City of Toronto has $258-million in loans outstanding

I’m not talking about debt raised by City Hall to pay for infrastructure and the basics of running a city.

These are loans given by the city to various and sundry groups on the “A” (approved) list — meaning those who meet council’s pet agendas.

I discovered this Friday while reading a report on the agenda of next week’s Budget Advisory Committee related to the city’s reserve funds.

Buried in that report is a four-page list of loans outstanding to the City of Toronto.

The total loaned from the city’s reserve accounts (rainy-day savings accounts) is nearly $70 million — $69.7 million to be exact. The rest of the $258 million came from other unspecified accounts.

City spokesman Brad Ross said council approves loan programs to “qualified recipients” from the city’s reserves (or other accounts).

He said each have their “own terms and conditions” around repayment.

I never did find out whether the loans are interest-free.

Nevertheless, this amount of money is given out with no regular accounting of the terms, when the loan was given, when it needs to be paid back and whether the loan recipients are even paying back those debts regularly.

It kind of fits with the overall lack of accountability at City Hall.

I was not provided with any insight into who got the $258-million and when, but the reserve fund loans gives one a flavour of where the loans go.

Most of them are for social housing, (not so affordable) housing and energy efficiency projects.

The ones from the city’s Capital Revolving Affordable housing fund are a variety of affordable housing projects.

For example, St. Clare’s Multifaith Housing Society has three loans valued at nearly $500,000 for projects on Leonard Ave. and on Pears Ave.

Wigwamen Inc. got $454,409 for an unidentified housing project.  None of the loan has been paid down since December 2018.

The same goes for Fred Victor, which got a $1.9-million loan for its Dawes St. headquarters, none of which has been paid in the last year. The information provided does not indicate when the loan was given.

However, a preliminary review of some of the loans listed indicated that at least a portion of the amounts are forgivable (meaning they never have to be paid back).

In many cases, there is very little indication of what many of the loans are for — for example, a $335,418 loan outstanding to Artscape, former councillor Joe Mihevc’s pet organization.

Given that council approves these loans and in view of their absolute negligence when it comes to monitoring city social programs like the Poverty Reduction strategy, I would suspect that they do so having very little insight into how this magnanimous use of city money adds up.

I would also venture to add that since the projects receiving reserve fund loans have been pushed by NDP councillors Ana Bailao, Joe Cressy and others, they probably don’t really care whether the money is ever paid back just as long as their agenda is fulfilled.

Remember, these loans are not to be confused with more than $100-million in grant programs and free rent on city properties for those arts, equity and community groups that qualify.

It’s yet more evidence of City Hall’s rampant abuse of tax dollars — and something I will be keeping a close eye on during the 2020 budget cycle.

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