Quelle surprise.

Premier Doug Ford’s ill-conceived plan to save Toronto $25 million over four years by cutting city council in half has failed, and then some.

But that was predictable — and predicted.

After all, councillors must rightly find a way to properly represent constituents in wards that have roughly doubled in size.

On Wednesday they understandably did that by voting to double their annual budgets for office staff. That, alone, will cost more than $24 million over four years.

They also voted to hike their budgets for office expenses by another $1.6 million over four years and asked the city manager to recommend an “appropriate level of compensation” for their increased workload. In real-speak that translates to a raise, cost as yet unknown.

All in all, council’s necessary actions proved Ford’s critics right. Slashing council was never about saving taxpayers’ money.

That was always just a shiny bauble meant to distract the public from the premier’s real goal: targeting his political opponents — the mainly left-leaning representatives of downtown wards that voted against him and his late brother Rob when they were on city council.

As always, the people he purports to represent will pay the price for Ford’s vindictiveness.

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