Taxing kids to use libraries, pools, farms

The Globe and Mail:

Hold onto your toonies, Toronto. You might need them to visit Riverdale Farm, swim in an outdoor pool or borrow a popular movie from the library.

The City of Toronto is looking to shave costs and raise revenue as part of its 2012 budget and new $2 user fees for services that are now free emerged Monday as a key theme in that plan. The new fees – floated during a day-long budget meeting – will be debated later this week and next and, if approved, will go before council next month.

Talk of the new charges is likely to unleash a new wave of budget-cutting protests and, in the case of Riverdale Farm, comes just a few months after council voted unanimously to let a local group work on a new funding plan for the popular family attraction.

Budget chair Councillor Mike Del Grande has made it clear he thinks Toronto has too many “freebies,” and the proposed $2 charge to cool off in an outdoor pool or wander among the cows and pigs at Riverdale Farm are just the latest on his list.

But Councillor Adam Vaughan, a strong critic of Mayor Rob Ford, characterized the proposed charges for movies, farms and swimming pools as “a war on children” being waged by the same council that cancelled the city’s $60 car registration tax as one of its first acts in office.

“If this council doesn’t have the courage to tax the car, where does it get the gumption to start taxing kids?” he told reporters. “Is that what this city has come down to? We are going to ding kids because we are afraid to tax adults.”

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