Mayor Rob Ford claims that the city is awash with too many managers has been refuted by a consultants’ study that says Toronto is doing much better on that score than comparably sized Chicago.

Ford has promised to unveil his ideas to save $50 million during council’s budget deliberations that begin Wednesday, and has made the number of managers one of his targets.

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At executive committee last week, the mayor grilled senior city officials on the subject, and two weeks ago the budget committee requested a report on trimming management ranks.

That report from the city manager included an internal consultants’ study completed last fall, which found the civil service has an “exemplary” ratio of one manager to 11.3 workers, compared with Chicago’s ratio of one manager to 7.1 workers.

Overall, city divisions (excluding TTC and other bodies) have about 2,300 managers for 34,000 employees.

The report recommended against deleting manager positions, saying such a move would harm the city’s ability to effectively deliver services to the public.

Western Management Consultants noted the Windy City is about the same size as Toronto, and in 2011 that city’s inspector general published a ratio of supervisors to non-supervisors for each city department.

“While peer cities for comparison are difficult to find, data available from Chicago indicates that Toronto compares very well with that city once organizational differences are taken into account,” the consultants said.

“In fact, the 11.3:1 figure for Toronto exceeds the target of 10:1 that the Chicago Inspector General had proposed for that city,” said the 38-page consultants report.

Ford’s office didn’t respond to the Star’s request for comment.

The consultants’ findings are in line with studies done by the association that represents City of Toronto managers.

Toronto is in good shape compared with both public and private sectors in general, said Richard Majkot, executive director of the City of Toronto Administrative, Professional, Supervisory Association (COTAPSA).

Majkot accused Ford of playing politics with the issue.

Asked to respond to Ford’s claims on this issue, Majkot said: “I would say he’s filed his papers for re-election as mayor. He is running for mayor and it makes good press.”

Claiming taxpayers are paying for a bloated bureaucracy is good politics, said Councillor John Filion.

“You could get rid of half the managers and say there are still too many, and a certain percentage of the population will say, ‘Yeah, that must be true,’” Filion said.

“Everybody is looking for simple solutions: Get rid of the managers,” he added.

Filion stressed he doesn’t think things are perfect but believes the bureaucracy needs to be reorganized, not shrunk.

“Too many issues come up where the decision-makers are all at the same level in the organization and nobody takes charge,” he said.

Councillor Peter Milczyn, chair of council’s planning and growth management committee, agreed that cuts can be made in manager ranks, but they would have to be carefully targeted.

“I’m sure there are probably some areas where you could trim back,” Milczyn said. “If he’s gone through each department and has good ideas, fair enough. But you’d have to be very specific.”

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Managers shouldn’t be seen as a waste, said Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker.

“If you have 10 or 20 firefighters, they usually will need a supervisor to make sure they’re deployed correctly, they show up and are doing their jobs,” De Baeremaeker said.

“Whether it be police officers or health inspectors or daycare workers, they need a manager to make sure things run smoothly.”

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