In the scheme of a $9.4 billion budget, $20 million one way or another might not seem like that much. But this week, that number became the focus of a high-stakes political game on the floor of Toronto Council that could decide the shape of politics for the remainder of Mayor Rob Ford and his council's first term of office.
The move to add that cash back into the budget, led by a coalition of new, politically-moderate councillors and seasoned veterans of former Mayor David Miller's left-of-centre government, delivered what some say is a black eye to the mayor and his allies.
At the end of just one day of three scheduled to debate the 2012 operating and capital budgets, councillors had voted narrowly - 23-21 - to reverse almost $20 million in cuts to libraries, daycares, shelters and other services. The money came from a place that Ford had pleaded with council to preserve: $154 million in reserves that he believed should go to cover a looming $700 million bill for new streetcars.
The relatively short debate, however, belied the long-term work that the group of councillors - including in the centre, Josh Matlow, Josh Colle, Mary Margaret McMahon and Ana Bailao, and from the left, Shelley Carroll, Adam Vaughan and Gord Perks - had done to draft a set of motions that could get support from even those councillors who generally supported Ford.
In the end, Eglinton-Lawrence Councillor Colle moved the omnibus motion that reversed most of the cuts, to child care centres, TTC funding, leaf collections, community grants and homeless shelters.
When council voted to support that motion, other motions followed and soon the $15 million restored from Colle's motion turned into $20 million as council decided not to ask for any more cuts from the library system and restored various other small programs too.
None of this was according to the mayor's plan. But despite the administration's best efforts, it attracted sufficient support from the mayor's regular allies to get through.
"They didn't bring out the brass knuckles but it sure came close," said James Pasternak, who was narrowly elected in Ward 10 last year and has supported the mayor on most major votes since then.
Pasternak was one of the swing votes that might have gone one way or the other. Councillors in the coalition were also working hard to persuade Michelle Berardinetti and Jaye Robinson to vote for the package. In the end, the two of them voted with the mayor.
But Pasternak said he ultimately had to side with his community.
"The little package that Councillor Colle and a few of us put together represented .15 per cent of the budget," he said. "But when you're in a situation where you're caught between two different groups there's no doubt - it's very difficult. But you have to make sure you're not cutting programs for ideological reasons but because they no longer have a purpose."
One of the strategies that the team of councillors employed to get that support was to make the debate less ideologically polarizing than is customary at Toronto Council. Normally vocal critics of the mayor held their tongues, and let Colle, a councillor who's maintained a relatively low profile downtown, argue the case.
Colle said the group made a concerted effort to reach out across the board.
"Through this whole process I know myself and Josh Matlow, we talked to as many councillors on the centre-right - maybe more than we did on the left," he said.
"I think there's a recognition that some of our objectives are different than some on the left. Our objectives were to save the services. Some of other peoples' objectives may have been to take a jab at the mayor - and if that was going to happen, we didn't want any part of it."
Colle was unwilling to call the vote a defeat for Mayor Ford and his budget - although others have called it just that.
Joe Mihevc, one of council's more left wing members, pointed out that this "is the first time in the megacity that a mayor didn't get his budget through. That wasn't his budget - that was our budget."
Ford's allies insist that although the amendments make the budgeting process more difficult, they don't amount to a real defeat for the mayor.
"I think that the administration and mayor's office succeeded in substantially reducing spending," said Willowdale Councillor David Shiner.
"We've tamed it from $13.6 billion in annual spending down to $13 billion. The problem is that next year we're going to be having to find $30 million or a greater tax increase because the funding isn't sustainable."
But next year, some councillors point out, it will be politically even more difficult for the mayor and council to make those cuts because it will be that much closer to the 2014 election. As Scarborough Centre Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker pointed out, councillors now understand that it's possible to push back.
"A number of people heard from the mayor's office, 'We're going to end your political career.' But some people stood up to that. And they'll find that their constituents love them and they're still coming to city hall. The truth is the mayor needs us as much as we need him.
"We all respect the mayor - he's elected as the mayor. But he has to listen to us."
Kristyn Wong-Tam, who was elected for the first time in Ward 27 (Toronto Centre-Rosedale) said that though councillors voted against the mayor's budget, it doesn't mean council's agenda has turned left.
"I think there was one vote in the pile of motions (rejecting a motion to stop contracting out cleaning jobs at the city) that demonstrated to us that this is a group still interested in contracting out public services, and I don't think that public workers should now start feeling secure in their jobs," she said. "They would still side with the mayor in contracting out."
The real test will come in the coming weeks and months - when council deals not only with labour matters but also the sale of Toronto Community Housing homes, the Sheppard and Eglinton underground rail lines, and the Land Transfer Tax.
The ultimate solution may be in numbers.
Ford ally Giorgio Mammoliti said that it's time to cut the number of councillors in half.
"It has to do with future council budget votes, and bringing the decisions through a little faster, to expedite those decisions," he said. "Council can do that easier with 22 councillors than it can with 44. I love everybody in that room - but not everybody feels the same way."