How did it get to the point where our city is closing down Toronto Community Housing units even when more than 100,000 families are on wait lists for those very units?

How is it that our city cannot afford to ensure safe housing for city residents — but it can afford to spend billions of dollars rebuilding a short stretch of the Gardiner Expressway?

Why can our city’s leaders not even begin to reduce the long wait lists for affordable housing, child care, and recreation programs, or deal with overcrowded and unlivable shelters, but they can afford to keep residential property taxes at the lowest level in the Greater Toronto region?

As city councillors launch discussion of the 2018 budget this week, community leaders are suggesting that the flawed process by which the city develops and decides on its budget each year is contributing to the city’s failure to address persistent and rising inequality in our city.

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In brief, the problem with the city budget is that the tail wags the dog. The budget discussion doesn’t start by determining the city we want to build, and how much that will cost. It starts with a predetermined tax rate, which rules out from the very start, any consideration for making significant progress on our shared challenges.

For the 2017 budget, without public consultation, council adopted a “budget direction” that took the tax rate as the top objective for our city, not building housing, or reducing poverty, or relieving congestion.

Council passed the budget direction and asked all city departments — regardless of their relative impact on people’s lives — to cut 2.6 per cent from their spending.

When the public had an opportunity to comment on the budget, six months later, the focus of discussion was almost entirely on stopping harmful cuts to shelters, child care, recreation, and other services, not on actually making progress in addressing critical problems of inequality, poverty and lack of access to critical city services.

And at the end of the day, council adopted a budget and did nothing to address the city’s rising inequality, high level of child poverty, million annual food bank visits, or the 400,000 people on wait-lists for housing, child care and recreation.

Is there a better way?

In a letter to Mayor and Council being released this week, leaders from various sectors in the community say that are simple ways to make this change:

Instead of imposing an arbitrary tax rate or budget cut, start the budget discussion with a consideration of programs and policies that can create the kind of city we want to build.

Involve the public earlier in this discussion of budget objectives and priorities — instead of waiting until after city staff have spent months deciding what programs and services to cut.

Put the City’s strategies and plans front and centre in the budget. The City has adopted plans with specific targets for improving access to housing, child care, transportation, jobs, or for improving the lives of youth, seniors, and newcomers. Staff should cost out these commitments, and involve the public in a discussion as to how to fund them.

City staff should work with public participants to create action plans, and design implementation strategies on how to achieve these outcomes.

Be transparent about how budget choices impact people that already lack equal access to opportunities. Even an initial analysis shows how TTC fare hikes and rising program fees hurt women, racialized communities and people living in poverty most. Council’s commitment to apply a gender equity lens to the budget was an important first step, but until there is an open and transparent equity analysis of budget options, decisions that make people worse-off and deepen inequality will go unseen and unaddressed.

These changes alone are not going to solve our persistent challenges overnight.

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But they will help focus our choices on what really matters, and present a more transparent consideration of the real impacts of budget decisions. This would allow us to make decisions about taxes and spending cuts in the context of their real costs to human lives.

Judging by the public responses to past city consultations, such as the core services review in 2011, last year’s budget, and the long-term financial plan consultations, politicians will find that many people really are willing to invest tax dollars in the things that build a more inclusive city, where people all have a roof over their head, and a real chance to succeed.