Even More On Bambi And Other Jewels

Seriously, how many of my readers gagged when you read the Mayor's comments about the end of the MFP file:

• "This should be something every council across this province and country remembers so they enforce the proper policies and vigilance to ensure this situation never happens again..."
  
  "Taxpayers will save millions of dollars and hopefully this is not one of those situations people ever forget about.
  
  "It reinforces how public institutions have to be very vigilant in ensuring proper safeguards and protocols are there to ensure this never happens."

I wish the Mayor would quit telling us that we are saving money. He is "saving" me into bankruptcy. How can he be "proud" that we are spending so much extra money. The settlement according to Francis will "restore the city close to a financial position it would have normally been in had the equipment leasing and landfill agreements been conventional ones." Except the whole reason for doing the deal in the first place was to get a deal better than conventional financing. If we wanted conventional financing, we could have gone to a Bank! So we are paying out millions more than we expected.

And the joke of it is that one of the reasons we are paying out more is that someone was NOT "vigilant in ensuring proper safeguards and protocols are there to ensure this never happens." Someone messed up and released our damaging forensic accountant report thereby causing the report to lose its legal privilege.

• "A senior official, employed by one of the appellants, provided a copy of the report to a lawyer who had acted for the appellants on the transaction that is the subject of their claim. The senior official mistakenly thought the lawyer was still a member of the appellants’ “legal team”....Had Gregg not given a copy of the KPMG report to Stewart, and had the appellants not sued Stewart without first retrieving the report, the appellants had an iron-clad claim of litigation privilege and they could have refused to produce it to their adversaries in the litigation."
  
  

The system failed again!

In my opinion, this City is in bad shape!

Rules, process and procedure, controls---who cares. They mean nothing. I get very, very scared when Eddie and Michael Duben, the City’s General Manager of Client Services, both lawyers and who worked with the same law firm, tell us that the Purchasing By-law can be "waived" in the arena matter. I am still waiting for Mr. Duben to reply to my email to tell me how the By-law can be waived since the Municipal Act says that it is mandatory to have one.

Let me give you a few other examples of Administration forgetting:

SUPERIOR PARK

On September 5, Council said that the matter was to be deferred for "up to 30 days" to allow for consultations amongst the various parties including the homeowners. Council had the oportunity to have it come back in 60-90 days too. They put their mind to it and said THIRTY DAYS! That time period expired a long ago.

What happens next: Administration schedules a meeting for October 17! What is the legal authority to do that? How can Administration just ignore Council?

Of course, a bright homeowner asked Administration on what basis this was allowed and said the meeting was improper. He asked for the City Solicitor's opinion but has never received it so far. I won't bore you with the exchange of emails but here are the excuses given why something can be done notwithstanding the clear direction of Council:

1. It is often difficult to schedule and coordinate meetings that involve members of Council due to their already busy schedule [Tough luck I guess for them. But it was Council that wanted the 30 days and there was supposedly an urgency to get this deal completed, back in August as a matter of fact!]
2. It is my understanding that it was the wish of the area residents for a meeting to be held in close vicinity to the topic being discussed [blame it on residents now....they wanted the meeting within the time limit not after]
3. Coordination of the availability of the venue and schedules of interested parties was taken into consideration, along with the City's desire to give public notice [Right, just like the first meeting not held in a timely fashion in the area and in other events like the "Tecumseh" Council meeting and postponing the Mayor's conference because of a holiday weekend]
4. The date and venue of this second PIC was conveyed to Council as a communication on October 10th. Council gave no contrary direction on the matter. With regard to your comment in your e-mail below, yes I am confirming that unless Council takes action to the contrary or directs a specific action, communications placed before them on the Order of Business are referred as noted, and yes, noted and filed does imply acceptance [I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS STATEMENT! Does that also mean that the 2 proponents for an arena whose proposals were "noted and filed" have been impliedly accepted so we now have THREE arenas in Windsor!]

One new matter I just confirmed this morning. In my opinion, there is a huge Conflict of Interest respecting this matter involving Administration. I will not mention the names of the two people involved since they may not have thought about it. However, since it impacts decision-making involving procedure, the Mayor, CAO and City Solicitor better get involved very quickly or else there will be more trouble at City Hall. If they want, they can call or write me about it BEFORE the meeting on the 17th!

And speaking of Superior Park, there is a big rumour going around that a different deal is in the works. The rumour suggests that a City Hall official met with a developer to do some kind of land swap so that if the School Board gets the park, it will be swapped for some other land owned by the developer and the developer could build as many as 65 homes on the Park. Stay tuned!

