Watch above: Alan Carter reports on a new poll that says almost half of Torontonians would be willing to pay more for better services.
TORONTO – Nearly half of Torontonians are willing to spend more money to use the city’s parks, pools and recreational facilities if they were better, according to an Ipsos Reid poll done exclusively for Global News.
Forty-six per cent of Torontonians polled said they would be willing to pay more in user fees and another 43 per cent said the city spends too little on arts, culture and recreation.
But that does leave 53 per cent of Torontonians who don’t want to pay another dime to use public facilities.
Michelle Oliveira has experience dealing with both private and city-run recreational programs including dancing, swimming and summer camps.
She said city-run programs are good and cost-effective but can be limited when compared to the privately run businesses.
“Well with the city programs as we all know, you have a very specific deadline, so you need to be on the phone, on the computer at 7 a.m. in the morning,” she said during an interview Monday.
“The city programs are fairly limited, when it comes to something like dance, there isn’t a lot of availability after school, they’re mostly the weekends and if you have someone who plays sports on the weekends, you’d have to choose between sport and dance.”
READ MORE: 90% say life in Toronto is increasingly difficult for average people
Researchers at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto concluded in an August report that the actual revenue from property taxes – the city’s main source of revenue – has been falling since 2004.
So the city has been relying more and more on user fees to pay for services. The city forecasted nearly $1.6 billion in user fees – 16.9 per cent of total revenue – during its 2014 budget process.
By comparison, the city brings in approximately 38.8 per cent of all revenue from property taxes.
The city hiked user fees in 2010 by approximately $20 million – a hike which Rob Ford tacked on to his $1 billion in savings claim.
But despite the recent increases to user fees, Toronto still compares well to some surrounding municipalities. Recreation fees for swimming or skating in Toronto is $4.09 for a single admission. In Barrie, the user fee is $5.75.
READ MORE: Half of Torontonians willing to pay more to spend less time on TTC
Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam said recreational facilities in Toronto were free before amalgamation. She said even the small amount people have to pay now can sometimes make it inaccessible to some families.
“There has been escalation of fees but what we’ve also seen is there’s also the division of those in the city who actually can use services and those who cannot,” she said.
“There are times when even modest fees, when you have a family of four or five children, you now have to make decisions to which of your kids learn to swim and which of your kids don’t.”
The city’s user fees don’t cover costs for a large number of programs. But Wong-Tam is ok with that, suggesting public facilities should be open to the public.
“There has to be some acknowledgement that if everyone is paying into these services and the building of these facilities then everyone should have access because these facilities are already publically funded, they should be publically accessible,” she said.
– With files from Alan Carter
Ipsos surveyed 1,252 Torontonians on Global News’s behalf via an online panel between September 22 and 25. The survey is reliable within +/- 3.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
The data, summaries and commentary in exclusive Global News / Ipsos Reid polling are subject to copyright. The data, summaries and commentary may only be rebroadcast or republished with full and proper attribution to both Global News and Ipsos Reid in all web articles, on social media, in radio broadcasts and with an on-screen credit for television.
Comments