If the community doesn't support you at the box office what makes you think they support bailing you out with taxpayer $$$. Having leeches like Rae and Mihevic in your corner explains a lot. What's another $1.2 million?

By SUE-ANN LEVY

In seven minutes flat last week the economic development committee decided this debt-plagued city would hand a local theatre company with its own "crippling debt" a $1.26-million bailout.

Committee chairman Kyle Rae announced the city's purchase of Theatre Passe Muraille's Ryerson Ave. building -- with money the city doesn't have -- without even calling on the theatre's principals (who were waiting in the wings) to make their case to the committee.

Not one member of the committee -- not even so-called fiscally responsible Case Ootes or Mike Feldman -- bothered to ask the hard questions about the bailout scheme.

The only person who really spoke was Coun. Adam Vaughan. He contended the city was getting the theatre's building "as a bargain" and it was a "secure investment."

It was never revealed publicly that more than half of Theatre Passe Muraille's $867,700 budget last year came from public grants (some $452,500 including $141,000 from the city.)

Yet the theatre still managed to rack up a "crippling" $500,000 deficit. "We had an overly ambitious artistic season ... we have not had as much support from the community as we would have liked to have seen," said the board's president Shelley Black. "That's what started us into a road of debt