Mayor Rob Ford said it at the debate on Wednesday, and he said it over and over again in the months prior: “I’ve saved taxpayers $1 billion.”

It’s not true — even though Ford is more or less supported by the city’s top bureaucrat, city manager Joe Pennachetti, and its chief financial officer, Rob Rossini.

The senior civil servants backed Ford in a briefing note sent to councillors on Thursday. The note said that, during Ford’s tenure, the city has implemented a number of “initiatives” that add up to $972 million in “budget savings.”

Pennachetti said later that hundreds of millions in similar savings were found when Ford predecessor David Miller was in charge. Regardless, there are two major problems with the claim.

One: It ignores costs.

Spending is actually going up; Ford and the city haven’t cut the total budget.

Rather, to come up with their $1-billion figure, they have added up particular moves that have supposedly allowed the city to spend less than it otherwise would have — while ignoring the particular moves that have required the city to spend more than it otherwise would have. Changes that reduced the burden on taxpayers were counted as savings; changes that increased the burden — imposing a tax levy for the Scarborough subway, halting work on the Transit City plan — were ignored.

Two: Costs entirely aside, many of the so-called savings that compose the “$1 billion” are not actually savings at all.

The Star read the budget documents line-by-line. What we found: hundreds of millions of dollars worth of items that did not actually save the city money — or that were service cuts rather than the “efficiencies” Ford says they are.

Here’s a partial breakdown. You decide how much the city has saved, and how much Ford himself can take credit for:

$30 million: User fee increases

How can making residents pay more for city services count as “savings”? The chief financial officer, Rob Rossini, argues that hiking user fees saves the general taxpayer money, since it funds programs with money from a smaller group of people — people who use programs. But many of these people are also taxpayers.

$45 million: Garbage outsourcing

Ford’s successful 2011 push to outsource garbage collection west of Yonge St. saved an audit-confirmed $11 million per year.

$89 million: Productivity gains and benefit reductions as a result of the new collective agreements with city unions

$753 million: “Efficiency savings and base budget reductions”

This is by far the biggest chunk of the supposed savings, and the chunk Ford refers to simply as “efficiencies.” What are they?

A $7-million draw from a social assistance reserve fund. A $6.5-million draw from a social housing reserve fund. A $12-million draw from a social housing reserve fund.

$23 million saved because fuel prices were lower than the TTC had estimated, $36 million saved because interest rates were lower than the city had anticipated.

$14 million from delaying capital projects to a later date.

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An $84-million “compensation reduction.” City workers actually got raises in the contracts negotiated under Ford. How, then, was there an $84-million “reduction”? Rossini compared the actual 2012 and 2013 wage hikes with a hypothetical situation in which the union had secured a larger pay hike. “If the city didn’t negotiate the lower increase, the actual increase would have been higher,” spokeswoman Paula Chung explained in November.

A $21-million “reduction” from the police service. What was this reduction? Chief Bill Blair proposed a 2013 budget $21 million higher than the city wanted, then was forced to come down to the city’s level. “We took that money out of the budget, took that money out of the tax levy,” Rossini argued in November. “That means taxpayers didn’t pay it.”

$69 million in “base budget reductions.” Rossini said the city simply adjusted a department’s budget to more accurately reflect actual spending in the previous year.

$70 million in service cuts. Ford “guaranteed” during his campaign that there would be no service cuts under him, and he still says there have not been any.

A $54-million reduction in TTC “fringe benefits liabilities.” This reduction happened because the provincial government granted the TTC an exemption to a pension-solvency requirement.

$6 million from the TTC paying less to settle injury claims, as a result of another change to provincial law.

A $6 million reduction in money provided to Toronto Community Housing from the city’s shelters department.

At least $70 million in traditional corporate efficiencies — improving internal technology, eliminating jobs deemed unnecessary, and so on.

$81 million from using non-tax sources, such as profits from city-owned real estate company Build Toronto, to fund capital projects.

$510,000 from eliminating mechanical leaf collection in the suburbs — which never actually happened, since council rejected the proposal.

$87 million from 2014 “base savings including compensation and TTC” that Pennachetti could not immediately explain on Thursday.