First, they didn’t take Gordon Chong’s advice on how to pay for the Sheppard Subway. Now they won’t pay him.

And consultants the ex-city councillor hired to make the case for Mayor Rob Ford’s subway dreams are owed $80,000 they may never collect.

That’s the bankrupt state of the TTC subsidiary Mayor Ford created to promote his subway plan.

Chong has complained the year-long initiative was under-resourced from the start. At times, he had to forgo his monthly cheque — roughly the $8,000 a month a Toronto city councillor makes — so his assistant would be paid.

The TTC was “crystal clear” from the outset that when the money was gone, that was the end. There wasn’t any more and there was no TTC capital project called “the Sheppard subway,” sources told the Star.

The money dried up last October. Chong was told to down tools until a source of funding for Toronto Transit Infrastructure Limited (TTIL) could be found. That meant neither he nor the consultant he had hired, Joanne Kennelly, would be paid because TTIL was out of funds.

Chong says he is owed $24,000, but, charitable soul that he is, he’s not about to push the city for his money, Chong says.

“I doubt we are going to be paid; there is no money,” he told the Star. “Consider this another charity I’m involved in. That’s life. I stuck it out because I actually believe in what I’m doing and I wanted to finish the job.

“I do my best and move on. The weather is getting better. I can go outdoors soon. If I were to make an issue of it I could collect the three months owed me, but at this point I’m not interested in getting into a big deal,” Chong said.

The consultants may be another matter. They were provided by Metrolinx, the provincial agency that coordinates transit across the GTA and is responsible for funding the city’s Transit City plan that the mayor disputes.

Metrolinx had an agreement with TTIL that the bill for consulting was not to exceed $88,000.

Metrolinx “didn’t know that we didn’t have any money when they signed the contract. They are going to have to sue us to get the money,” Chong said. “You can’t get blood from a stone.”

The former TTC commissioner says he is not aware of other outstanding bills. “Nobody else has been knocking on my door.”

TTC sources say they have never seen a bill from the province but it would have gone to TTIL anyway and there is no way for the TTC to cover these costs without city council approval.

When Mayor Ford unilaterally killed the Transit City LRT plan without taking it to council for a vote, he surprised city councillors by tapping an unknown dormant subsidiary of the TTC to pursue subways instead.

He formed TTIL from the ashes of TTCL, a 1980s subsidiary of the TTC with a dormant account of about $160,000. Ford named his brother, Doug, and Councillor Norm Kelly as the directors. Kelly co-chaired with Chong, who was also CEO.

The mayor expected the TTC to fund the initiative by dipping in to the TTC budget, but transit bureaucrats balked. That created early ill feelings, Chong says.

He says the TTC didn’t want to cooperate with his study because they don’t believe in the public-private slant of providing new transit. When the TTC refused to top up the TTIL fund, Ford didn’t look for money elsewhere.

Once Chong took over, legal fees gobbled up the first $40,000. The rest of the money quickly disappeared in salaries to Chong and his assistant, Kinnelly, who did much of the nitty-gritty work in the study.

Chong said he was paid up to October and is owed $24,000 since then. Kennelly was paid up to the end of her contract, though she has done work since, in effect for free.

Meanwhile, the mayor has refused to embrace Chong’s recommendations that he impose road tolls, licence fees, parking taxes and other tools to close the billion-dollar funding gap for the first phase of Sheppard subway expansion.

Files from Tess Kalinowski