Two recent news items:

• A couple days ago the Star reported that "The city has dropped plans to cash in part of a loan to Toronto Hydro to fund its operating budget this year". Apparently the City doesn't want to lose the interest that they make annually, and will instead defer some capital projects. Thing is, I haven't heard anything more about this outside this one article.
• The city had budgeted for $5-million revenue due to the increase in the property tax base, but it will actually be $26.6-million. The reason is that the Municipal Property Assessment Corp -- the provincial agency that assesses property values in Ontario -- finally got caught up on a long backlog of new properties. They were way behind, the City prodded them, and there has been a one-time burst of new assessments. Good news.

Oddly, the Toronto Star article that reports on the assessment base growth -- a more recent article -- still talks about the City cashing in some of the Hydro equity. So, I don't know if it was really cancelled, or what.

My index of Toronto budget related postings is here.

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