Preville on Politics

I wouldn’t mind an increase in my water bill…

Posted on November 13, 2007 by Philip Preville

… such as the 9 per cent hike proposed by council’s executive committee yesterday, if Toronto Water was not in the habit of frittering the money away. Back in September, the city’s auditor general pointed out that, in addition to overtime scams of various kinds, Toronto Water’s emergency repair contracts were so badly managed that cost overruns had become the department’s new normal. Now comes another audit of Toronto Water, which goes before audit committee later this week. It doesn’t paint a pretty picture.

According to the latest audit, Toronto Water staff is in the habit of splitting purchase orders so they don’t have to seek out competitive bids. Some invoices they pay out have so little detail on them it’s impossible to verify whether the city got what it paid for. Technical staff is doing lots of purchasing and accounting work, which they shouldn’t do; meanwhile, no one is keeping an eye on the parts and equipment inventories. On one $220,000 contract the city was overcharged $18,000 just for travel expenses, in part because no supervisor had any knowledge of the contract terms. (You can find the audit committee’s September and November agendas here; the auditor’s reports are buried therein.) Howard Moscoe says we can all pay our higher water bill by cutting down on booze consumption, but he and the rest of the executive committee ought to take a little water with their wine too.

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Philip Preville

Veteran freelance writer Philip Preville lived much of his life in Montreal and Edmonton before he was lured, like so many Torontonians before him, by the promise of more work and a better living. A National Magazine Award winner and former Canadian Journalism Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Massey College, Preville writes Toronto Life’s politics column. He lives with his wife and one-year-old son in Riverdale, just close enough to the Don Valley Parkway that he can hear it when he steps outside his house—but just far enough away that it doesn’t keep him awake at night. On his office wall hangs a 1938–39 press pass belonging to his grandfather, Elias Gannon, who wrote for the Montreal Star.


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