Tuning in to Budget Committee just in time to hear budget chief Shelley Carroll say, "The barrage of questions going to staff that are not specifically budget-related are challenging." I see things are going well
Discussion
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"Just put up your physical hand. Physical hands are all we're working with today." #NoContexxt
Carroll wants everyone to understand that housing capital projects getting deferred isn't necessarily the City's fault. "There's a focus of some of our colleagues on capital deferrals but often there are other reasons why deferrals are happening or being smoothed out to other years.
"Or they're making stuff up. That too. I'll say that right into the microphone. Okay, I think that's it for Housing Secretariat…"
want to keep watching but must get other work done and also nap
Budget Committee is back, hearing from more City divisions!
Today's game: listening/watching until someone mentions "leveraging AI"
- Livestream: https://www.youtube.com/live/5lyvRANck-s
- Agenda & documents: https://secure.toronto.ca/council/agenda-item.do?item=2026.BU11.1
Cheng mentions "naturalized areas" in parks with "weeds taller than toddlers."
Moise asks Paramedic Services about whether they have seen an uptick in overdose calls since the closure of supervised consumption sites. Division head Bikram Chawla (I believe) says they haven't. Anecdotally, this belies what I heard recently from a Parkdale Community Health Centre employee, which is that overdoses are spiking. Then again, people may be trying to avoid calling 911 because of the risk of discrimination and arrest (paramedics routinely ask police to accompany them on overdose calls).
~11 more replies (not shown)
Toronto Shelter & Support Services says [one-time/time-limited] funding for the Encampment Office will be ending in March of this year.
Moise asks about the operational impacts of the changes to the encampment protocol approved late last year to prioritize removing encampments within 50 metres of "children's amenities"; TSSS say they've removed 48 since.
Cheng asks if they could reach zero people turned away from shelters. TSSS say average numbers have dropped over 2025 from ~120 to ~34 to, one night in December, 2. Will have to dig into budget variance reports to see if they go into more detail as to why.
Carroll obliquely addresses "social media" criticisms of a $100 million cut; says it's clawbacks from other orders of government.
That wraps up this cluster of services, but the next agencies (Toronto Police Services, TTC) aren't available until 1:30 p. m. Back then.
BTW, if anyone wants to crunch the Toronto shelter numbers themselves, here's the main #OpenData datasets:
Back to Budget Committee, where we'll be hearing from the city's two biggest agencies, the TTC and Toronto Police Services, about their budgets. https://www.youtube.com/live/5lyvRANck-s
A quick reminder that my self-imposed rule is that I get to stop watching as soon as someone mentions leveraging AI.
I know there are perfectly fine reasons to go with numbers for the lines instead of colours, but as someone who almost never takes any of those lines (I generally only need streetcar/bus) I can never fucking remember what lines the numbers stand for.
I know 1 (yellow/Yonge-University-Spadina) and 2 (green/Bloor), am iffy on 3 (the now-defunct SRT, I guess?) and I guess 4 is purple/Sheppard, and 5 and 6 are the light rail lines???
sigh still Technical Difficulties, I'm gonna log off and maybe go get groceries before it gets dark
Back to Budget Committee! I need to do work and grocery shopping and stuff, but will check in when I can.
- Livestream: https://youtube.com/live/L_oYF5M6F-M
- Agenda: https://secure.toronto.ca/council/#/committees/2562/27153
- It may be easier to find the various documents here: https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/budget-finances/city-budget/notes-reports-and-presentations/