13 steps cost city $4,000 in O/T
By Sue-Ann Levy, Toronto Sun
First posted: Friday, September 22, 2017 08:39 PM EDT | Updated: Friday, September 22, 2017 08:58 PM EDT
First the good news.
City parks and recreation staff came $113 under their $10,000 budget to build 13 steps in Tom Riley park.
“The mayor is glad staff were able to get these stairs completed quickly, on time and on budget,” said his spokesman Don Peat Friday, noting the mayor thought the original cost estimate (of $65,000 or higher) “out of whack with reality.”
No kidding.
Now the bad news.
A Freedom of Information request on the costs, obtained by the Toronto Sun, shows the city was billed 82.5 hours overtime for union staff to demolish the eight wooden steps originally installed by senior Adi Astl.
Astl, the 73-year-old Etobicoke resident who gave rise to Stepgate, became somewhat of an international media celebrity when, frustrated by the foot-dragging and bloated costs at City Hall and concerned about the safety of other seniors trying to access the south end of the park, he installed his own flight of eight wooden stairs in 12 hours on June 22.
It cost him $550 to do so.
Astl and his councillor Justin DiCiano had been told by the parks and rec department that it would cost anywhere from $65,000-$150,000 to do the same job.
According to the FOI, it took five — yes five — city of Toronto workers 82.5 hours on overtime (since they’re clearly far too overworked on regular time) to build the 13 steps. Those overtime hours were included in the $10,000 budget, but the regular hours they worked were not.
That cost taxpayers $4,006.01 or about $50 per person per hour.
The staff needed included a lead hand, a heavy equipment operator, a welder, a construction coordinator and a general handyworker.
Cue four guys standing around the jobsite drinking coffee and yakking while one actually works.
Did I mention that Astl, at 73, built his steps in 12 hours with only the help of a homeless man?
A long list of materials cost $4,891.30 and another $989 went towards construction fencing — the latter of which was probably in stock and bought in bulk already.
Astl said he wasn’t surprised with the number of staffers who needed to take his steps away and build the new ones.
“It’s the city...nobody has any idea of what’s going on (in other departments),” he said.
I agree, combined with a pervasive attitude of not really caring how foolish the parks and rec department looks considering they needed five people working for 82.5 hours of overtime to do the job of two (and one a senior).
Considering how much media scrutiny this project got, I would have made darn sure that they did it as efficiently as possible.
I guess, however, 82.5 hours and five workers is considered efficient for city workers.
I can only imagine how many managers, supervisors, architects, planners, forestry staff (to protect the trees) and union workers would have been needed to do the job if had been budgeted at $65,000.
DiCiano says he’d consider the cost of just under $10,000 “good” if it’s real.
“What I don’t trust is whether it is really $9,800,” he said.
But if it is real, he says he hopes this is not just a one-off — in other words, he wants to know what Tory is doing to fix this city-wide.
Let’s provide a recent example of the two summers lost for users of the Pan Am bike/walking trail south of Pottery Road while a $3.6-million construction project to fix the Pottery Road bridge and Belleville underpass kept getting delayed. The Lower Don Trail will finally open tomorrow.
But getting back to Stepgate, Di Ciano said the original quote is proof of how city staff “overengineer, overthink and overdesign the simplest projects — wasting money that could better be spent on repairing sidewalks or other parks projects.
“This project is a perfect example of how a simple staircase was all that was needed,” he said. “City staff need to get back to reality and simplicity when trying to deliver.”
slevy@postmedia.com
13 steps cost city $4,000 in O/T | LEVY | Toronto & GTA | News | Toronto Sun
