PANDEMIC Outbreak At City Hall

Another pandemic story in the Star today. I wonder how many more we will get before next Monday's Council meeting praising the Mayor's decisive actions.

Did you see that strange story in the Star the other day too dealing with disaster funding? I must admit I did not recall seeing a story on the Report referred to, just Eddie's comments. There was an interesting quote:

• "What kind of threat exists in Windsor? A pandemic. Terrorism. Tornados. Natural disasters. While it may seem like hyperbole now, it's possible. If any one of those disasters occurred and the city was not prepared, the finger of blame would first be pointed in the direction of city hall.
  
  "The last thing any mayor wants is to be in a position that has someone saying, 'You should have thought of that,'" Francis said."

There was a Report issued on June 29, 2006 as a matter of fact by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM). Lo and behold, on the Council agenda a few days later on July 10 is a Corporate Pandemic Plan. Now that is fast action and just pure co-incidence even though Eddie is co-Chair of the FCM committee that deals with public safety, security and emergency preparedness so he would have known when the FCM report would go public. Strange that Eddie did not mention that Windsor Plan in the first news story.

We will be required to spend $500K or so for the Plan. The money will come out of our Municipal Slush Fund for unexpected costs. Given that this is an election year and spending money is a No-No, expect to see a whole bunch of stories in the Star leading up to the Council meeting about floods, bird flu, West Nile, terrorists etc to demonstrate that our Mayor is right on top of things. I guess this is called momentum building.

The approach is similar to the 2 news stories about Brian Masse, Bill C-3 and the border leading up to the huge Guest Column that he wrote in Saturday's Star!

Should we applaud the fast thinking of City Hall on this issue? Not really! We should understand how we are being manipulated for political purposes.

It all started back in December 2005 when a Corporate Pandemic Planning Committee was set up. Actually, if the issue was so important, one could ask why it was not started back in October, 2004 when FCM issued a Report on "MUNICIPAL EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS AND MANAGEMENT COSTS Issues and Resource Requirements." Why did it take over a year for someone to wake up and do something at City Hall.

When one reads the Agenda Item there is no doubt that the Plan is well-prepared. It seems to be very thorough and can apply to risks other than Pandemics as well. Frankly, in reading the materials there is an air of "emergency" and "severe risk" that demands action that just jumps out of the pages. One shocking example given is that the costs of surgical masks alone for City workers would be almost $400K per month!

So given all of the urgency and the Mayor's statement above, one would have thought that the Committee Plan would be presented to Council immediately after it was prepared. It wasn't!

The Agenda Item was actually dated May 1, 2006 which means that the Report was finished before that date. It was not on Council's agenda until July 10, over 2 months later and not until after the FCM Report was issued publicly.

What we are supposed to see a few months before the election is a concerned Mayor and Council taking steps to ensure that Windsorites are safe and secure. The real Pandemic that they are concerned about is not being re-elected.