More Letters To The Blogmeister

Here are a few more letters from readers. Can you guess who wrote the first one?

• "Our Future Starts Today" I read with interest that the current mayor of Windsor ran on a campaign slogan three years ago of "Our Future Starts Today". What Eddie Francis didn't tell Windsorites was what that future would be. Let’s look at then and now
  
  1. Then: Windsor in the middle of Canadian unemployment rates. Now: Windsor has second highest unemployment rate of any city in Canada.
  
  2. Then: Promised an automotive strategy. Now: no auto strategy and the city has lost thousands of automotive jobs.
  
  3. Then: Promised more open and accountable government. Now: a record number of secret behind closed doors council meetings.
  
  4. Then: Promised to solve the border. Now: no closer to solving the border, despite secretly spending millions on New York consultants and Toronto lawyers.
  
  5. Then: Promised regional cooperation. Now: Tecumseh announces a new arena and a week later Windsor announces they will spend at least $50-70 million to compete with it.
  
  6. Then: Promised to negotiate from a position of strength. Now: announces a new arena in a panic, with no tender process and no site.
  
  7. Then: Promised to Help Small Business. Now: Raised license fees in some instances as high as 700%. Has not released the Small Business Task Force Report completed in July, 2006.
  
  8. Then: Promised to Revitalize Downtown. Now: Downtown Commercial Vacancy Rates are approaching 40%.
  
  9. Then: The previous Mayor is committed to Windsor's most valuable resources, The University of Windsor and St. Clair College. Now: The Mayor backtracks on these committments and forces these institutions into scrambling to make up for lost funding.
  
  10. Then: A positive future with the right leadership. Now: A bleak economic future even with new leadership.
  
  If the next 4 years are anything like the past 3 years, Windsor should brace itself for more of the same: job losses, out of town consultants, secret meetings, falling real estate values and economic woes.

A better use for arena monies?

• I like your Bambi mailbox but you better take your deer off or it will be stolen and sold. You know parks are fair game to sell off now.
  
  Take that 48, 58, 79 million for the arena and put towards necessities in this city. Just so you know I work in our health care system and guess what I see and what that money could go towards. Daily I see a tremendous amount of cancer, old and elderly people who need help and people who cannot afford to eat.
  
  So wake up council our new arena is not going to help our fellow residents but the slot money will and so will our parks; they help clean up the air pollution and environment and maybe we will even live long enough to enjoy an arena.
  
  Fawn (Bambi's baby)

A letter from reader who has an issue with City Hall who answered my question about whether "your residents supporting a candidate for Mayor?"

• Yes, those I have asked are. Frankly, I’m trying to encourage them to Mr. Wonham. Mr. Francis record and decisions are unimpressive to us. We are putting a petition together and each person we discuss the matter with we recommend Dr. Wonham. I’ve spoken with Tom Lynd and he is of the opinion that since there is such chaos and controversy that under normal circumstances, unfortunately the old Mayor gets elected again because it ‘brings’ out the voters. Hope Dr. W pours on the steam.
  
  Thank you for including us in the blog. You are truly a public servant in the truest sense."

Another reader refers me to 2 articles in Detroit papers recently, parts of which I attach:

• "Nation to Big 3: Grow up, times have changed
  
  
  Eight days from now, Michigan will pick its CEO for the next four years.
  
  Be it Gov. Jennifer Granholm or Republican Dick DeVos, the challenge will be enormous. Jobs are disappearing, homes values are sinking, automakers are retrenching and the entitlement class is digging in -- all of it the ugly by-product of Michigan's cultural clash with the global world.
  
  And not enough people are talking about changing it because that means acknowledging the end of a hallowed era built for comfort, not competition.
  
  In a column Friday, I argued that the "expectations of comfortable middle-class culture forged by industrial America are blocking change." In essence, that Detroit's "enemy" isn't Japan, NAFTA, dumb product decisions or the Republicans so much as us."
  
