Big number: $244, the approximate amount the average Toronto residential tax bill would need to increase each month for every month the COVID-19 response continues, to cover city hall’s financial hit

It’s hard to attach a price tag to a pandemic, but, well, Toronto has one. The COVID-19 outbreak and response is costing city hall a whopping $65 million each and every week.

That’s a scary number. According to an internal document, it’s a mixture of lost revenue and increased spending. It includes $23.5 million in forgone weekly TTC fares, plus $3.9 million in revenue from parking fees, that just isn’t going to materialize when Torontonians have nowhere to go. Overtime costs and increased spending on child care, shelters and cleaning add to the pile on the expenditure side. A slowdown in the number of real estate sales is also taking a chunk out of Toronto’s land transfer tax haul.

And unlike other levels of government, Toronto is not allowed to dip into debt to balance its operating budget, and isn’t allowed to access many taxes, tolls and fees. There are enough surplus and reserve funds to offset these costs until June 1, but after that, city hall will be in the red. These costs will need to be addressed — and soon.

To put $65 million into context, it’s about equivalent to the annual revenue raised by a two per cent residential property tax increase. That kind of tax hike would cost the average Toronto homeowner an extra $61 on their property tax bill for every week this pandemic situation continues.

Hold onto your wallets: that’s $244 a month.

OK, but what if they were to spread the pain around a bit, and address the TTC’s revenue shortfall with a fare increase? The TTC’s recent 10-cent fare increase is projected to raise $31.4 million, so covering a weekly loss of $23.5 million would mean a fare hike of about seven cents for every week this lasts.

Trying to balance things by cutting expenditures doesn’t work any better. Cutting the Toronto Public Library’s entire $195 million funding envelope would deal with less than a month’s worth of pandemic cost, for example.

And don’t give me any guff about a gravy train. You’d need to eliminate the salary and office budget of every member of Toronto council for at least 35 years to address the fiscal impact of 12 weeks of COVID-19 response.

I’m not doing this math to suggest the city will immediately pursue these kinds of remedies, but because it’s important to understand the scale of the problem.

Toronto is going to need an unprecedented financial bailout from the provincial and federal governments.

It’s a good idea to lay the groundwork for this bailout now, because history suggests Queen’s Park and Ottawa will not necessarily be super-eager to come running with enough cash to fully repair the fiscal carnage. The last several decades of intergovernmental relations show a tendency to instead scapegoat and dump on municipal governments — especially in Toronto.

And this city’s finances were already not in awesome shape. The 2020 budget, approved by Toronto council in February, saw some increased long-term stability thanks to Mayor John Tory’s introduction of an additional 1.5 per cent property tax increase, but the City was still short billions needed to execute council-approved housing and transit plans.

Tory had been working to convince Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier Doug Ford to contribute to these costs. Now he’ll be asking for even more cash.

He should be careful not to accept any half-measures. A temporary change to regulations to allow Toronto to run an operating budget deficit might be part of the solution, but it must be accompanied with a whole lot of funding.

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Tory should also be prepared to embrace more property tax increases to make up some of the difference. While the scale of this challenge is too big to be addressed by Toronto alone, there remains a great deal of wealth in this city. Asking homeowners who can afford to pay more to speed along the recovery makes sense.

There’s danger in a scenario where Ford and Trudeau do just enough for Toronto to survive through the 2021 budget process, while city hall refuses to budge on property taxes. Doing that would likely result in years of financial pain, with perpetually cash-strapped budgets that some politicians will inevitably try to paper over with service cuts and increases to TTC fares and other fees. More austerity in a city that’s experienced far too much austerity already.