Accounting firm questions projected savings from contracting out garbage

Mayor Rob Ford’s move to privatize part of Toronto’s garbage collection has been blasted by an accounting firm hired by the city’s outside workers’ union.

The city says contracting out of collection west of Yonge Street will save about $8 million a year, cutting around 300 jobs in the process.   But the accounting firm Al Rosen and Associates says the figures used are questionable at best.   

“It is my opinion that city staff’s costing is so fundamentally flawed that city council needs to have an independent assessment of the cost of in-house delivery,” attorney Al Rosen said in a statement. “How can you know whether they are saving money if they don’t know how much it costs to do it themselves?”

The union wants city council to reexamine the numbers and take the appropriate time to reach their conclusion.  Council is set to vote on the issue next week.

“Slow this process down, develop the proper system and the proper checks and balances to ensure that residents and tax payers are getting the best value for money,” advised Mark Ferguson, president of TCEU/CUPE Local 416.  “But that’s not what we see in this process here.  We are hoping that councillors will hear that message and make the right decision.”

Ferguson wants to sit down with the city’s solid waste managers and find efficiencies, instead of contracting-out.

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