So tell me: do you want to see public transit in Toronto spiral into irrelevance, and live in a city where the best option for getting downtown from northeast Scarborough without a car is hitchhiking? Or do you want to pay a little bit more taxes?

That’s the choice that the Toronto Transit Commission is offering the public in their just-announced public consultation over the very detailed list of proposed cuts to the TTC.

Those cuts, as you may remember, included the removal of a whack of bus routes that aren’t used by many transit riders, and more notably, the complete closure of the Sheppard subway.

The TTC was looking at those cuts in the wake of council’s decision to hold off debate on two big new taxes, on land transfer and vehicle registration. The TTC has to come up with about $100 million in annualized cuts - $30 million this year. At the time, it looked like pretty serious stuff, and the commission didn’t want to go ahead with any of it until they’d heard from the public.

The 10-point online and paper survey is to be that consultation. No public meetings. No discussions with residents along the routes that might be slashed. Just a 10-question survey that asks people if they’d be all right losing some bus routes, paying higher fares and having a generally less useful transit system.

All of which points to a conclusion that many critics of the mayor have drawn: that the cuts to service that drew so much attention in July and early August were simply that: attention-getting devices to shore up support for the new taxes when they come up for debate in October.

Given that, it seems very unlikely that the TTC will approve any service cuts when it meets September 12 (so far, all the commissioners have done is held back on any expansion of service).  More likely, TTC Chair Adam Giambrone and his fellow commissioners will deliver a case for voting for those new taxes at council.

This is a very political move, but not necessarily a bad one. The cuts being contemplated in July were nothing but a bad idea; Toronto has significant gridlock pressure already, and closing off the one means we have to reduce that pressure would be a huge step backwards in the midst of a budget crisis that while very real is more than likely a temporary one.

Still - the one thing we have all learned is that when it comes to promising massive cuts to public transit, Mayor David Miller and TTC Chair Adam Giambrone are exactly as threatening as they appear.

Which is to say, not at all…

No more will you have to ask this question to your office-mate, your mom, or the night sky. Mayor David Miller has, as of today, posted a comprehensive package of .pdfs, pleas and arguments for the imposition of the two new taxes… right here. It says exactly what he’s thinking: the $356 million in new taxes are absolutely essential to the city’s future wellbeing, there’s no appreciable fat to cut at city hall, and property taxes are no way to finance a city the size of Toronto so vehicle registration and land transfer taxes are the way to go.

Earlier this week, Miller’s staff emailed a pretty much identical package out to councillors who might want to hold a community meeting or send out a newsletter.

For constituents of those councillors who might not want to help out (a big shout-out to Denzil Minnan-Wong, Case Ootes and Karen Stintz and their peeps), this package provides a handy alternative.

Or alternatively, those constituents could always click right here, and check out the swag from our editorial board meeting with Mayor Miller from a couple of weeks back. As swanky as the mayor’s package is, it doesn’t have movies. And ours does.

Nice to see that Toronto continues to rate in the top ten of the world’s most liveable cities, at least according to the Oxford-bred wits at The Economist. In these days of threatened subway closures, trimmed library hours and angry political recrimination from both ends of the spectrum, kind words from abroad are a balm. Even if they are a little, well… condescending.

Because liveable isn’t the same thing as exciting, world-class or, well… big. New York, Paris and London do not make the top 10. Zurich, Perth, and - oh yes - Vancouver do.

Toronto’s been trying hard to be an exciting, world-class and big city for a couple of decades now. We’ve tried to get Olympics twice and a World’s Fair once (barely). We have a fine Pride Day parade, a well-regarded film festival, and some unusual new architecture bedecking our cultural institutions. And we do have some fine cultural institutions. We also have big theater, even if the most recent example of it was an over-long and critically-panned attempt to give J.R.R. Tolkien the Andrew Lloyd Webber treatment.

And when it comes to big? Well, we’re flirting with big city taxes; the city certainly seems awfully big to someone trying to get across it at rush hour; there are some tall buildings here and there, and they make things look big; and we do have the CN Tower, which for at least another week will still hold title as the tallest free-standing structure in the world.

But the other things that make big don’t seem to apply here. Astronomical murder rates, race riots, terrorist bombings - all of these things have happily and at least for the time being passed our striving mid-sized burgh by.

So I’ll take my pat-on-the-head from The Economist. At least they’re not telling us to impose a congestion charge like all the proper cities have.

I mean, I’ve been writing a column about city politics for well over a decade, getting all sorts of things wrong in the process, and not once - not once, has the city’s corporate communications office seen fit to write a news release explaining how I didn’t know the difference between capital and operating budgets.

