Toronto city staff dismissed idea of tracking work trucks ahead of damning parks audit

Toronto city staff opted not to install GPS devices on untracked parks maintenance vehicles even though they only cost $200 apiece, the audit committee heard Tuesday, in the fallout of a damning investigation that revealed field crews systemically parked at plazas and restaurants while logging on their timesheets that they were on the job.

“This is the stuff that just drives people crazy – when, as a city, we’re working hard to improve things,” audit committee member Jamaal Myers told CTV News.

“All of that work is undercut when we see things like this.”

The municipal Auditor General determined that in a standard eight-hour workday, city crews reported spending more than four hours a day at parks maintenance locations – but of the vehicles with trackers, GPS systems indicated they were there just two hours and 36 minutes a day.

In 86 per cent of cases reviewed by the auditor, the vehicle’s GPS data showed the work trucks parked at restaurants, grocery stores, malls and more.

“The optics here are not good,” Coun. Vincent Crisanti told the committee Tuesday.

“We’ve had such an enormous tax increase – we expect better service.”

The parks division heavily relies on paper time logs completed by the workers, councillors heard, which the auditor found were often incomplete or unverified.

Thirteen per cent of those records were not verified by supervisors, and 28 per cent did not indicate what maintenance work had been performed, according to the report.

Meanwhile, a third of the city’s parks vehicles do not have GPS trackers, making it impossible to cross-reference the paper timesheets.

Staff told the audit committee it was a “business” decision not to purchase the devices for the 192 parks trucks that were not equipped with them, but said they have since decided to install them on those vehicles by January 2025.

“I really think we need to keep going on this, and find out what we need to fix, what’s really broken, and say thanks to the people that go and do a great job every day,” Coun. Paula Fletcher said Tuesday.

“And by the way, to those of you who don’t – we’re watching you.”

Staff, though, would not “speculate” on what disciplinary action would be taken against the maintenance crews accused of falsifying timesheets, saying a separate investigation would have to be undertaken.

“I just don’t understand how managers, people at City Hall, could not see that something was wrong here,” said Myers.