Sandwich Community Planning Study

Here we go again. Administration trying to shove it down the throats of citizens.

There is a Task Force set up and from what I hear they have done excellent work. They are to present the results of their hard work over a long period of time in a report to Council on October 30. Administration took on the effort to draft a report based on their work.

Naturally, if you are involved in the process, you'd like to be able to see the draft and be able to comment on it BEFORE it is presented. Seems only fair. On AUGUST 25, Administration wrote:

• "your Chair has asked that we circulate for your comment/input, a draft Sandwich Community Planning Study before we submit it to City Council. In order to meet our deadline to submit items for the October 30, 2006 Council Meeting, you must be prepared to receive & review the draft study, and reply with any comments to us, all by email within the period of October 11-13.
  
  Please be aware that if the volume of comments received by Oct 13 exceeds our staff's ability to amend the draft CPS report by Oct.17, the report will be delayed for submission to the Nov 6 Council Mtg [i.e. the last one before the municipal election]. Also, this time frame means that any comments received from individual Task Force members will not be able to cross referenced by other Task Force members at a meeting, before they are considered for inclusion in the report."

So far so good EXCEPT for one thing....the draft Report was never sent out to all members!

I thought I would set out the entire email sent out on OCTOBER 13 because it is so ridiculous, highlighting some of the most outrageous comments and with comments added:

• "I regret we were unable to follow up with you until now. Thanks to those of you [below] who flagged the outgoing August 25th email for a reply today. The reply is this:
  
  Due to fluctuating staffing capacities in our department, we regret we were not able to produce suitable draft copy of the Sandwich Community Planning Study until yesterday at 430PM. [Not acceptable] To make matters more complicated, this turned out to be a very large electronic file. When we tried to test-email it, we discovered it was too big for some servers to deliver, meaning that some of you may have been able to download it, but most will not. [Gee, ever think of splitting it up into several small files and e-mailing it out] We could not email it out this way ["unequally"] to only some Task Force members. I raised this with Hildegard and noted that our only option that will allow us to have this document on the October 30, 2006 Council Meeting Agenda, is to provide her with a CD copy that she can review this weekend. [How is this "equal"] [We couldn't burn multiple CD copies.] [Why not? Burn one, burn 100] Kevin is also looking at it, via City Hall's internal email server, being he was your first City contact at the inception of this project.
  
  We need to receive back any comments and advice from Hildegarde & Kevin by no later than 4PM October 16, 2006. [Wow, that ruins her weekend!] One day is all we will then have in order to incorporate received comments and submit the final report on Tuesday October 17th, which is the date decisons are made regarding what items Council will consider on October 30th. [Perhaps it should not go forward on the 30th if the deadline cannot be met] Even then, in order to achieve that Oct 17th goal, we cannot make any wholesale structural changes or add any major content to the report. [who cares what the Task Force members think. Administration has decided what will be said] Hildegard and Kevin are now on the lookout for factual errors or errors, or citations made in the report regarding who said what or did what. [No substantive commnets or disagreements allowed] I am pretty confident you will find that the final document reads consistently from start to finish. All of you will be on the Council Report notification list. That means that, if the Sandwich Community Planning Study is approved to go Council's October 30th meeting agenda, the City Clerk's Department will notify you of that fact on, or just after October 20th. Also, all of you will receive your own bound colour paper copy of the report as soon as it is finalized. [Cannot produce a draft report in a proper time but can produce a nice glossy one! Will it be autographed by Administration too]
  
  I believe we have recorded with integrity the enormous "community sweat equity" invested by the Task Force. [But you will never know until it appears on the agenda and if it does not reflect what the Community says, oh well] I can state here and now, without qualification or reservation, that the draft report delivered to Hildgarde & Kevin already exceeds the high standard set with our Little River Acres Community Planning Study. Beyond that, all I can say regarding the hoped-for Oct 11-13 review period, is that we have done our best, to deliver our best, using the best resources we have. "

Frankly, if I were Councillors Postma and Jones, I would demand someone's head for this. It will clearly not be able to be presented until after the election so all Task Force members have adequate time to comment and then hold a meeting to review what each person has said. There goes a nice vote-getting opportunity for them to solidify voter support in Sandwich!

I am sure there are more screw-ups but who can stomach any more of this.

Doesn't Administration even listen to Eddie or Council? Doesn't he micro-manage them? Where's CAO John Skorobohacz ensuring that Administration acts properly?

How soon they all forget! Or maybe, they just do not care!