Mayor Rob Ford has continued his annual tradition of voting against every one of the city’s community development grants programs.

The six programs would have sailed through council unanimously on Friday, without a vote, had Ford not placed a “hold” on the items in order to vote against them. He lost the votes 34-1, 34-1, 33-1, 34-1, 35-1, and 35-1.

Ford did not speak before the votes, and he would not answer a question on the subject from a Star reporter in a media scrum.

Ford was also silent when he voted in June against accepting federal money for a gang prevention project that would not have cost the city anything. He lost that vote 33-1.

Even his brother, Councillor Doug Ford, voted against him on Friday. “There’s some good ones and some not-too-good ones. I wasn’t going to cut off all the good ones for the bad ones,” Doug Ford told reporters. He said some of the grants “really help people,” though he has questions about the effectiveness of others.

Rob Ford is an ardent advocate of small government. As a lone-wolf councillor, he railed against grants on the council floor and on talk radio, characterizing them as “free money” given by taxpayers to community groups running ineffective or odd programs that don’t deserve city support.

Councillor Shelley Carroll, an opponent, said Ford was “cowardly” for not explaining his votes. She also argued that his stance is at odds with his political philosophy. The community groups, she said, offer important services the city therefore doesn’t have to provide at a higher cost.

“This is contracting out, in a sense, and I do not know why that wouldn’t be attractive to someone like the mayor,” she said.

Arts grants and grants to major cultural organizations are dealt with separately. Ford supported both of them earlier in the year.

The grants approved on Friday, totaling about $16 million, will go to 306 projects. Nineteen of the funded projects are explicitly intended to make communities safer; 25 provide recreation programming; 24 are intended to improve race relations and promote community participation among minority groups; 13 are local festivals or events.

The biggest chunk of funding, $13.5 million, goes to 214 groups running programs “that advance council’s strategic goals and priorities by working to improve social outcomes for vulnerable, marginalized and high-risk communities.”

Extend-A-Family, for example, will get $21,230 for its Safe and Secure Futures program, which aims to help families better support relatives with disabilities. Newcomer Women’s Services Toronto, which provides counselling, employment training, anti-violence workshops and other services for immigrant and refugee women, will get $38,210.

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The 19 community safety projects include: a Jane-Finch program to improve relations between young people and the police; a Scarborough program to help female Caribbean immigrants, aged 16 to 18, to develop better conflict resolution skills; a Scarborough program to reduce violence and substance abuse among young Tamils.

Ford voted the same way on the grants programs last July, also in silence. He lost 43-1 in votes on four programs, 42-2 on the fifth, and 41-3 on the sixth. He also lost 37-1 last July in a vote on anti-HIV/AIDS grants. He supported an HIV prevention grant this week.

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