Spit It Out

If you watched Council, then you will know exactly what I'm talking about. If you did not, then you were fortunate.

Do you know what is worse than the arrogance of Eddie Francis as Mayor of the City of Windsor? It is the timidity of the Members of Council who sit there and are abused by the Mayor and who refuse to tell him where to go. They should have the guts to walk out of the Council Chambers publicly when he gets into one of his moods. How can they have such little respect for themselves and for those who voted for them by allowing Eddie to get away with such childish behaviour?

They need to put him in his place already. It is as simple as that. We saw the precedent set with ex-Mayor Hurst. It would be much easier this time around.

Another Eddie Francis lecture and dressing down of Councillors, on the airport this time. Another scolding by the teacher of the errant pupils. It is remarkable to watch grown adults allowing themselves to be treated in such a manner.

Only Councillor Dilkens had the nerve to say that he was not pleased with what was going on. He never received any airport minutes, he never receive any financial reports about the airport. The answer to him was disgraceful. He's not entitled to anything don't you know. Council approved the airport being a separate, private company. It's not like the Windsor Utilities Commission which is part of the City. The airport is separate and distinct. It gets our money, as I will point out below, and the Mayor is the head of it but unfortunately the Airport Corporation does not have to tell us anything about its operations.

I guess Councillors didn't understand what they were voting for when they set up an Airport Corporation. They voted for secrecy. They voted for lack of openness and transparency. They voted away control of a valuable City asset. Oh well.

And again this view that the Mayor has of the world that if you say something negative than that is terrible and is destroying the unity that he is trying to create. What it really means is that he cannot tolerate anyone saying that he might be wrong or anyone criticizing him.

That's what is wrong with this Council. They are afraid to open their mouths when they know that the City is falling apart because they can see it firsthand. They are part of it.

Their sin is not saying something negative. Their sin is not saying anything when they know that something is wrong. It is time for the sinners on Council to start repenting and doing their jobs for which they were elected. They have a legal responsibility to the citizens of Windsor.

It is not that Eddie is so smart frankly. Look at his negotiations that I've talked about before. Look at his failure to manage the Tunnel properly, losing revenues and market share, no finalization of the deal with Detroit and no Tunnel improvements. I won't even talk about his border failures because it is becoming so tedious. The joke of it all now is that the Councillors just gave him the airport too.

What a nerve. He sits at the front with all the information at his fingertips since he micromanages everything and apparently shares very little with his Council colleagues as Councillor Dilkens pointed out. What a lack of respect. What a disgrace. And they sit there and the Councillors take it like children.

You had to watch it. You had to see the look on his face as the Mayor demanded of the Councillors that they "Spit it out." They had to tell him which slide out of all of the slides that were shown was the most important. Just like a teacher. When no one answered, I was surprised he did not give them all a detention and make them write lines.

The airport debate at City Council was enlightening. The Star headline reads:

• "City airport turns corner on losses."

Oh please, the Star has to stop this kind of nonsense. The only reason given why money was being made is that the airport did not have a full complement of staff. In other words payroll savings was the reason for a "profit" being shown not revenues.

But don't you worry, the City will continue to pay each month $27,000 to the airport although it wasn't needed. A nice reserve don't you think and a nice chunk of money being built up. Why in a year that will be over a quarter of a million dollars for someone to spend. And you know that Council can't control that spending because it's in a private corporation headed by the Mayor.

The one thing that hit me immediately was that the Woodslee Credit Union should ask for its money back and so should the Councils of Windsor and the County. All that Mr. Mancini needs to do now is to call up the airport general manager and ask her for her presentation. With a bit of tweaking, the Gazelle Feeders could use it.

If you listened to the presentation and the discussion afterwards, I believe that Detroit airport was barely mentioned. Do you remember Detroit airport and Aerotroplis? Did somebody forget about this and neglect to mention it:

• "By increasing passenger and cargo traffic at Detroit Metro and Willow Run airports, the Detroit area could create a model for economic development that is ahead of the international curve. An aerotropolis between the two airports would take advantage of 25,000 acres of undeveloped property for industrial parks, hospitality centers, entertainment, and rapid transit centers."

With the City's opposition to anything to do with the border crossing, do you really believe that the international cargo companies are going to set up operations at Windsor Airport? Speed and efficiency of the transportation network are important but we can't even agree on a road to the Ambassador Bridge yet. The only cargo that will land in Windsor is that bound for Puce and Chatham.

You just have to listen to the amateurs who think that they can play in the big leagues. I am certain that Federica Nazzani is a very bright person but what's her experience in running an airport or developing a multimodal hub? I'm certain that the people who work at Windsor airport are all very loyal and caring employees but what do they know about running a major international airport hub?

• "Aerotropolis centers exist or are being planned in Ontario, California; Las Colinas in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas; Paris, France; Campinas, Brazil; Lantau Island, Hong Kong; Seoul, Korea; and Wayne County, Michigan."

I did not see Windsor's name being mentioned there.

What's wrong with this City? It is the arrogance that we see every day. Can you believe it, 16 of the major aviation companies in the world were interested in Windsor Airport, and three them actually prepared an answer to the Request for Proposal. We dismissed them out of hand. We're not interested in them. We know more than they do.

Did we tell the people who we are disqualifying that there were problems with their RFP? Absolutely not. Eddie told us that they knew they were not answering the RFP properly so why bother telling them anything. When did we tell them that they were disqualified... right after the closing in June? Absolutely not. We never told them. They learned about it when the Administration report came out four months later. That's the way to treat international companies. That's the way to be inviting to business investors. Use them and then get rid of them after they have served their purpose.

The airport's general manager saw 30 companies and made major presentation to all of them. Not one ever said no to hearing what Windsor has to say. What an honour for us. And the result is... nothing. No business. What we learned is that some of the carriers would be interested in coming to Windsor provided that the price was right in City incentives. That's really why they listened to her, to see how much they could sucker out of us.

There is no point in getting all upset about it anyway. The whole thing has nothing to do with the airport. That's all a huge diversion so we will focus on the unimportant. Who the heck wants passengers anyway, there's no money in that. It all has to do with cargo and logistics and distribution. It all has to do with land and the thousands of acres around the airport.

Who will pay to service the lands and who will profit from the shovel ready lands being created are the key elements in this drama. I remember Mr. Fischer when he presented at Council sometime ago making it a given that taxpayers will pay for all of these servicing costs.

Councillor Valentinis set it up so nicely. We should thank him for letting us know that it is going to cost us big time. We need a "funding strategy" to service the lands according to the Councillor. We need to make the airport more attractive before we can ever expect anybody to be interested in it.

Our role model must be Hamilton. The Councillor formerly known as Council Budget seemed to know so much about Hamilton that he was able to ask so many intelligent questions about it. They sunk in a tremendous amount of money I believe into their airport and into what they are doing there. Unfortunately, Hamilton has not received any money from their investment so far. I guess that's our future too.

It's just another example of Council being irrelevant and citizens being kept in the dark. Aren't you tired of it already? Considering how much is going to cost, aren't you scared about it already? Thanks to Gord Henderson's column today, we have another THINK BIG dream on the horizon that Windsorites can salivate over as our taxes zoom higher to pay for it.