  
• "MITCH ALBOM: The mediocrity of today's greatness
  
  I witnessed something recently that said a lot about who we are in America. It took place not on a big stage on a Saturday night in New York, but on a daytime talk show in the middle of the week...
  
  I was to be a guest on that TV show. It was one of those shows liable to have a cooking segment, followed by a pets segment, then a segment on sexy Halloween costumes.
  
  On this day, they were doing a mini-talent contest -- a singing thing, like "American Idol..."
  
  You kept waiting for someone to come out from behind the curtain and say, "OK, it was all a joke, clearly these people can't sing." But no one came. A winner was awarded. And nobody mentioned how foolish they all looked bragging about their talent, when their talent, once displayed, was little to brag about.
  
  What seemed most important was that everyone clapped.
  
  The bigger the boast ...
  
  Now, the same day this was going on, I happened to be having an ongoing conversation about a Belgian girl we know. She is 15 and already has graduated from high school. She is now taking university courses. At 15! She is, politely put, brilliant. She speaks English better than most American kids, even though it was not her first language.
  
  Yet, because her culture emphasizes conformity, humility, more and harder work, and less and less talk, she thinks she is nothing special. She is shy and demure. She would blush if you asked her to say she was going to win this thing. And she would put on sunglasses only if it was sunny.
  
  I thought about her as I watched this small-town version of "It Ain't Bragging If You Can Do It -- And Even If You Cant, It's Still Good." You see this everywhere in America. Rappers sing about their greatness while recording in someone's basement. MySpace is full of teenagers boasting Web personas they would never live up to in the flesh. Athletes make bold predictions, and if they are shut down, nobody calls them on it.
  
  What seems most important in America is that you have another boast in your bag if your first one falls through.
  
  Why this concerns me is that, in many ways, we have become a place more interested in telling you how good we are than in actually working to be that good. Somewhere along the line we fell so in love with having a positive self-image that good became great and mediocre was also great and lousy was great, too.

And another Riverside Bike lane letter

• I'm finding your blog to be an interesting foil to the established media. I check in regularly to see what's going on.
  
  I just read some of the comments about the bike lane controversy, and thought I would put my own (lengthy!) spin on it, and cycling in general:
  
  I was on the Windsor Bicycling Committee for three years (96,97,98), and Riverside Drive improvements were the hot issue. When major reconstruction is undertaken, such as after sewer work, the road has to be constructed to established standards. By these standards, the Drive would need to be widened. The plan was to take the wasted space between sidewalk and road, and use it to widen the lanes. This wouldn't work for the entire width, so some stretches would need to reclaim encroached land, and expropriation would be required in other instances.
  
  The consulting engineers were also faced with the task of traffic calming. They recommended the bike lanes as a traffic calming measure. This would narrow the car lanes, which apparently slows traffic. The road standards allow for a narrower car lane when combined with a bike lane.
  
  The point of this is that a reconstruction will widen the road, with or without bicycle lanes. So why have some bike riders become the heavies in this issue? Because it's a tactic to stop the whole project.
  
  One argument against widening the drive is that two lanes will become three or four at the whim of council. If one believes in the technical standards, that won't happen. I'm not sure if council can override these standards; however, the objective is to calm traffic, not to create a commuter superhighway for Tecumseh and Lakeshore.
  
  Another argument is the loss of some trees. I cannot say that this is a good thing. I can say that less car traffic will mitigate the negative environmental effects of tree loss.
  
  Assuming that more car lanes aren't going to happen, what's the next objection? Encroaching fences and walls will have to be pushed back or removed entirely. How do affected residents deal with this? They are not likely to attract much public sympathy. So, find another angle - go after the bike lanes.
  
