Ah, but if you watch the voting patterns a more discernable pattern emerges. On the rhetorical campaign platform issues, Ford had a high level of agreement, even among the left.
Get to service cuts and the margins are much narrower. Tenant defense fund and library closures? Relatively low impact cuts - but 21 against. Wait til the real cuts go on the table, there won't be support for them.
Fiscal responsibility is important, but the goals - build a city, have rock-bottom taxes, and a balanced budget, are not fundamentally reconcilable. Pick 2 of 3. #3 is a given, but who will fall on the side of city building and who will fall on the side of low taxes?
More fundamentally, even if the Fords were being the despots they so desperately wish they could be, there is simply no way to balance the budget on cuts alone. When faced with tax hikes and service cuts (both necessarily massive), what will councillors choose to do?
Is his budget plan goign to be like his transit plan, and when it's clear it won't work, dissapear into never-never land?