Toronto may cancel new community centres, libraries if development funding dries up

The City of Toronto is delaying hundreds of millions of dollars in planned work to expand its community centres and libraries as new home construction in the city dries up, with consideration being given to cancelling some projects altogether.

The city’s chief financial officer Stephen Conforti reiterated on Friday that roughly $300 million in capital plans had been deferred in anticipation of revenue from development charges slowing, adding that some projects may be cancelled.

Toronto’s latest budget has reduced the capital plan for parks and recreation by $214 million, libraries by $76 million and waste by $6 million.

“You’re going to see deferrals of projects within community centres, across some of our library expansion. That’s reflected in today’s budget,” Conforti told reporters.

“We are going to continue to review those growth-enabling capital projects and make determinations around where we need ot continue to defer projects and where maybe we outright cancel projects.”

A decrease in the charges — fees homebuilders have to pay municipalities for new infrastructure — is driven partly by a “softening” of the market for new housing and partly through an overhaul of provincial policy.

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As a result, Toronto is expecting to receive $1.9 billion less over the next 10 years than it had previously anticipated.

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While some of those figures will be delayed rather than fail to be paid entirely, the potential for fewer homes to be built means some of the revenue the city expected won’t show up at all.

That has left officials reassessing their long-term plan to expand libraries, parks and community centres.

“It’s fair to say — both as part of our background study that we’re looking into for the next DC background study as well as the review of next year’s capital programme — there may need to be the cancellation of some capital projects,” Conforti said.

“The challenges we see on the development charge side is bringing new assets online or expanding existing assets to be able to accommodate growth in our city.”

The city has not yet assessed which projects would be cancelled.