The defining theme of David Miller’s tenure of mayor was cemented in 2007: it’s all about money. Miller has been browbeating other levels of government for more funds since he was first elected, but last year, the money talk was interminable. Given the chance to champion his own cause and raise new revenues for city coffers, he performed a series of pratfalls—a squandered vote, a tepid PR campaign, a series of cost-cutting threats gone limp, meek recourse to MasterCard charity—so tortured even his critics were relieved to see it come to an end. Then, just to rub it in, the Royal Canadian Mint sued city hall over the image of the penny used to advertise the mayor’s One Cent Now campaign, making his play for a share of sales-tax revenue a bust in more ways than one. By year’s end, the entire city was weary with fiscal fatigue. Yet 2008 offers only more of the same: a $248-million budget shortfall and another argument over who’s owed what.

Toronto’s civic conversation is so preoccupied with the money we don’t have, we no longer talk about what we do with the money we’ve got. All told, nearly $10 billion in expenditures will wash through city hall next year. Much of it will be shovelled into the sacred cows of transit and policing, a good deal of it will be squandered, and public sector unions will make a play for the remainder while other services suffer and the city is left to run itself. City hall lacks more than money. It lacks leadership from its mayor, vision from its councillors, accountability from its public service, and vitality and ingenuity from its entire organization. None of these things costs money—they are merely components of civic spirit—but their absence has helped bring Toronto to the place where it stands today: barely functional and on the brink of insolvency.