After enough hours at a given City meeting, you fall into a trance... and then you realize that councillors make most decisions in that state.

DAY ONE
Monday, February 7
Morning session

9:32 a.m.: Speaker Frances Nunziata (Ward 11, York South–Weston) calls the 9:30-scheduled meeting to order. In the previous term, council sessions would lethargically get going around 9:40–9:50. Rob Ford makes the meetings run on time.

9:36 a.m.: Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34, Don Valley East) stands at the podium to acknowledge the presence of the football team from his alma mater, Senator O'Connor Catholic Secondary School. The Blues defeated Mayor Ford's team, the Don Bosco Eagles, at the finals.

9:38 a.m.: After delivering a short inspirational speech about football and getting good grades, Mayor Ford puts on a long-sleeve t-shirt adorned with the O'Connor Blue logos. He will continue to wear it for the rest of the day's proceedings.

11:11 a.m.: Mayor Ford wanders into the public gallery to greet a group of schoolchildren. The kids whisper to each other, with excitement and apprehension, "It's Rob Ford!" The mayor advises the teacher leading the group: "If you need any magnets, 'Rob Ford the Mayor,' let me know."

11:19 a.m.: Mayor Ford returns with a stack of magnets.

11:37 a.m.: Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday (Ward 3, Etobicoke Centre) angrily objects to "tearing up parkland" in his ward to accommodate the Pan Am BMX track. As evidenced by earlier comments, however, his concern is really more a cultural/generational "get off of my lawn!" complaint.

12:14 p.m.: Councillor Adam Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity–Spadina) has launched a crusade against "problem" frat houses in the Annex, similar to his earlier battle against nightclubs in the Entertainment District. In both cases, the rowdy, sometimes-vomiting youth have a tendency to test the patience of the upstanding, upper-middle-class citizens living nearby. One of Vaughan's cleverer ideas for getting a handle on frats involves having the City deny them film shoot permits; he insists they use the resulting cash to finance their keggers.

Lunchtime

12:38 p.m.: Press conference on privatizing garbage pickup! Ford speaks for less than a minute, during which time he mistakenly refers to the City workers' strike as having taken place "last year." He then scurries away without taking questions, leaving Works Committee Chair Denzil Minnan-Wong to contend with the media. Minnan-Wong takes a handful of questions and the conference is soon cut off by Adrienne Batra, the mayor's press secretary. But Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday (who privatized Etobicoke's garbage pickup during his 1994–97 term as that city's mayor) is happy to let reporters scrum him for as long as they care. It gradually becomes clear that this was one of those Ford announcements that will play well on TV and radio but won't hold up to much scrutiny in the print media: numbers are inconsistent, key questions are unanswered, and details are unavailable.

1:26 p.m.: In the City Hall cafeteria, the mayor orders the veal milano. The deputy mayor gets a tuna sandwich (a classy one, heated on a sandwich press).

Afternoon session

3:05 p.m.: Council debates the Childcare Development Task Force that Community Development and Recreation Commmittee Chair Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West) wants to set up. Few progressive councillors are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that this isn't really about privatization. Councillor Vaughan moves a motion to request that the Task Force be forwarded copies of all coroners' reports pertaining to infant deaths in private childcare. He argues that public, regulated childcare comes not from ideology but from "a history of tragedy."

3:09 p.m.: Mammoliti effectively spikes his own plan by moving that the task force be referred to the mayor's office and be renamed the "Mayor's Childcare Development Task Force." He himself will chair it, contrary to his earlier statement at committee that it would be chaired by a committee member other than himself.

3:30 p.m.: Joe Mihevc (Ward 21, St. Paul's) misspeaks, saying "Pitfields" instead of "pitfalls."

3:31 p.m.: New councillor Josh Matlow (Ward 22, St. Paul's), a member of the CDR committee, tries to find a suitably polite and diplomatic way to express his disillusionment and frustration that everything the committee decided together is now being tossed out the window by its chair.

3:40 p.m.: Janet Davis (Ward 31, Beaches–East York) asks Mammoliti why he didn't bring forward the mayor's interest at committee. Mammoliti explains that since the committee meeting, "the mayor has come to me and said it was a priority. I couldn't have brought this recommendation forward before that." There is a general suspicion that Mammoliti may have gone rogue when he proposed the task force in the first place and is now being reined in.

3:44 p.m.: Gord Perks (Ward 14, Parkdale–High Park) argues that Mammoliti's motion is out of order because it removes the matter from its proper jurisdiction, which is the Community Development and Recreation Committee. [* CLARIFICATION February 11, 2011: the jurisdictional change in itself was not the problem, but rather that the change ran contrary to the content of the motion, thereby effectively defeating it.] Speaker Nunziata, without offering a reason, asserts that the motion is indeed in order. Perks challenges the chair, meaning that he calls on the members of council to vote to overrule her. The voting panels open, and there is confusion, followed by farce—since Nunziata failed to offer a reason for her ruling, it is not clear exactly what interpretation of procedure is being contested. Several councillors, notably Pam McConnell (Ward 28, Toronto Centre–Rosedale) demand an explanation from the speaker; she refuses. Perks offers, "Because she felt like it!" Nunziata is narrowly upheld by a vote of 19–16, and later likely gets a private talking-to from the City Clerk.

