Rob Ford casts the sole vote to reject free (!) federal money for gang prevention

Rob Ford can’t seem to shake his roots as a contrarian councillor. At last week’s council meeting, he was the sole person to vote against accepting $350,000 from the federal government for a yearlong gang intervention project (the funding will go to a pilot project to help 300 young people “at high risk of gang attachment” transition into employment). Ford said no thanks to the cash (not the first time he has done something like this) on the grounds that it’ll cost some taxpayers somewhere...at some point. That rock-solid logic puzzled even staunch conservatives like Doug Holyday and Denzil Minnan-Wong—who both, incidentally, scored A+ marks on the Toronto Taxpayers Coalition’s report cards for city council in 2011. Echoing the thoughts of pretty much everyone, everywhere, Minnan-Wong said, “It’s free money....Why would you turn down $350,000?” [Toronto Star]

(Images: Rob Ford, Christopher Drost; Bills, Brian nairB and Lauren Siegert)