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There are much greater examples of waste not just at City Hall, but at Queen’s Park, as we see in reports by the provincial auditor general every year.

But Mayor John Tory and the city’s audit committee are rightly taking this issue seriously because they know this kind of wanton abuse of public money drives taxpayers up the wall.

Especially when the city is crying poor about having to end school breakfasts and eliminate more than 6,000 daycare spaces in the wake of provincial funding cutbacks.

We agree with Tory that Premier Doug Ford needs to do a better job of consulting with the city in advance, before lowering the boom on city spending.

But these reductions are necessary because the previous provincial Liberal government turned Ontario into one of the world’s most indebted sub-sovereign borrowers.

As Health Minister Christine Elliott noted, the city might be able to find more money to fund its public health programs if it stopped doing things like paying people to water dead trees.

Clearly, $2.6 million annually is a drop in the bucket compared to the funding cuts the province is seeking from the city.

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But it’s also true too many councillors instantly go to Defcon One (imminent nuclear war) any time they’re asked to show leadership on necessary spending restraint, including when the mayor asks them to do so in preparing the city budget.

The oldest trick in the book for politicians who regard taxpayers as cash cows for never-ending government programs, is to rally support by threatening the programs that will provoke the most emotional responses from those who have to pay for them.

Even though if the city wants to retain them, it’s capable of doing so by prioritizing services and finding efficiencies elsewhere.

The same way hard-working, tax-paying Toronto families do every day to balance their budgets.