Right about now, the curbsides on Mayor Rob Ford’s leafy Etobicoke street are being swept clean by city workers manning mechanical leaf collection machines.

It’s a luxury service that only a small portion of the city —central Etobicoke and pockets of Scarborough — receives. And it comes with a hefty price tag: about $500,000 annually.

But even in this day of deep cuts and gravy draining at city hall, the leaf collection program has survived.

It will not be on the chopping block next week when city manager Joe Pennachetti presents his final bare-bones budget to council for consideration, a budget that is expected to slash museums, library hours and environmental initiatives, among other things.

In fact, mechanical leaf collection never came up in the KPMG service review — although the consulting firm did look at it.

“I don’t know this, but I suspect the reason is that in the initial meetings with KPMG I’m sure staff warned them, ‘Don’t even bother with seasonal programs like leaf collection or windrow’ — we’ve behaved so badly on council,” said Councillor Shelley Carroll, a former budget chief.

Leaf collection, Carroll explains, is really the result of a longstanding “game of petty political brinkmanship.”

Etobicoke has enjoyed the service since well before amalgamation, similar to how North York residents had special windrow snow clearing. Once the former cities merged, council looked at these fragmented services and debated cutting them or extending them across the city.

When leaf collection hit the chopping block, Etobicoke councillors threatened to vote away windrow clearing. Meanwhile, a Scarborough councillor argued their residents deserved a slice of the pie. And while windrow clearing has now been extended throughout most of the city, leaf collection never was.

Councillor Paula Fletcher, a left-winger who represents Toronto-Danforth, says she has nothing against the leaf collection in Etobicoke, but she wishes that kind of respect for local programs was extended to the entire city.

“You see the way things have been targeted, like Riverdale Farm, which was in the old city of Toronto before amalgamation,” said Fletcher. “Mechanical leaf collection seems to have been protected, but nothing else seems to have been.”

For Elstree Rd. resident Halinka Dybka, 46, the service is invaluable. There are five 200-year-old oaks on her property.

“The leaves are beautiful but it would take days to bag up all the leaves. And then city workers would have to be loading the bags. It’s all labour,” she said. “And I think anywhere in the city that needs it should get it.”

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The mechanical leaf collection program operates for about 6 weeks each year, beginning around October and ending in early December.

KPMG did not respond to an interview request.