Council approves cost-sharing plan with province for SmartTrack

CTV Toronto: SmartTrack funding vote passes After hours of intense debate, a cost-sharing plan for Mayor Tory’s proposed transit expansion was given the green light by city council.

A deal with the province that sets out a cost-sharing agreement for Mayor Tory’s $7 billion SmartTrack plan passed a vote at city council on Tuesday night.

Councillors voted 35-7 to work with provincial transit agency Metrolinx to complete planning work for six SmartTrack light rail stations and two other GO train stations.

Under the proposed plan, the city will be on the hook for $3.3 billion to build six new SmartTrack stations and the Eglinton West LRT (the western portion of SmartTrack) while the province will spend $3.7 billion for infrastructure that supports SmartTrack, with most of that money going towards the cost of electrifying GO transit rail.

The cost-sharing agreement is part of a wider transit plan that also includes the Scarborough subway extension and the first phase of the downtown relief line. The province gave city council until Nov. 30 to finalize the cost-sharing agreement.

“All of these different claims that have been made about free LRT’s and things the province was going to do on its own, some of those are true but a lot of those are partly imagined,” Tory told reporters on Tuesday in response to critics who say SmartTrack is effectively just a provincial plan being built with city money. “The bottom line is this: if this deal is approved we are going to have a transit plan where city taxpayers will pay 15 cents on the dollar for a multi-billion-dollar plan.”

According to a staff report, the city’s share of the $3.3 billion cost of SmartTrack could be reduced to $2 billion assuming that the federal government follows through on a commitment to provide $1.2 billion in funding and that Mississauga and the Greater Toronto Airports Authority put a combined $470 million towards the completion of the project.

Officials from Mississauga, however, have raised some doubt over whether they would be willing to come to the table with Mayor Bonnie Crombie reportedly telling the Toronto Star last week that the $470 million figure is a “non-starter.”

Council also unanimously passed a motion Tuesday to formally ask the City of Mississauga and the airports authority to commit funding to the project.

City could face shortfall

During the mayoral campaign, Tory vowed to use tax increment financing (TIF) to fund the city’s share of SmartTrack, however the staff report last week pointed out that even with the expected growth to the tax base resulting from the project, the city would still face a shortfall that would be the equivalent of a 2.1 per cent property tax hike.

“We have a serious problem. There are a huge number of unanswered questions about the transit deal in front of us. One of them is that we just don’t know where the money is coming from,” Coun. Gord Perks told CP24 on Tuesday morning. “Given that we already have huge financial challenges in the City of Toronto I am nervous about that.”

It should be noted, however, that Tory has said that he is unwilling to raise property taxes to pay for SmartTrack and would instead support the introduction of a number of new revenue tools, including a hotel tax.

In an interview with CP24 on Tuesday, Toronto Transit Alliance Chair Sarah Thompson called that commitment to introducing new revenue tools “a huge step forward for the city.”

Tory also reiterated the commitment while speaking with reporters on Tuesday, promising to identify a number of potential revenue tools that he is in support of in the coming weeks.

“We don’t have to rely on property taxes nor do I think we should,” he said.