Now Toronto waits.

A judge decided Wednesday to let Mayor Rob Ford keep his job until an appeals court rules on his conflict of interest case sometime this winter. The decision eliminates any chance of the messiest outcome previously possible: Ford being returned to office on appeal after someone else already took over.

The decision also leaves the city with a teetering mayor-in-limbo presiding over the process of setting the 2013 budget, potential challengers cooling their heels at least temporarily, and Ford attempting to project strength and stability even as he acknowledges he is “prepared for the worst.”

The appeal will be heard on Jan. 7. A decision is expected in the following weeks. If not for the stay ordered by Ontario Superior Court Justice Gladys Pardu, Ford would have been forced to vacate his office by Tuesday under a decision issued by Superior Court Justice Charles Hackland last Monday.

“I’m very pleased with today’s decision, can’t wait for the appeal and I’m going to carry on doing what the people elected me to do,” Ford, told reporters at City Hall.

“They voted for me to get the city back on financial footing, which we’ve done, we’ve got a lot of work to do, and I’m going to continue doing it to the best of my ability, and I can’t wait until January 7.”

Ford’s triumph may be fleeting. To win the appeal, his lawyer, Alan Lenczner, has to convince a three-judge Divisional Court panel that Hackland made a legal error. That will be difficult, said John Mascarin, a municipal lawyer not involved in the case.

“It’s a question of did the judge make errors in law. They don’t go back and rehear everything. I think Ford’s going to be up tough against this. I don’t see him being able to overturn the decision,” said Mascarin, of the firm Aird and Berlis.

The case is about Ford’s February decision to deliver a speech, and then cast a vote, on the issue of whether he should be excused from abiding by a council order to repay $3,150 to lobbyists who donated to his charitable football foundation. Under the province’s Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, members of council are forbidden from speaking or voting on matters in which they have a financial interest.

Lenczner offered a preview of his four appeal arguments on Wednesday. As Mascarin noted skeptically, they are very similar to the arguments he unsuccessfully made in the original hearing.

Hackland, Lenczner contended, was wrong in ruling that council had the authority to force Ford to repay the money in the first place, wrong to “conflate” the conflict of interest law and the City of Toronto Act, wrong that Ford had not made a mere “error in judgment,” and wrong that Ford’s speech to council showed that the $3,150 was a significant amount of money to him.

“Mayor Ford would’ve made the same speech whether $5 was involved or $500 . . . For him it was a matter of principle,” Lenczner told the court.

The unusually quick appeal date helped convince Pardu that there would not be “any harm to the public interest” if she granted a stay. Ford’s case also benefited from the endorsement of the opposing lawyer, Clayton Ruby.

“It would be inappropriate for the city to start down the complicated and perhaps expensive road of replacing Mayor Ford when this court has been able to offer us an appeal date within a month and a half,” Ruby told the court.

Council will vote on the city’s 2013 budget a mere week after the appeal hearing, very likely before a decision is issued.

Ford’s precarious position may not hurt him much during the budget process: unlike the last budget, the one tabled by city bureaucrats last week is relatively uncontroversial. And because of the holidays, City Hall will be quiet for three of the four weeks before the hearing.

But Councillor Karen Stintz, a conservative, said the case has produced “political instability.” Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, another conservative, called it an “unnecessary distraction.”

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“We’re going through a budget process, capital and operating, and we need to focus in on that. Now that the decision has been made on the stay, hopefully we can move forward with some measure of stability, until such time as the appeal is heard,” Minnan-Wong said.

Councillor Doug Ford said his brother will change in the wake of Hackland’s ruling. “You get hit over the head with a sledgehammer — let’s call facts facts — and you do things a little differently,” he said.

With files from Wendy Gillis