What if?

What if Mayor Rob Ford wasn’t a rotund, rich, balding guy from the suburbs whose suits don’t fit, who doesn’t deliver a great speech and who didn’t have a big brother who doubles as mayor and says outlandish things?

Would you love him more?

Would you cut him some slack; suffer him gladly the way you did Megacity Mel until the then Bad Boy and former mayor wondered out loud on CNN, “Who the hell is the World Health Organization?”

What if Rob Ford hadn’t slobbered you with incessant talk of “gravy train” a year ago? What if he hadn’t promised to find $3 billion in savings at city hall in four years (about a third of the budget) — without cutting services; without laying off staff?

What if he hadn’t released his election platform on YouTube and told citizens, “hiring freezes don’t make sense. There’s no need for layoffs. We’ll replace only half the people who choose to leave (by attrition) . . . and save $1 billion over four years.”

This year, with all the upheaval, the city is reducing staff by up to 1,500, including layoffs and buyouts, and the annual savings is just $40 million for the 2012 budget. Ford promised $200 million.

Using all the tools at his disposal, city manager Joe Pennachetti has targeted $360 million in savings for 2012 — or about 10 per cent of the city’s tax revenues. He’ll be lucky to get more than $200 million.

It’s not chicken feed, but by Ford’s own election platform, 2011 was to guarantee citizens $526 million, rising to $695 million next year.

What if Ford’s election promises of “No service cuts. Guaranteed” hadn’t been exposed within six months as wild exaggerations (He suggested privatizing waste collection would save $40 million, then downgraded it to $20 million a year). Wouldn’t you be happy with savings of $11 million announced this week?

What if Rob Ford hadn’t appealed to our base instincts of wanting something for nothing? Or tapped into our desire to believe that city workers are lazy, unproductive and overpaid — “garbage” he called them; and, as such, we could get rid or a few thousands of them and no one would notice?

Wouldn’t you be happy that for the first time since amalgamation, the city is taking a serious look at reducing costs across all departments? Well, almost all. There is the matter of the police. And fire services and EMS could escape the axe as well.

One year into his uneasy reign as Toronto’s chief magistrate, what rankles is how the mayor governs, how he chooses not to engage, how he divides rather than unites, how he disparages where he should praise, how he seems to hate the very city a mayor, by definition, is expected to embrace and praise.

Toronto has not seen a civic leader like Ford — dating back to when reeves directed our affairs and a collection of towns and villages struggled to govern a growing municipality.

Mel Lastman, in all his tomfoolery and bombast, in his heart, loved his kingdom. Ford treats the city like dog poop on shiny loafers; like a bastard child he’s never hugged and doesn’t know how to love.

For a short while it didn’t matter. Voters had sent Ford on a mission to city hall. They were tired of a city budget that balloons every year without tangible increases in service levels.

Ford quickly did the easy things: cut office expenses, froze councillors salaries, eliminated the free food at committee meetings, gave back the $60 vehicle registration tax. He didn’t need that revenue, not when he was going to save an equivalent amount ($66 million) from simply demanding open and transparent tendering of city contracts.

He served notice he was privatizing waste collection and the majority shrugged. This was payback to the unions for the garbage strike. He killed Transit City and only the well-connected howled.

When Ford promised to build the Sheppard Subway for $4 billion, using private sector money, those who knew better shrugged again. “Maybe the mayor knows something we don’t know.” Only, he didn’t. And he can’t build Sheppard without more than a billion dollars of government money; and revenues from tolls and other charges he detests.

Slowly, the emperor’s drawers were being exposed. Skepticism turned to cynicism when consultants failed to uncover the buckets of waste and gravy at city hall, exposing, instead, a litany of service cuts.

Finally, veering off message to a damnable proposal to redevelop the waterfront with a Ferris wheel, megamall and monorail, the administration derailed itself, crashing into a stiff citizen coalition that said, “Enough.”

Voters looking for change had forged an unsteady alliance with the anti-government, anti-tax, aggrieved Ford Nation to put the penny-pinching crusader in office. They’d punched their ticket on the “gravy train” and now, a quarter of the way in, they look ahead and they fear a train wreck.

Is Ford’s mayoralty salvageable? Can he correct course or is he more likely to plough ahead, “stay the course,” as he said earlier this month in the face of plunging polling numbers.

Shortly after the election, Ford received the kind of briefings all new mayors get from senior staff. Unrealistic promises were flagged. If he was going to moderate, that would have been the time. They told Ford:

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“You won’t get $200 million in savings in 2012 through staff attrition, Mr. Mayor. For one, the attrition rate is half of what you told voters it is.

“The $100 million you expect from open transparent tendering? Ahh, we already do that.

“Wanna eliminate the fair wage policy and save $80 million a year? Be our guest. (Everyone is still waiting).

“You want to eliminate the $125 million we set aside each year as a down payment on city borrowing? Pardon us, sir, but that will only increase the borrowing costs you are intent on reducing.

“With all that now known, you cannot eliminate the vehicle tax and the land transfer tax because that will create a $300 million hole. How would it look to eliminate that revenue while crying poor?”

Ford, of course, ignored the warnings.

For 10 years, Rob Ford the councillor played the role of council gadfly. He learned how to oppose, a lone wolf baying at real and perceived government waste; he picked up no pointers on how to lead.

Rookie Councillor Ana Bailão is surprised at how this administration wastes the skills of councillors not ideologically aligned with Ford. “It’s been a lot more divisive than I anticipated,” she says.

She sees a sliver of hope. Ford was forced to compromise and work with opposing councillors to extricate himself from the unpopular position he took on waterfront makeover.

“I hope it will be a pattern for the future: more listening and less of ‘It’s my way or the highway’.”

Councillor Adam Vaughan, who’s watched Ford for the past decade, expects more of the same.

“I almost feel sorry for him, but he won’t listen. It’s very hard to tell someone who thinks he knows everything that he doesn’t know anything,” says Vaughan.

“He doesn’t have the creativity or the tolerance to govern. It’s not going to happen. He’s in over his head. I’m not being uncharitable — he is what he is.”

A good politician morphs from running a campaign to running a city. He adjusts, changes the rhetoric, looks for opportunities to build, Vaughan says. “Rob Ford is a demolition expert; he’s a blunt force. The issue is, how can we contain the damage.”

Royson James usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: rjames@thestar.ca