After sitting into the wee hours last week to finish Budget 2004, members of the planning and transportation committee were in full attendance seven hours later at the 9:30 a.m. meeting Wednesday.

Bleary-eyed but conscious, take a bow, councillors Gerry Altobello, Peter Milczyn, John Filion, Cliff Jenkins, Howard Moscoe, Cesar Palacio, Bill Saundercook and Karen Stintz.

It's particularly notable, as it followed eight days of council meetings (excluding weekends).

Across the hall, the works committee displayed similar but not unanimous fortitude.

But particular huzzahs to rookie Councillor Mike Del Grande, who, rather than risk the drive back to deepest Scarberia after the exhausting 15  1/2-hour budget finale, grabbed some shut-eye on his office couch. He considerately warned a fellow councillor not to sit too close during the meeting.

We asked for a sign — any sign — that city councillors were prepared to offer a token sacrifice from among their many and varied perks during the budget debate as a way of saying, "We share your pain."

Here it is: a hardly noticed motion by Councillor Howard Moscoe, which invites "Members of Council ... to voluntarily reduce their office budgets by submitting to the City Clerk a memorandum advising her of the amount of money they wish to forgo; the deadline for such submissions is 11 a.m. Monday, May 3, 2004." That's today.

Though the councillor surely proffered the motion tongue in cheek, we will dutifully check with clerk's staff and report on the cash happily relinquished by our elected representatives.

We're not optimistic.

Final thought on matters fiscal: We wonder if (and how long) Councillor Michael Feldman will continue as one of Mayor David Miller's three deputy mayors after voting Nay to the budget.

In any other legislative body, Feldman's disloyalty would be noted and quickly acted upon, although city council doesn't operate under rules of party discipline and such.

But we won't be surprised if when council reshuffles the deck next year at the halfway point of its three-year mandate, Feldman gets shuffled out.

Election rumblings in Ottawa are felt in T.O.:

Ex-councillor Mario Silva's dreams of a free and easy ride to Ottawa as MP for Davenport have hit a snag.

Charles Caccia, Liberal MP for the riding since the Great Lakes were only Good, is publicly musing about running as an independent after Silva wrested the Liberal nomination from him. Independents have a spotty history of success in federal politics but Caccia is a threat to Silva, who may wish he hadn't left the security of municipal politics.

It's high time for Councillor Olivia Chow to get off the fence and declare the glaringly obvious: that she's running against Liberal backbench warmer Tony Ianno in Trinity-Spadina in hopes of joining her hubbie Jack Layton, the federal NDP leader, in Bytown.

Asked point-blank at a news conference on the waterfront last week, Chow allowed that she was "very seriously" considering it. How she kept her eyes from rolling as she made this pronouncement is a minor miracle, though everyone else's did.

Yet another headache for federal Liberals: a hot rumour has it Councillor Raymond Cho will run as an independent against incumbent Scarborough-Rouge River MP Derek Lee.