Public Commons

• This analysis of Toronto's top-level budget items takes a natural functional view of what City Government does for its people.

Part of City Finance Analysis Understanding the Commons

To see the numbers in the pie charts below, float your mouse over the pie slices. Numbers are shown as millions of dollars. If you see a comma in the number that pops up, that's into the billions.

One way to understand municipal government is to look at it functionally by the highest budget line items considered by City Council. In the broadest terms, these are Municipal Services (things you'd typically go to City Hall for), Personal Services (social support and interventions as appropriate for things like child care and emergency services), and Public Services (meant for everyone, like transit and waste disposal). For details, see An overview of Toronto Government.

Overview: Budget by Class

This first chart shows that the city has roughly equal budgets for Personal and Public Services, and about a fifth of the budget is dedicated to central administration. Note however that TCHC (Toronto Community Housing Corporation), Toronto Hydro, Boards of Edication, and other important public services are budgeted separately, not included here.

A Little More Detail: Main Categories

This next chart breaks Finance out of Municipal Services, Emergency Services (Personal Security) out of Personal Services, and Public Commons out of Public Services. The resulting six categories are much easier to relate to from day-to-day life. Each of these six categories is broken down further, below.

Municipal Administration

City Hall. Again, see see An overview of Toronto Government for details of what each category includes.

The three largest categories here (General Management, Internal Services, and Commercial Support) are further broken out below.

Municipal Finance

This is mostly municipal debt, and investments in things like housing and energy.

Personal Support

Taking care of each other through Public Health, Housing, Social Assistance, and Child Care, as appropriate. This category helps people be productive members of society, and retire with dignity. This doesn't included TCHC (owned by the City of Toronto), which is budgeted separately.

Personal Security

These are (mostly) the well known emergency services.

Public Works

Public Works does the heavy lifting for us, and keeps the city and its vital services moving. This doesn't include Toronto Hydro (owned by the City of Toronto), which is budgeted separately.

Public Commons

Public Commons is the main interest of this website. Commons provides support for rest, relaxation, rejuvenation, and lots of fun and socializing! The glue that keeps the city together.

Biggest Municipal Administration Categories

General Management

From City Council to 311, the highest level management of the municipal government.

Internal Services

Working behind the scenes to keep the wheels of the municipal government turning.

Commercial Support

Various ways to keep the commerce of the city humming.

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Source: budget background paper (to be revised) plus some supplemental data provided by a City of Toronto Financial Analyst.

Source Data Tables (Google Fusion Tables)