More Quickies

Here are some more quick thoughts for you

GORD REVEALS ALL

I just cannot believe what he wrote. He has pulled back the curtain in OZ and shown us the Wizard. He has pointed the finger at the Emperor and his lack of clothes.

If you truly want to understand what has gone on in Windsor over the last four years with Eddie Francis as Mayor and what will continue to go on until such time as he is replaced, I can do no better than quote the last sentence of Gord's column of November 6, 2007. This encapsulates so well everything about what Eddie Francis is and why this City is a mess.

"Plenty of vision. Lots of great pictures. But no cash. The story of our lives."

Do I hear you saying Greenlink? Or THINK BIG?

It has all been talk hasn't it. Visions of what Windsor can be in speeches. Nice artists' renditions. But no action. And where there has been some, such as the arena, it was due to third-party forces. No wonder people are suggesting facetiously that Tecumseh offer to build a bridge across the river to force Eddie to do something!

To give you a good example of what I mean, you only need to read Henderson's column about the lack of money to build the University complex downtown that would have solved all of our problems and then look at the story on page 2 that says

• "$1M upgrade allows arena to host shows"

When Eddie ran for Mayor, he wanted a public/private partnership to operate an arena downtown with a maximum City contribution of $15 million. We are already at almost $65 million for a City owned and operated arena in the East end and counting. Even assuming that this is the maximum cost, and we know it's not, we are out $50 million. And here we have Henderson writing another one of his columns talking about the $58 million downtown project that should be built. Or even a second-best project at $35-$45M.

You can do the math as well as I and see why the City can't do anything right and why we don't have the money for it. You cannot blame the University for being financially prudent. You can blame the Mayor and Council for reversing their position for reasons unknown. You can blame them for what they have done and the fiscal problems they have brought to the City because they were afraid of Project Ice Track going to Tecumseh as they drove the Toldos and Rosatis out of town.

Perhaps we might make a few bucks by selling off the artists' renditions to get back some cash.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO...

Wasn't there supposed to be an item discussed at Council with respect to the border? I remember from the video scrum posted on the Windsor Star website that the Mayor said that there would be something discussed last Monday. I wonder what happened.

Maybe that was encompassed in Councillor Halberstadt's question about border legal costs that were buried in the Communications package. We learned that the marketing costs are an extra over and above the almost $3.4 million discussed.

It cannot be about the US$75 million Tunnel deal. I hear there's no news about that even though the teams are supposedly working so hard still to accomplish something. And we are still waiting for the Public Open House on the Tunnel Improvement project that was postponed last February I believe. I thought it might have to do with the road to the border but I wonder if the technical teams from DRIC and the City have even met yet.

I guess we'll just have to keep on waiting until the Mayor decides to tell us something at Council.

USING THE DOWNTOWN MOSAIC

I am slow. I admit it. It took me all this time to figure out why Larry Horwitz was Gord's big hero and why he showed up in Gord's column so many times in such a short time period.

You see, Gord needs a DWBIA foil so that when all of Eddie's downtown plans fail miserably, he can use someone to be optimistic and to give us hope.

I've only met Larry once but I've read a lot about him in Henderson's columns over the years and I think that he is a very progressive and interesting person. He is certainly dedicated to the downtown and wants to make it grow. For that is to be congratulated.

That job used to be filled by Marc Boscariol. He was a big Eddie booster and to be fair he had to be. He had $2 million of his own money tied up in his projects downtown. He needed downtown to succeed.

In my view, both of them made serious mistakes in thinking that Eddie will do anything to help the downtown. The arena didn't go downtown, 311 centre is not going downtown, the Capitol Theatre will be tied up in litigation forever, what urban village, and I don't want to talk about St. Clair College and the University of Windsor. More distractions. If we actually had the border being fixed up, there would be many hundreds of out-of-town workers filling up hotel rooms and seats in restaurants for the next several years as the road and the Enhancement Project were being built here.

WHY THE UNIVERSITY OF WINDSOR DID NOT GO DOWNTOWN

"No truth to rumours of a bitter split" on the University Board. Oh please. They may be all united now but that wasn't the case before.

I am so tired with BS about why the University did not go downtown. I think it's time that someone from the University actually go public, make a statement and answer questions to tell us what really happened.

Who on the Board of the University and in the Administration of the University were pushing for buildings to go downtown without doing any kind of significant cost analysis to see if it made sense and what impact it would have on students? Who on the Board and in Administration fought the battle, not necessarily not to go downtown, but to see if it made sense for the University, as a university, to move and not put the University and its students in jeopardy merely to be a catalyst for a downtown rejuvenation to save the career of Eddie Francis.

We need to know who actually saved the University from financial ruin and saved a number of students from being hurt in their education and who was interested in an ego building exercise.

All of a sudden now we are hearing from "Marty Komsa, outgoing board of governors chairman, board members were hugely excited about the proposal from university president Ross Paul, but it simply couldn't be justified financially...Another drawback, said Komsa, is that engineering students in their first three semesters need immediate access to the main campus, which would be 2.1 kilometres away."

Did you hear any of these remarks when this was all first announced?

Henderson's diatribe against the University is totally uncalled for. His comment

• "Meanwhile, the downtown limps from crisis to crisis while our university, historically disconnected from a host community it needs to embrace, continues to huddle in perfect isolation in its below-the-bridge academic ghetto."

is an insult to people whose function it is to ensure that the University survives. Gord just does not dare put the blame where it is deserved. In the circumstances, the question to ask is whether Gord will demand that Eddie contribute to the University's plans for its new complex no matter where it is located since it will help the City of Windsor.

NO SPACE AVAILABLE

I guess that was the reason. I was already to Blog this item:

• I'm sure that you saw the story on page 3 in the Tuesday Star about the Capitol Theatre. It was a good story except if you have not read the online version, you would have missed a key part of it.
  
  Here is what was deleted, probably because of a lack of space on page 3:
  
  "Mayor Eddie Francis said despite the board's good intentions, he sees no quick end to the Capital fight.
  
  "The board has hired a lawyer and they believe they can negotiate a settlement with the trustee with the city writing the cheque," he said. "I just hope they are not being misinformed or somebody is providing them with misleading information as to what the city is prepared to do.
  
  "They seem to believe the city will come in and write a cheque and we are not prepared to do that. We are trying to get in front of a court to argue the validity of the mortgage. We believe the building and property belong to the City of Windsor."
  
  Silly me, I would have thought that the Mayor's position was a key element to include in the story and the published version. What it says is that the Mayor chooses to litigate rather than to resolve anything. Isn't that important for people to know?
  
  But for the online version, the readers of the Star would never know about what he has to say about this. Council ought to be outraged at the Mayor's position, the arts community should be and so should taxpayers. This matter can be settled so simply that it is ridiculous and instead our Mayor wants to fight lawsuits and pay legal fees.

However, there were the key paragraphs in the second story by the Star.

Should the Star have published the story they did or waited another day for the whole story? I'll let journalism professors figure that out and what the role of the Internet is and how it impacts how newspapers carry on business in the age of instantaneous news.

As for me, I'll just ask the question why there is no desire to have settlement talks when there is a new "legal" Capitol Board. It seems odd....we just had a speaker in town telling us how we might save the downtown and yet we seem ready to stand by as a key ingredient in keeping it alive passes away. The Star rants and raves about the downtown yet says nothing and does not demand that Eddie sit down and resolve the mess.

Why?