3:54 p.m.: Adam Vaughan, on his way up to the media area, quips, "I've figured it out: the mayor wants to use children on the backs of garbage trucks."

4:21 p.m.: A motion to force the (Mayor's) Task Force to report through the CDR committee fails 19–20. The referral to the mayor's office passes 34–5.

4:34 p.m.: Now the exact same debate but with Mammoliti's Ice Rink Infrastructure Task Force. Councillor Mike Del Grande (Ward 39, Scarborough–Agincourt) moves that it be sent to the mayor's office and renamed in his honour.

4:51 p.m.: Council votes 16–21 on the motion to have this task force report through CDR. The referral to the mayor's office passes 32–5.

5:00 p.m.: Next to me in the gallery is a young couple setting a new precedent for physical intimacy in the chambers. Council is debating a sole-source contract to purchase and maintain resident lift systems for long-term care homes, but in lieu of trying to care about this item, the handful of reporters present just observes the young couple.

5:45 p.m.: Councillor Doug Ford (Ward 2, Etobicoke North) rants against sole-source contracts. At the conclusion of his remarks, he gets a round of polite applause—officially, this is because it was his maiden speech at council, but I like to think it was because he managed to go three minutes without beginning a sentence with "In the private sector..."

6:00 p.m.: Council votes 38–0 to go to in camera (i.e. into closed session) to deal with three items that include confidential reports. Mayor Ford, who railed against such "secret meetings" during his campaign, is among those thirty-eight votes.

7:30 p.m.: Council emerges from closed session.

7:52 p.m.: By a vote of 16–17, Council rejects a Del Grande motion concerning the lift systems report. When councillors realize that the mayor and his brother found themselves on opposite sides of the vote, sarcastic cheering breaks out.

DAY TWO
Tuesday, February 8
Morning session

9:50 a.m.: Council begins debate on Councillor Davis's motion to condemn the federal cuts to immigrant settlement services. The Council Chamber is filled with people who object to the cuts, and the symbolic motion should be a slam dunk. It is not.

11:26 a.m.: After Holyday moves that the motion be referred to the Executive Committee, the debate heats up between those who believe that closing settlement agencies is a prima facie harmful thing that ought to be denounced, and those who claim that the matter requires further study.

11:31 a.m.: Anthony Perruzza (Ward 8, York West) shouts: "This should have been a ten-second debate, period!"

11:35 a.m.: Prior to speaking in favour of the referral, Cesar Palacio (Ward 17, Davenport), who is Ecuadoran, tries to shore up his immigrant cred by opening his remarks with, "As the only Spanish-speaking councillor..." Joe Mihevc gently raises his hand: "I speak Spanish."

11:45 a.m.: When it comes time for the vote, it turns out that the electronic voting system is malfunctioning. After three attempts, the clerks suggest a manual headcount is in order. Their first idea is to have each councillor stand one at a time and say "aye" or "nay"—but after trying this with one councillor (Perks), they realize it would be much quicker to have all the ayes rise at once, followed by the nays.

11:49 a.m.: Councillors are forced to literally stand up for their principles.

11:52 a.m.: The referral carries 22–21, along unusually clean ideological lines.

12:02 p.m.: Following her scrum, Davis coolly confronts Mammoliti, asking: "What more information do you need, Giorgio?" He mutters something about her motion being an NDP plot.

12:04 p.m.: Gord Perks tells me it's the only vote all meeting that the Ford team has whipped. He's confident that Stephen Harper's staff contacted the mayor's to privately express their displeasure with the motion.

Afternoon session

3:00 p.m.: Vaughan alleges that the Ombudsman was subject to undue political interference in the course of preparing her report on the treatment of a resident with dementia [PDF]. He makes reference to a disagreement between the Ombudsman and City management with regard to the basic facts of the case.

3:22 p.m.: In a scrum following the report's adoption, the Ombudsman is peppered with questions regarding Vaughan's assertions, as we try to tease out pieces of the puzzle. The questioning centres on the report's unnamed "Property Standards Officer," whether he was disciplined, and whether there was an internal disagreement as to how exactly he had behaved.

3:25 p.m.: Shelley Carroll (Ward 33, Don Valley East) tweets, "Someone's having lunch with Jeff Lyons next week and it ain't me," signalling that the infamous lobbyist (a key figure in the MFP scandal and the uncle of Toronto Sun columnist Sue-Ann Levy) is looking to get back into the City Hall game. Turns out he recently recruited veteran strategist Sean Hill, a former assistant to Joe Mihevc, to his firm.

3:57 p.m.: Mihevc speaks on Del Grande's motion to cancel councillors' automatic inflationary salary increase but is distracted by the fact that Mayor Ford is conversing with Nunziata, his back to all of council, blocking their view of the speaker and vice versa. Mihevc stops, says "Mr. Mayor, you're beautiful..." The mayor shuffles away and blows Mihevc a loud kiss.

4:59 p.m.: The pay freeze passes 39–3, with Mihevc, John Filion (Ward 23, Willowdale), and Ron Moeser (Ward 44, Scarborough East) being the dissenting votes.

5:30 p.m.: Half an hour after most councillors had mentally checked out, and after dealing with one final item of exceptionally narrow interest, City Council adjourns.

Photo, of Being Erica being filmed in the Annex, by *Lemur* from OpenFile Toronto's Flickr pool.