Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has made good on some key campaign promises, after city council voted to abolish the vehicle registration tax, slash councillors' office budgets and refer the question of declaring the TTC an essential service to the province.
In their first vote Thursday, councillors voted 39-6 in favour of killing the personal vehicle tax effective Jan. 1, 2011.
"I've always said there is a lot of money being squandered and now there won't be any more money being squandered," Ford said after the vehicle tax vote, pledging that the move will leave $64 million in taxpayers' pockets next year.
But Beaches-East York Coun. Janet Davis -- who voted against the plan alongside Sarah Doucette, Pam McConnell, Joe Mihevc, Gord Perks and Adam Vaughan -- wondered how Ford planned to replace the lost revenue.
"Our residents have a right to understand what it means," Davis told CTV Toronto. "I think councillors have a responsibility to know where the $64 million is going to be found."
Willowdale Coun. David Shiner said the city was pulling in $90 million surpluses before the tax was introduced.
"Now we have surpluses of $300 to $350 million a year. That is taxpayers dollars that we have taken and don't need," he said.
Council then moved on to the question of their office expense budgets, voting 40-5 in favour of slashing them by about 40 per cent, from $50,445 to $30,000.
Ford, who famously left his office budget untouched in the years he was a city councillor, had made this a central pledge in his "stop-the-gravy-train" election campaign.
And, before the day was through, council voted to ask Queen's Park to make the Toronto Transit Commission an essential service. The issue was expected to be a test for the new mayor, but the matter ended up passing with a vote of 28-17.
Several other motions -- including a call to make the vehicle tax rebate retroactive to Sept. 1, 2010 -- were defeated before the final vote.
With a report from CTV Toronto's Natalie Johnson
