Mayor Rob Ford was the only member of council to vote against accepting $350,000 from the federal government for a year-long gang intervention project that will not cost the city anything.

Council voted 33-1 on Thursday to accept the funding from Ottawa’s National Crime Prevention Centre. Ford’s vote, which he did not explain, baffled even conservative allies like Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday.

“It’s free money,” Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, another conservative, said when asked why he voted in favour. “Why would you turn down $350,000?”

Sandra Costain, manager of the children and youth department at Regent Park’s Dixon Hall, criticized Ford harshly. “Isn’t that so disgusting? It’s just sad, it’s embarrassing and it’s disheartening. This is a man who has contact with young people who play football. So, c’mon,” Costain said.

Ford made his name as a principled, penny-pinching council contrarian who regularly found himself voting alone or with few others. He has occasionally cast solo votes as mayor, such as when he voted last year against $7.2 million in grants to community groups — some of which work to prevent violence — and against accepting $100,000 from the province for HIV and syphilis screening.

He said then: “Everyone says it's provincial money. No. It's taxpayers' money. So, you know what? In the big picture, they say it doesn't cost the city a dime. Well, it costs people money.”

He also voted against accepting a provincial offer of no-cost public health nurses, saying he didn’t want the city to eventually be stuck paying their salaries — though the health minister said the provincial funding was ongoing. He changed his mind after council guaranteed the nurses would be laid off if the funding ever expired.

Minnan-Wong said Ford might have had similar concerns about the anti-gang funding. Ford’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.

The $350,000 will be used to extend a three-year federally funded pilot project that concluded at the end of March. That project was intended to help 300 young people “at high risk of gang attachment” in Rexdale, Jane-Finch and Weston-Mount Dennis transition into legitimate employment, and to help the city to gain insight into which tactics work and which don’t.

The new money will allow three temporary employees to provide continued help to young people who were involved in the project, to identify training possibilities and other supports for their family members, to continue discussions with a 30-member youth group about the barriers that prevent at-risk young people from changing their lives, and to develop ideas to improve existing city programs.

The final results of a University of Toronto evaluation of the project, known as Prevention Intervention Toronto, will not be available until the end of the month. But a city report says a draft evaluation found the project succeeded in “significantly dropping the rate of gang membership” among participants, reducing violent offending and criminal behaviour of all types, and improving attendance and behaviour at school.

Lead evaluator Scot Wortley, a U of T criminology professor, said he did indeed make “a number of promising findings,” though there is “room for improvement” in the project. He, too, expressed confusion about Ford’s vote.

“I just look at it and (think), with the issues that young people in our most disadvantaged communities are having, any program that could even potentially help young people and steer them in the right direction deserves attention — not to mention the fact that it doesn’t detract from the city’s budget, doesn’t take resources away from policing or anything else,” Wortley said. “It’s an unusual statement.”

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