Toronto Mayoral candidate Rob FordDella Rollins
The city could squeeze $25-million in savings by collapsing its disjointed back-office functions, farm out 311 and merge pensions, according to the latest KPMG review of core city services.
The consultant's report on Toronto's Government Management programs is the sixth of eight releases, all of which will be public by Thursday.
Some of the newest suggestions include combining 311 with 211, adopting online tax payments, outsourcing custodial duties, farming out payroll functions, harmonizing accounting software city-side and centralizing the disorderly accounting and administrative functions at some of the more than 100 agencies operating at arm's length from the city.
"Why do we need all of these procurement, real estate and fleet management functions scattered among all our agencies, boards and commissions?" said committee chair Paul Ainslie. "This all needs to be looked at."
Mr. Ainslie's back-of-the-napkin calculation said all the proposals would save $25-million over the next three years.
One KPMG suggestion that the committee has already embarked on involves the complicated web of pension plans currently under city management. Five legacy plans cropped up following amalgamation and several agencies such as the TTC run their own pensions. The consultants stated that harmonizing those plans with the massive Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System could yield big financial benefits.
"We've been looking into that for two or three months now, so really this validates some of the things we've already been doing."
But Mr. Ainslie said many of the proposals won't be easy to implement without willing councillors sitting on agency boards.
"The biggest barrier will be political willpower," he said. "One problem I've often seen is that we appoint a councillor to a board or a commission to represent the city's best interests and, all of a sudden, they do a 360 and that board becomes more important to them than the city they were sent to represent."
Some of the KPMG suggestions for consolidated disparate backroom departments hold the possibility of job losses.
"That is a concern," said Mr. Ainslie, "but at the same time if we can't rationalize services without layoffs, it's unfortunate, but it's something that will have to be done. I don't think people are comfortable with paying taxes to see services duplicated. It's all about making sure people get best value for tax dollars."
The Government Management Committee will meet to discuss the proposals next Tuesday.
Patrick White