Toronto should pay for Pan Am Games overruns, 2 mayors say
Two southwestern Ontario mayors are calling on Toronto to pick up the tab for cost overruns from the Pan Am and Parapan Am Games but Mayor John Tory said Thursday the Games are a region-wide event that involved many cities.
Ontario's auditor general said Wednesday the games came in $342 million over budget, with more than $5 million being spent on performance bonuses, according to a report released Wednesday.
The province disputes those results, saying the ultimate cost of the games was roughly the same as the $2.4-billion bid budget.
"I just have a hard time saying to my residents in Leamington: Part of the property and income taxes you pay are going to fund these things in the City of Toronto or the GTA, especially with a cost overrun and bonuses" to executives, Leamington Mayor John Paterson told CBC News.
Paterson first expressed his feelings on Twitter after the auditor general's audit became public Wednesday.
Paterson said he supports sporting events like the Pan Am and Parapan Am Games generally, but he's not happy the entire province will be paying for bonuses and overruns for an event focused on Toronto.
"This is a sporting event where properties were improved, infrastructure was specifically built, and [it all] gets left behind simply for residents to use and enjoy. Yet, the rest of the province ends up paying for it," he said.
Paterson doesn't equate Ontario's funding for the games with other development funding that would only affect citizens in other small towns because that type of funding goes to economic and social development instead of sporting events.
"I guess that's where my problem is, when the benefit is strictly for the area where it's being held," he said. "I just have a hard time finding all Ontario taxpayers having to pay for that area's benefit."
'Tremendous waste' says Sarnia mayor
Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley has long opposed funding the games, calling the event a "tremendous waste."
He said the games did not have any direct effect on Ontario residents outside the GTA and agrees with Paterson's call for Toronto to pay for the overruns.
"If you were to stop the average person on the street and ask what was the legacy of the Pan Am Games, I doubt you'd get a response that's positive," he said. "There was no capital benefit to southern Ontario, no capital benefit to the north, no capital benefit to the east, the facilities that were built will serve the Toronto area. They should pick up the tab."
Toronto Mayor John Tory, however, responded Thursday by saying the games were not just a Toronto event.
"Well, I'll make two points," he told CBC News. "First of all, the Pan American games was a southern Ontario venture that many cities participated in. And secondly, Toronto, for its own part, in terms of the money that it spent, finished under budget. So I can comment only on those two items and beyond that I really can't."
