ANOTHER CRACKPOT SCHEME YOUR TAXES PAY FOR

Kathleen Kelly stumbled upon Street Health's Safer Crack Use kit in
December while she walked her dog through an Ontario St. parkette.

The kit, according to the accompanying insert, was supposed to contain a
Straight Shooter pipe, alcohol swabs, vaseline, dental gum, matches, a pipe
cleaner and extra screens. When Kelly found it, not 50 feet from the
children's jungle gym, it was minus the pipe and the cleaner.

Street Health and the All Saints Church Harm Reduction program - both
clearly identified on the kit's insert - benefitted from the city's very
generous $50-million grants program to the tune of $100,000 last year.

Street Health got a $48,380 grant for harm reduction outreach and HIV/AIDS
prevention education while the All Saints program, which operates Street
Health, was handed an extra $50,000 from the city's homeless initiatives pot.

"I thought 'what the hell is going on,'" said Kelly of her initial reaction
to the kit. "Why are we enabling and promoting illegal activities?"

Kelly says she was particularly concerned about the crack use safety tips
contained in the kit. Instructions like: "Everyone should have their own
pipe; Clean your pipe regularly; Always use a latex condom when giving a
blow-job."

Until I told her, she didn't know city funding was involved. "That makes me
really grumpy," the lawyer and mediator told me this week, one day after
the grants subcommittee voted not to cut the generous grants pot, despite
the city's budget crisis and a proposed 4.8% tax hike.

No one I spoke to knew for sure how much was used from the two city grants
for the kit.

As of Friday, Laura Cowan, executive director of Street Health, didn't
return Sun phone calls.

Mary Margaret Crapper, spokeswoman for public health, said the $48,380
given to Street Health was for education and outreach but beyond that, they
don't specify how the dollars are to be used. However public health did
refuse a Street Health request for extra money to purchase the
paraphernalia to put in the safe crack kit, she added.

Coun. Kyle Rae, who sits on the city's grants sub-committee, knew all about
the kit and has seen it.

Crack Not Included

"The AIDS grants are meant to stop the transmission of HIV and AIDS ... if
we're able to do that by making safer drug activities, then I'm prepared to
do it," Rae said, insisting the kit is okay because they don't actually
give out crack.

Aren't we lucky for that?

Still, I find it awfully hard to believe there's a budget crisis around
here when there's grant money to burn on crack addicts, not to mention a
plethora of other wacky projects. And when council has virtually ignored a
scathing city auditor's report from last April that says the $50-million
handouts program is out of control with few, if any, checks and balances on
whether grant-getters use their money for the purpose intended.

City auditor Jeff Griffiths also referred to "grants in kind" - free space
in city-owned buildings occupied by a variety of groups already getting
city grants. Nine months later the city's real estate gurus are still
trying to figure who is where.

It's quite obvious that most councillors, starting with Mayor Mel Lastman,
don't have the will to crack down on the $50-million grants program this
year. (Rae told me Lastman searched him out at Tuesday's budget launch to
make sure he knew it was status quo for the grants budget.)

Guess they don't have the will either to stand up to the well-orchestrated
campaign from the professional handwringers, 200 of whom packed the grants
sub-committee meeting this week, demanding a $1.3 million top-up to the
$50-million grants pot.

They didn't get it. Nor did Coun. Gloria Lindsay-Luby get anywhere with her
brave pitch to cut the grants budget by 4.8% - the same amount as the
proposed tax hike.

Nope, it seems council would sooner fund safe crack kits than safely keep
taxes down.

Guess I'm cracked for even thinking they'd see the light.