Toronto

Maybe Mayor Rob Ford should start planning his 2014 New Year’s levee now.

His office initially delayed planning the 2013 levee, cancelled it at one point, and briefly contemplated holding a massive Nathan Phillips Square skating party before opting for a traditional meet-and-greet event at City Hall.

The levee saga played out in dozens of e-mails obtained by the Toronto Sun through freedom-of-information legislation.

The correspondence between the mayor’s office and city bureaucrats provides a glimpse of how Ford’s staff tried to deal with a relatively simple public event, how they attempted to manage the fallout of cancelling it amid Ford’s legal woes, and how they were forced to change direction entirely once they got a last-minute decision from the mayor.

The levee — held Jan. 1 — is an annual event which allows the mayor to mark the beginning of the new year by meeting Toronto residents.

City officials in Toronto’s protocol office started asking the mayor’s staff about the 2013 levee in October 2012.

An e-mail sent to Ford’s office on Oct. 17 outlines four options ranging from the traditional levee to a massive “party” in a park that would cost between $20,000 and $25,000.

Weeks later the mayor had yet to make a decision.

Several e-mails from Carley McNeil, Ford’s event co-ordinator at the time, asked for direction on the levee from then-chief of staff Mark Towhey and Ford’s former deputy chief of staff Earl Provost.

Almost a month after the initial request from city staff, McNeil wrote to her colleagues in the mayor’s office stressing they needed to start planning the levee and “confirm with the mayor if he wants to do it again.”

Days later, on Nov. 26, the court decision which booted Ford out of office for a conflict of interest was dropped. The decision to kick him out of office was later overturned on appeal.

McNeil e-mailed Towhey the next day, reminding him they need to make a decision on the levee.

“FYI. We need to sit down with the mayor and talk this over,” she wrote.

Fifteen minutes later Towhey sent back a one line e-mail.

“Cancel the levee,” Towhey wrote.

McNeil then fired off an e-mail to city staff saying: “I think we have decided to cancel the levee at this time. Sorry ... Thanks anyways.”

The Toronto Sun broke the story that Ford had scrapped the levee on Dec. 11.

“We won’t hold the traditional New Year’s levee on (Jan. 1),” Towhey told the Sun at the time. “We’re looking at other options.”

He denied that the levee cancellation had anything to do with Ford being kicked out of office.

Once the Sun story came out, the mayor’s office was flooded with media requests asking for confirmation that the levee was off.

Towhey sent an e-mail to Ford’s spokesmen establishing the messaging for why the levee had been cancelled and confirming he’d already sent a Twitter direct message to a Toronto Star reporter with the information.

“Mayor wanted to move away from traditional hours-long receiving line tow (sic) a more family-friendly event,” Towhey wrote. “Right now we’re looking at a family skating ‘party’ on (Nathan Phillips Square). Checking options and costs of that. Also looking at dates.”

Six days after the mayor’s office said it was going to hold a skating party, bureaucrats sent Towhey and McNeil a draft itinerary and $7,600 budget for the event in Nathan Phillips Square that included face painters and a cotton candy machine.

According to the itinerary, Ford was supposed to deliver his New Year’s Day address from the roof of the square’s skate rental building. He was then slated to wade through the crowd, meeting and greeting people, before serving up hot chocolate to around 1,000 residents.

On Dec. 20, city staff e-mailed the mayor’s office several times trying to confirm the skating party was good to go.

McNeil wrote back that she was in a meeting with the mayor and sent a second e-mail 20 minutes later nixing the skating party.

“The mayor has decided he would like to just go back to the traditional levee,” she wrote. “Two hours 2-4 p.m. Inside. Keep it simple.”

The next day, Ford’s then-press secretary George Christopoulos confirmed the levee was back to the way it had been in previous years.

“The traditional levee is back on,” Christopoulos told the Sun on Dec. 21.

An e-mail from city staff sent to the mayor’s office after the Jan. 1 levee wrapped up confirmed 15 councillors joined the mayor and 386 residents turned out for the event.

A city spokesman confirmed the final cost of the 2013 levee was about $3,500.

don.peat@sunmedia.ca