Just Doing More Thinking

When it is this warm out so early in the year, there is nothing better than sitting by the pool thinking deep thoughts such as these:

COUNCILLOR MARRA'S TUNNEL MOTION

Councillor Halberstadt's BLOG over the DRIC road is really confusing me. He said:

1) "But first up is the decision on the Windsor route to the new bridge, which will see the 401 extended along the existing Huron Church corridor. The key is how this route will be constructed"

2) "City Council met privately last night and the night before to hash out its preliminary position on the DRIC blueprints. New York transportation guru Sam Schwartz, with a full team of technicians, is back in town and ready to engage in intense modelling with the provinces's engineers to hopefully find a compromise on the route's many nuances. "

So we learn that the DRIC corridor is to be used and that Schwartz is here to "compromise" the "nuances" whatever those are.

Now please excuse me but didn't Council demand that the entire corridor be tunnelled? Wasn't that the object of the Marra Motion? Isn't that how certain Council members got elected or re-elected? Wasn't that the basis for so many Henderson columns? Were Windsorites played?

In a letter to the Star, Councillor Marra quoted the Mayor:

• "Why tunnelling is the best option. "If they are serious about the well-being of Windsorites, they (DRIC) can commit to a tunnel," stated Mayor Eddie Francis on March 29. I could not agree more with the mayor."

Oh well, the legal mind of the Mayor will find a loop-hole in the Marra Motion so big that you can drive a truck through it!

BOYCOTTING CITY HALL

Oh I would hate to see the in camera vs public meetings report for the 2nd quarter of 2007! All of these secret border meetings with Sam Schwartz and his team. At least two days' worth. I wonder what the charges will be for Sam "with a full team of technicians."

I hear some of the reporters were very angry that they found out about the sessions on Councillor Halberstadt's BLOG. It's a tough way to make a living when you are scooped by a Councillor who attended the meetings. Their News bosses must be furious.

Why they allow themselves to be used this way is beyond me. While Eddie may love it, it would seem to me that the way to stop this practice is for the City Hall reporters not to attend anything to do with the Mayor and Council.

A reader sent me this note about the whole event:

• "Doesn't it annoy anyone that Eddie waits until the 11th hour to pull these stunts? Why not have Sam start doing this work a year ago and give yourself lots of lead time to talk and negotiate with the DRIC. Nope - he waits until two weeks before they are set to release plans and flies in NY consultants and holds two-day strategy sessions. Ridiculous."

LACK OF CONGESTION ON HURON CHURCH

It's time that Marty Beneteau, Editor of the Star, slam the Mayor again.

Remember the vicious Guest Column he wrote, "Chaos on Huron Church" complaining about speeding on Huron Church

• "You could do a brisk business peddling St. Christopher medals to the HC commuters forced to navigate trucks that think they're cars, cars that think they're at Indy and stoplights that get ignored like a flight attendant doing her pre-flight spiel...
  
  Huron Church serves up more where's-a-cop-when-you-need-one moments than any other.
  
  Take Thursday, 6:30 p.m. Southbound on HC, doing an acceptable imitation of the 60 km/h speed limit, I was approaching the light at Grand Marais. A guttural moan and the gleaming grey snout of a tractor-trailer appeared on my right. I'm being passed like yesterday's news, easily at 80 clicks."

Nothing seems to have changed as we read the other day about the car/truck collision involving a four-door Pontiac G6 that was overturned. We learned:

• "Last month the Huron Church Road Enforcement Detail issued 131 traffic violations, including 65 tickets for speeding, 20 traffic signal violations and 46 other miscellaneous violations.
  
  "We are continually enforcing there,"

That echoed what the Deputy Chief of Police had said previously about his problem being speeders on Huron Church.

As I said once before:

• "There is the very subliminal message in the Column...
  
  One does not dare in Windsor give them any credit if one wants to be part of the "in-crowd" but isn't one of the messages being delivered that there is no truck backup problem on Huron Church any longer.
  
  Here is the "official" confirmation by the Star Editor no less that the Bridge Co. has done such a good job with its new Customs booths and making sure that they are staffed to keep traffic moving smoothly that the real problem on Huron Church is speeders..."

THE DETROIT/WINDSOR TUNNEL DEAL

Who knows what the real story behind this is. The Detroit News reported that:

• "The [Detroit] council today opted to sell bonds to balance the city's $1.4 billion general fund budget, in lieu of leasing Detroit's share of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. Kilpatrick's team is negotiating a lease deal with the city of Windsor that could lead to a one-time payment to the city of $58 million, but the deal is not done....
  

  
  Kilpatrick has said he will approach the council for tunnel deal approval in mid- to late June."

Let's try and figure out what the possibilities are:

1. Cliff Sutts figured out that the deal made little sense and that he had a risk since he "emphasized the deal will not be completed until he is fully assured local taxpayers will not be hurt. "We will be extraordinarily cautious so costs of the acquisition will be self-supporting of the project itself," he said. "That there will be no need to go to the well of the city to support this transaction."



2. There never was a deal but this was done by Eddie to help out Kwame at budget time to beg forgiveness for seemingly supporting Freman Hendrix for Mayor. After all, Kwame knows Roger Penske better than Eddie



3. Kwame (and Council) know Eddie desperately needs the deal. Now that they have suckered him in for US$75M, they may as well see how high they can get him to go.



4. Kwame knows the Feds will put in a good chunk of the money...Next time they won't threaten him on a Tunnel deal as they did previously



5. The City of Detroit wants to "relocate three sets of cement silos" for their waterfront project. Eddie was concerned that to make the move easier, Detroit "could fill [the Tunnel] up with cement and our investment would be lost."



6. Eddie is so fixated on the Bridge Co. that he wanted them to know that anything they can do, he can do better. He can do anything better than them. Of course the money that he is using is our money, not his, but that is a quibble.



7. Eddie is acting as an agent for DRTP which is trying to corner the tunnel market in Windsor.



8. Eddie's new favourite reading is about the Chunnel's bankruptcy.



9. Eddie needs the difference between the $75M and the $58M to help pay for the Engineering complex to get the University to move downtown into the urban village because certain Windsorites will not support a taxpayer levy similar to the hospital levy.



10. Eddie needs a Tunnel, any tunnel, to get Gord Henderson off his back when Eddie reneges on building a tunnel from Highway 401 to the Ambassador Bridge. I mean, after all "If European engineers can burrow deep under the English Channel and connect Britain to the mainland for the first time in 8,000 years, Canadian engineers can surely find a way to dig a few kilometres along Huron Church Road. "