If you've ever watched the budget process at city hall in Toronto, around this time each year, it goes something like this. The mayor, after having a draft budget prepared by the city's budget chief, runs to all and sundry and screams words to the following effect: The sky is falling, the sky is falling. Services will be cut. Taxes will go up. Jobs will be lost. We need more money from other levels of government. My oh my what will we do?

And now with the widening of the 416, it seems that Toronto's budget circus cum dance cum political free for all has made its way to Ontario's second most populous metropolitan region. Mel's budget circus is now in Bob's backyard.

Yesterday's paper alone was replete with stories from intrepid city hall reporter Anne Marie McQueen about the shenanigans concerning this year's city of Ottawa budget. Now in fairness to our friends on council and in the bureaucracy, this year represents the first real budget cycle for Ottawa. The 2001 budget was basically built from a master shell left by the transition board.

So this year's effort is bound to come with the political grandstanding (read: usually mild-mannered councillor Clive Doucet's vitriolic tirade on doubling arts funding, yikes!) and posturing as the elected folk try to get their projects funded, be it a south end library or ice pads and pools in demand throughout the city.

As well, look for some Queen's Park vs Chiarelli-land questions of interpretation of where infrastructure funds should go … like this week's debate on the $70 million from Budget 2001. Mayor Bob wants to plow this money into pavement (read: Queensway widening) while local cabinet bigwig Norm Sterling is arguing for $45 million to be put toward more convention space at the Congress Centre.

On this point, the budget is vague. The $70 million was part of a $250 million allocation for cities other than Toronto for "strategic infrastructure" projects. Such infrastructure is obviously defined as roads and transit, but could also include urban renewal projects and convention facilities.

With a draft budget not due until February 13th and the final document only to be approved at the end of March (prediction: try mid-April), expect many more interesting stories, leaks and the odd hissy fit from our friends on council.

Here's what we know so far. The final operating budget will come in around $1.6 billion and another $300 million or so will be earmarked for capital projects. At last count, the city is officially $27.5 million over. But it's actually much worse.

Consider this gem of a passage from page 9 of Tuesday's staff report to the corporate services committee.

"The report identified net budget pressures of $50 million dollars. This indicated that other budget adjustments of $27.5 million would be required to achieve the targeted tax rate after the amalgamation savings were taken into account. Unfortunately, through the departmental budget submissions, net budget pressures have been identified that are significantly in excess of the amount identified in the budget directions report. "

The shocking thing here is not one single councillor in attendance asked for clarification of this significant excess. Is it $50 million, $62.87 million or 97 million, 862 thousand dollars and three cents? Yes my friends, the members of corporate services were asleep at the switch.

On the capital side, you could probably line up a list of $600 million worth of necessary projects, but council will have to define its priorities.

This process is frought with a few problems. First and foremost, council must be more specific in its direction to staff. Its direction to staff this past December was simply to find $22.5 million in amalgamation savings and have no increase in the tax rate.

How about clear instructions such as identify five major service area candidates for alternate service delivery with financial, human resources and service level impact analyses? Or what about clear direction to liquidate a certain percentage of surplus properties over the next 12 months?

The second problem with this process is one of timing. Indeed, councillors of varying political persuasions (Hunter, Deans, Chiarelli and Bloess) all agree that setting a budget some three months or more into the calendar year is ludicrous.

Of course, our cities don't have a great example to follow here when one considers that Queen's Park routinely brings down it's budget in May some five weeks into its fiscal year. So in effect, our provincial friends spend our tax money on the basis of special warrants (which should only be used in times of crisis, war or natural disaster) as opposed to any legislative legitimacy.

Just as an aside, the provincial Tories will probably do the same thing again this year even though Paul Martin tabled his budget in December giving the province more than ample time to table a budget before the beginning of the fiscal year.

Getting back to the city's flawed process, hopefully these councillors and others will adopt a new process for 2003 where budget deliberations start in September and an actual plan is in place by December or early January at the latest.

Finally, the other major problem here is that the structure for building the budget is wrong. When Bruce Thom was in Edmonton, council hiked taxes by 16% over four years so the administration finally convinced council to adopt a zero-based budgeting cycle where every - and I mean every - service was put under the microscope and the budget was built from the ground up.

While this process would be time consuming, it would represent the most sincere, transparent and accountable effort to really fashion a modern budget setting process. And it would be the ultimate gift to bestow upon the new council that will take office in 2004 with hopefully, some fresh new faces around the table … who will be awake!