  The fact that road improvements required widening with or without bike lanes was lost in the controversy. One opponent played the "child safety" card, stating that the lanes were unsafe for children; somehow it was implied that the city wanted kids on bikes to play in these lanes. Another cited the noise factor of bicycles, while others claimed that the lanes would cause traffic to pass too closely to cyclists. Suggestions were made to use Wyandotte St or link the Ganatchio Trail to a system of east-west back streets.
  
  When this finally went to council, advocates for both sides made their pitch. Council decided that night not to decide, but to defer a decision until the Windsor Area Long Range Transportation Study (WALTS) was completed, and the Bicycle Use Development Study was updated into the Bicycle Use Master Plan. Council did appoint a Riverside Drive resident to the Bicycling Committee. So, all of this has happened, and and we're back to where we were nine or ten years ago.
  
  Now, a new objection seems to be that the traffic calming measures aren't sufficient. Some want stop signs or traffic lights, others want 'bicycle boulevards' (see http://www.votealan2006.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=2), which looks to me like the first step towards a gated community.
  
  Since the bike lanes were implemented on the Drive west of Strabane, I have used these lanes in favour of Wyandotte Street. A single trip on a bike under the viaducts is enough to convince any cyclist that these lanes are superior. Farther east, in Pillette Village and Riverside, cyclists have to contend with on-street parking and the dangers of car doors opening, or the shifting of lanes, forcing what is essentially a lane change left into traffic. If Wyandotte is the preferred east-west route for cars, what better street for bikes than the Drive? Some have said that back street routes can accomplish the same objective for bikes. But these routes are really only adequate for short neighbourhood trips. Bike commuters, like car commuters, want the most efficient route.
  
  There are many opinions about the cyclist's place in traffic, but I offer these:
  
  1. the Highway Traffic Act defines vehicles to include bicycles ("vehicle" includes a motor vehicle, trailer, traction engine, farm tractor, road-building machine, bicycle and any vehicle drawn, propelled or driven by any kind of power, including muscular power, but does not include a motorized snow vehicle or a street car; http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/DBLaws/Statutes/English/90h08_e.htm)
  2. the City of Windsor prohibits bicycles with a wheel diameter greater than 26 inches from riding on sidewalks. This essentially allows children's bikes on sidewalks.
  3. municipal roads are financed primarily through property taxes. Bike riders aren't freeloading at motorists' expense.
  4. the number of cyclists breaking the law is exceeded by the number of drivers breaking the same laws.
  5. cyclists aren't required to have driver's licences or carry liability insurance. Bicycles are not registered or licenced.
  6. if every bike on the road equals one less car, then the traffic calming has already started.
  
  Opinions #1 and 2 mean that if bike lanes exist or not, bikes still belong on the road.
  Opinion 3 means that cars do not enjoy a special status because they pay fuel taxes.
  Opinion 4 means do not judge bicycle lane usage by the lawbreakers.
  Opinion 5 reflects the potential damage that motor vehicles represent compared to bicyles. Licencing revenue would be swallowed up in the administration of such a venture (does gun control sound familiar?). Many persons who cycle for economic reasons would be forced to walk. Kids would become outlaws.
  
  This leads one to consider who actually is a cyclist. Some do it because they have no alternative, some do it because they want to. Some don't have cars, and some do. A bike ride can be a shopping trip, a trip to work or school, a relaxing day outdoors, or part of a fitness regimen. The reasons are many. Automobile owners or property owners don't have special status that allows them to control access to public streets or determine the choice of transport. So the arguments about using other streets are groundless.
  
  This issue is bigger than homeowners on Riverside Drive. It's about transportation and recreation options. It's about making Windsor more attractive to tourists, and to the doctors we are trying so hard to move here. How can our local economy diversify from the automotive industry when all of our infrastructure serves only the automobile?
  
  In some yellowed letter to the Windsor Star, I invited council to ride the Drive with me, and I even offered to buy the coffee. No one has taken me up on the offer, but it still stands. And I extend the offer to you and your readers.
  
  thank you for the opportunity to voice my opinion