Provincial Finance Minister Dwight Duncan's first budget is a substantial and welcome relief for Hamilton property tax payers. There are some valuable goodies for this city.
But there is a sense of let-down, a sense of what's not there. Special social services funding -- for the third consecutive year -- signals the McGuinty government recognizes our city's property tax payers are unable to bear the increasingly heavy social services burden. But where is the structural change that would fix the problem? Where is the uploading?
Downloading was not supposed to put municipalities in shortfall positions. It was to be "revenue neutral" because at the same time that it shifted burdens, such as social services, onto municipal property tax payers, the Mike Harris government gave itself new responsibilities, including taking on over 50 per cent of the educational portion of residential property taxes.
That exchange has worked out badly for older municipalities including Hamilton. Our property tax payers must shoulder the burden of social services costs, on which the city spent about $100 million last year alone. Those costs can't be pooled with other municipalities, as is the case in the Greater Toronto Area. We've been stuck holding a heavy basket.
Stuck except for the annual trek to Queen's Park, budget documents and cap in hand, pleading for help. In the past two years, the McGuinty government has come through with a total of $34.6 million in special funding to help cover the shortfall generated by social services costs.
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