Comment 117868

By A Smith (anonymous) | Posted April 23, 2016 at 14:56:26 in reply to Comment 117851

Here is a comparison of some actual city budgets.....

City of Oakville (city and regional portion) expenditures in 2014 were approximately $442M ($373M not including social welfare/housing) / 182K citizens = $2,428/$2,049 per person.

City of Burlington (city and regional portion) expenditures in 2014 were approximately $472M ($402M not including social welfare/housing) / 182K citizens = $2,622/$2,233 per person.

City of Toronto expenditures in 2014 were $10.944B ($8.15B not including social welfare/housing) / 2.79M people = $3,940/$2,921 per person.

City of Hamilton expenditures in 2014 was $1.544B (1.145B not including welfare) / 546k people = $2,828/$2,097 per person.

If we look at transportation costs, we see that Toronto spends $1,023/person. In Oakville, Burlington and Hamilton it's $360, $422 and $592 respectively.

If we plug in Burlington's per capita transportation budget for Toronto, we see that it's city costs fall back in line with Oak/Burl/Ham. It would appear that all that public transportation costs taxpayers lots of money...an extra $600 dollars/year. Moreover, where are all the higher costs associated with sprawl cities? They don't appear anywhere in the city budgets.

I guess you could argue that they are the costs of owning a car, versus relying on public transportation, but that is a personal choice. On the strict tax costs associated with running a city, it would appear that sprawl beats density.

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