And then this upstart Soknacki comes along, starts writing a column about city politics from the perspective of a former budget chief, and not more than a year into his stint, after filing this inocuous little column, this shows up in my in-box:

Media Advisory

August 22, 2007

Cutting capital budget will not solve 2008 operating budget shortfall

A column published in the August 17 edition of the York Guardian newspaper and other Toronto Community News publications by David Soknacki (“Apocalyptic visions for city”) incorrectly asserts that the proposed new Land Transfer Tax and Personal Vehicle Registration fee will be used to pay for capital budget expenditures.

Funding from the new revenue sources, if approved, will support City operations. The day-to-day operation of City services is paid for from the City’s operating budget - the money dedicated to salaries and operating expenses such as rent, fuel, electricity, equipment, etc. The City, like everyone else, must pay the increased costs of fuel and electricity and other services when these costs rise.

The projects cited by Mr. Soknacki were approved by City Council in 2007 as part of its capital budget deliberations, for which it has a five-year plan, also approved by Council. The City’s financial difficulties have to do with its operating budget * with a projected shortfall next year of $575 million. The City cannot, by law, run an operating budget deficit.

Capital funding, however, is much different. The City borrows money to pay for capital projects such as roads, bridges, buildings and other facilities with long-term funding requirements. Even if the projects cited by Mr. Soknacki were cancelled, this would not solve the City’s 2008 operating budget shortfall.

With respect to the City’s new garbage containers and 70 per cent waste diversion plan, property taxes will not bear those costs. Residents will begin paying for curbside collection directly next year, based on the size of garbage container they opt for.

The release goes on to say what a big city Toronto is, the way all the Toronto news releases these days do - but the damage is done. David Soknacki, who last term set just three Toronto budgets, got his own news release chiding him for not knowing the difference between capital and operating budgets. And I, who have been writing columns about far more than three city budgets for more than 10 years, did not.

I called the former Scarborough councillor immediately, so that he could gloat. To my disappointment, he did not.

“Why in heaven’s name they would do this is absolutely beyond me,”he said. “I thanked them for the increased visibility it gives me my ideas - it’s a great opportunity for me to go back to the editors of the paper and ask for more money because of the increased visibility of the column.”

Okay, he didn’t gloat much. The news release did send him back to the books (or at least the city’s own website) to check his numbers.

“I read the column twice,” he said. “I stand by what I say - but to be 100 per cent sure I am going to go back. I referred to a number of new projects that corporate communications advises are part of the ‘07 budget. I’m surprised because I said they were new items passed in the June council meeting, so I don’t understand how they can be in a budget that’s already passed. I will spend the time tonight to take a look at it. Other than that I was, um, surprised.”

Soknacki is not, of course, the first one of the fourth estate here at city hall to have enjoyed a corporate communications correction on the very political matter of city finances. He’s just the greenest.

So I’ll bide my time. David Soknacki, enjoy your correction.

If I play my cards right, I bet I can swing two or three before month’s end…

Well, not a very good one. It doesn’t take any skill, there are no prizes and in fact no one has been able to successfully do this sort of thing in the history of the megacity. But it’s my contest, and I challenge you try your luck at it all the same, blog readers.

Here’s the setup.

Toronto is having a fiscal crisis. The mayor and the city manager are dealing with it by closing community centers on Mondays, going easy on the pothole-filling and clearing snow less frequently and comprehensively. Many suspect that there are other ways to find the $575 million that don’t trouble residents. Others resent the fact that the politicians and senior bureaucrats aren’t feeling the same pain as the constituents they serve, and suspect that there are ways to balance that pain without troubling residents.

So here’s the contest. Send in your ideas for balancing the budget that don’t involve raising taxes or cutting front-line services or making another level of government give the city money that we all agree that government owes.

Also, send in your ideas for things that your councillors and mayor should do without because it would make them feel as badly as you do. Special bonus points go to ideas that Ward 2 (Etobicoke North) Councillor Rob Ford has not already come up with.

For more special bonus points, come up with new taxes and fees other than land transfer taxes and vehicle registration fees. This one is for all you “teacher-you-forgot-to-give-us-homework” kids out there, who are clinging to the unfashionable-yet-some-would-say-numerically-correct premise that Toronto is suffering from chronic underfunding and an over-reliance on the property tax base.

Like I said: no prizes, but I’ll take the most practical/amusing/completely unfeasible schemes to budget chief Shelley Carroll and see what I can do.