It was an exciting morning at Toronto's budget committee, for all of 20 minutes, as Mayor Rob Ford was interrupted by repeated, shouted heckling from the council chamber benches. After the first two people were escorted out by security, the third heckle got the entire budget committee meeting moved out of council chambers and into the more easily controlled Committee Room 1. (Some of the hecklers were recognizable from last week's Occupy Toronto protest, for what it's worth.) Budget continues to meet there, and the process will continue over the next month until city council votes on the full budget in January. Some of the cuts to city services that have already come out of the presentation include:

• closing five wading pools and two outdoor swimming pools;
• cutting TTC Wheel-Trans service to kidney dialysis patients;
• closing three homeless shelters (though almost all of the spaces will be preserved, according to staff);
• two firehouses will be built, but no firefighters will be hired to operate them;
• and roughly $4.6 million cut from the community grants program that council has previously voted to protect.

As you might guess, this is just day one of a process that is scheduled to end in January when city council votes on the full package. By the time it makes its way through many committee meetings plus whatever changes councillors make, it will probably look totally different. (See the failed Core Service Review process for an example of how this works.) As one example, while council's ability to stop a TTC fare hike is quite limited (according to former budget chief Shelley Carroll), there's a chance that council could overrule the TTC's service cuts that were announced last week.

The full budget presentations to committee are available for download here.

Blog photo by kasrak via Flickr.