TORONTO

The city spending almost $75,000 on 30 chairs doesn’t sit well with an apologetic Mayor Rob Ford.

As the Toronto Sun reported first, the City of Toronto shelled out $74,850 to buy 30 chairs for City Hall’s members’ lounge.

In a hastily called press conference called to address “chair-gate,” a “very upset” Ford apologized to Toronto residents for the “insane” expense.

“I apologize to the taxpayers, I take full responsibility, I should have been on top of it but again that’s what we have managers for,” Ford said Friday. “Obviously we never watched the pennies today and the taxpayers’ money has been affected and it drives me absolutely crazy when I see this stuff.”

The city bought the replica chairs at $2,500 each to replace 30 original Warren Platner chairs in the lounge beside the council chamber. City staff say the chairs, which are considered art pieces with considerable potential historical value, were in a “bad state of disrepair,” leading to the replacement chairs.

Ford claimed he wasn’t aware of the spending until Friday but didn’t hesitate to rage against the expense — a cost he would have nitpicked during his decade as a penny-pinching councillor.

“It’s a problem when we’re spending a lot of money, $75,000, on 30 chairs,” Ford said. “To me it is completely unacceptable and to the average taxpayer it is unacceptable.”

The mayor ordered a briefing from city manager Joe Pennachetti and Rob Rossini, the city’s deputy city manager and chief financial officer, on the chairs before speaking to the press.

“They briefed me, I am not happy about it, I want everything to go to government management (committee) from here on in with respect to anything to do with heritage,” he said. “Heritage was the driving factor behind this cost escalating. We’re on the Internet, we’re looking at other prices.”

A briefing note on the chairs issued by the city Friday noted refurbishing the 30 original chairs would have cost $225,000, replacing them would have cost $165,000, while the replicas only cost $74,850 and were selected through a request for quotations process.

“We did almost everything right, we dropped the ball on a few issues,” Ford said. “The person who made this mistake, I can tell you is no longer with the city … we can’t tolerate this.”

Ford and city staff wouldn’t elaborate on why the staffer was no longer with the city, who they were or when they left the city.

City staff said Thursday the decision was made by the division head of facilities management in late 2012.

“I can assure you, it won’t happen again,” Ford said. “This is just completely unacceptable. To spend $2,500 (per chair) on these heritage chairs, to me, is insane.”

As for the original chairs, Ford said they will be coming out of storage and going on the auction block.

“I said, ‘I want them auctioned off, I want them sold off, I need value, I need something for these chairs,’” Ford said. “There is a good chance we can get money for these chairs so at the end of the day, the price not be as high as it is now.”

Councillor Paula Fletcher lamented Ford’s “bread and circuses” act that includes his summer highlights video and a painting of himself.

“What about the real dollars? And I don’t mean a few chairs that have been replaced,” she said. “They had been refurbished so poorly, they were falling apart.”

Fletcher said Ford should be more concerned about the $85 million in sunk costs the city might be on the hook for when it comes to changing from the Scarborough LRT to the Scarborough subway.

Asked about the sunk costs for the subway, Ford said that’s not up to him.

“That’s a provincial issue,” Ford said. “That’s up to the province and Metrolinx to deal with.”