying: “If they want to ignore the taxpayers, that’s their prerogative.”

But his once-firm grip on council has, in recent months, weakened considerably. Ford’s own executive committee recently voted against him, refusing to save $500,000 by cutting the collection of overflow recyclables placed beside homeowners’ blue bins.

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Councillor Adam Vaughan, a staunch critic of the mayor, said the final list of cuts will be much smaller because council “will take this Chicken Little budget away from the mayor and Del Grande.”

“We have the mayor running around saying the sky is falling,” Vaughan said, “and the money is there not only to provide the services Torontonians love — everything from sidewalk clearance to libraries to suburban bus routes — the budget shows there’s actually the resources available to build a better city.”

With files from Daniel Dale

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WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Nov. 29-30: Council votes on proposed 2012 water, waste water and solid waste collection rates.

Dec. 5-6: Budget committee meets to start going through recommended spending, department by department.

Dec. 7-8: Public deputations on the proposed operating and capital budgets to the budget committee at city hall.

Dec. 9 and 13: Budget committee finishes deliberations.

Jan. 9: Budget committee votes on operating and capital budgets.

Jan. 12: Mayor Rob Ford’s executive committee votes on operating and capital budgets.

Jan. 17-19: City council deliberates and passes final budgets.