91原创

Nick Mantas racked up more than $16,600 in bills over nine days when he and his chief of staff travelled to Turin for a green cities conference in March 2023, all at the public’s expense.

The city automatically聽covers the costs for councillors and their employees to attend conferences up to $7,000 per person. Mantas told council they breached that limit when the airline overbooked their flight home, forcing them to buy new plane tickets and stay an extra day. In February, council voted to reimburse the overspending as well.

But the filings raise questions about how the pair missed their flight, and show that even before that incident the cost of the trip had blown past original estimates. One councillor who reviewed details of the expenses described them as a “shocking” use of public funds that should never have been approved.聽

In the filings and written responses to the Star, Mantas聽鈥� who was first elected as councillor for Scarborough-Agincourt in 2021聽鈥� attributed the cost overruns to a series of mishaps beyond his control.聽He asserted that he did his best to keep his spending down, and that his attendance at the forum was in the city’s interest.

“The information I gathered at the conference would not only be beneficial to my constituents but also to the City of 91原创 as a whole,” he said in an email.

He cited a side visit he took to the athletic complex of Turin’s professional soccer team which he said helped inform plans to redevelop the L’Amoreaux Sports complex in his ward.

The Cities Forum is hosted by the聽European Commission, and brings together urban leaders “committed to a green and just future of cities.鈥� The City of 91原创 had no official involvement with the Turin event, but Mantas decided to attend in his role as the city’s advocate for tech and innovation, a non-statutory position given him by former mayor John Tory.聽

Although the conference started March 16 and lasted just two days, Mantas and his chief of staff arrived on March 10. A copy of his schedule included in the filings shows no entries until the 13th, when he began meetings with Turin officials.聽

In his email to the Star, Mantas explained that he and his staffer arrived early because it was cheaper to fly on that date. He said they spent the extra time ”(getting) acquainted with the city and the venues where we were to attend meetings.”聽

He didn’t say how much cheaper the flight was. He and his staffer billed taxpayers for about $1,800 in accommodation and per diems of $100 (U.S.) a day over the three days his schedule was empty, according to the filings.

The documents show the trip got off to a rocky start. In a letter included in filings, Mantas said when he and his staffer arrived at their Airbnb, they discovered it was in a bad part of town, so they cancelled their reservation and relocated to a Holiday Inn.

鈥淭here was a lot of screaming and noise outside,” he wrote in the letter. 鈥淭here was no way we were going to stay in this unsafe area.鈥�

Aribnb later refunded the cost of the original booking. But the two rooms at the hotel cost almost $2,700 over eight days, about $1,000 more than the Airbnb,聽and taxpayers footed the bill.聽

The Holiday Inn rate included a daily $15 charge for parking, which Mantas needed because he had rented a car for the duration of the trip, despite all the events on his itinerary being within a six-kilometre radius of the hotel. An invoice included in the filings shows he was charged 200 euros to upgrade the car, and got a BMW X1, a subcompact luxury crossover.

Together with gas and other fees, the car cost about $1,800, again billed to 91原创 taxpayers. On a travel form Mantas was required to file with the city before he left, he had estimated rental car costs at just $300.

Mantas told the Star he decided to rent a car “after investigating the costs of travel between Milan and (Turin) plus taxis,” and was forced to upgrade to a more expensive model after his inbound flight was delayed and the rental company gave away his reservation. He said the BMW was the only vehicle available.

Copies of the councillor’s schedule show that between March 13 and 15, and over the two-day conference on March 16 and 17, his appointments included visits to an aeroponic greenhouse, a university innovation centre, and an urban farm, as well as attendance at panel discussions and speeches.

He and his staffer were scheduled to fly out of Milan’s Malpensa airport at 11:15 a.m. on March 18, and聽Mantas wrote in the filings that “we departed (Turin) at 8 a.m. to begin our 1 hour drive to Milan.”聽

However, according to Google Maps, their hotel was about 145 km from the airport, and the drive can take two hours.

A聽receipt included in the expense documents from a toll booth located about 20 kilometres south of the airport was timestamped at 9:56 a.m. Mantas claimed in the filings that he and his staffer arrived at the check-in counter 11 minutes later, at 10:07 a.m., but were denied boarding because the flight was overbooked and check-in had closed early.

When the airline “did not try in any way to provide us with any solution,” he had to put up almost $5,300 for new flights the following day and two hotel rooms in Milan.聽

In his responses to the Star, Mantas didn’t directly address his underestimation of how long his trip to the airport would take, or the toll receipt.

“Sometimes people鈥檚 flights get overbooked, and the airline drops their customers,” he wrote.

The city covered Mantas’s expenses under council’s $7,000-per-person business trip limit, but he had to take the rare step of formally asking council approve repaying him for the extra flight and hotel stay.

At a February meeting, after Mantas told his colleagues he wasn’t at fault for missing the flight, they to pay him back.

But Coun. Paula Fletcher (91原创-Danforth) said council didn’t see details of Mantas’s spending for the rest of the trip, and if she had, she wouldn’t have voted to reimburse him.

“I’m just going to channel Rob Ford. Call me Roberta Ford here,”聽said Fletcher in an interview, referencing the former mayor famous for haranguing councillors about their spending.

“Never in a million years would I take a trip like this. It looks to me like a taxpayer-funded vacation for nine days with two days of conference. It’s shocking.”

With files from Jon Ohayon.