Budget Cuts to Hit Toronto's Planners Despite City's Continued Growth

The City of Toronto is asking all its departments to cut their budgets by 2.6 percent. For a planning department that's dealing with rapid growth and a deluge of applications, it's hard to know what to cut. "Chief Planner, Jennifer Keesmaat, told the Star Tuesday that staff are doing an 'exceptional' job but that planners are struggling to keep pace with the influx of development," Jennifer Pagliaro reports in The Toronto Star.

The population boom which has stretched the city's resources thin has been particularly tough on the planning department. "According to the city’s latest growth report, there are 786 active applications submitted and 549 more currently under review. And since 2010, the number of planning appeals at the Ontario Municipal Board, which rules on planning disputes, has more than doubled," Pagliaro tell us.