Tolling Water Usage

Poor Larry Horwitz. After saying all those nice things about the downtown and being quoted so much in Gord Henderson's column, this happens to him. Is there no justice?

You know already that the Santa Claus parade has gone to Sandwich from the downtown killing business for his members. Then, just after he becomes the head of the Downtown business group, the Windsor/Detroit Tunnel participates in an offering by a US mall owner of $20 each to the first 2007 users of the Tunnel on the big shopping day in Detroit.

• "Horwitz said the Downtown Windsor BIA represents 650 businesses. “I’m working extremely hard trying to bring business to the downtown core ... and the corporation that is funded and paid for by our taxpayers is actually giving out incentives to shop in the United States,” he said.
  
  “The fact that this is happening just shows that there’s no grand vision in terms of creating a balanced and stable downtown core, as well as the city as a whole."

Obviously, the expectation is that if a shopper makes the effort to get up at 5 a.m. in the morning and will go to a shopping mall in Detroit to cash in the voucher, that person will spend a whole bunch of money in Detroit. Which means that Horwitz's members and other Windsor retailers lose out on all that money. If it is a couple of hundred dollars per person, well you can figure out the math as well as I can.

I thought that the Mayor's response was rather muted don't you think. Mind you, he is the head of the Tunnel Commission, or should we be saying Tunnel Corporation, as well as being the Mayor of Windsor. I wonder if the US mall developer paid the Tunnel some big bucks for the promotion. That helps out the Tunnel but what does it do for Windsor retailers? You see what I mean about the inherent conflict of interest that the Mayor/Chair of the Tunnel Commission has!

It seems all that the Mayor could say was

• "Told of the promotion, Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis said it was the first time he’d heard about it.
  
  Although the City of Windsor owns the Canadian side, Francis said tunnel staff aren’t city employees.
  
  “The Detroit-Windsor Tunnel is operated by the Alinda corporation, and the Alinda corporation, under the former DCTC, are the ones responsible for the operations of the facilities,” he said.
  
  Francis said companies which arrange advertising promotions at the tunnel deal with the operators directly, and don’t need the City of Windsor’s permission.
  
  Francis compared the vouchers to Detroit businesses taking out an ad in a Windsor newspaper or a Windsor radio station. “They run ... a variety of advertisements through local media, and this is one media they’re choosing to use.”
  
  Francis said with the Canadian dollar so strong compared to the U.S. dollar, more shoppers are bound to be going to Michigan."

Lots of excuses. A rather defeatist attitude I thought too. Where was the gung ho, pro-Windsor Mayor that we are supposed to unite behind to speak positively about our region? Where is our Civic Booster par excellence? Where is the "Shop in Windsor" rhetoric that I would have expected from a Mayor in a situation like this? Where is the "I can't stop the promotion this time but by heavens it's never going to happen again at my Tunnel" anger that I would have expected and the calling up on the carpet of the operator's manager?

This silence on the Mayor's part really bothered me. Could it be that he didn't want to get his friends in Detroit upset at him so that they would not let him sponsor more of their events like the Super Bowl and the Detroit Grand Prix? In the past and with the predecessor company to Alinda, if they did something wrong, the Mayor had no hesitation in taking a shot at them:

• "The tunnel commission has expressed its position to the DCTC," Francis said. "The (joint operating agreement) is very specific."

Who knows, maybe there is nothing in the JOA that deals with this. Or is there something more that we don't know about?

Could it be, and this is just absolutely pure speculation on my part, that the operator of the Tunnel, Alinda, will be your next water supplier? Yes, that's right...responsible for clean water and fixing up watermains.

You must be thinking that I have too much lead in my waterpipes to make such an outrageous statement like this. Well just a minute, there is a reason for my observation.

If you read the financial pages, you may note that

• "Alinda Infrastructure Fund I also closed earlier in the year on $3bn - three times its original $1bn target."

Three times higher than expected! It has "approximately $10 billion in purchasing power." Well that's a lot of cash to have to spend to keep investors happy.

And what would make investors happy these days: infrastructure. Alinda Capital Partners is an

• "independent private investment firm specializing in infrastructure assets that provide essential services to communities, businesses and governments....Specific sectors of interest include transportation, energy, power, water and wastewater, and utility services for residential, commercial and industrial customers."

How many times have we heard Councillor Lewenza, the chair of the Windsor Utilities Commission, tell us how important water is for drinking and showering. Why it is so essential to our well-being. Starting to make sense yet?

Alinda is already involved in the Tunnel and bridges in Alabama. And take a look at this! Is this why Eddie didn't dump on Alinda? Could Alinda be a potential saviour for our Mayor by providing him with a ton of money for the Tunnel, WUC and maybe even Enwin too? You remember that Gord Henderson column involving his secret friend Jim and the statement:

• "It would take immense political courage, but the only real fix for the Windsor Utilities Commission and Enwin might be to blow up these bloated organizations and start over...
  
  The way to really fix this mess, said Jim, would be to shut down WUC and Enwin Powerlines operations and hand them over, on contract, to the private sector to run on a turnkey basis."

Making more sense now?

Here's the clincher. Read about "South Staffordshire Plc [which] comprises South Staffordshire Water, a regulated water supply company, together with a number of complementary non-regulated activities focussed on customer contact management, supply of spring and mineral water and repair and maintenance of water and sewerage infrastructure" and what Alinda did. Now you know why I am speculating the way I am. Is our infrastructure next:

• Arcapita Announces Sale of South Staffordshire PLC to Alinda
  29 October 2007
  
  London – 29 October 2007 – Arcapita Bank B.S.C.(c), a leading international investment firm headquartered in Bahrain, announced today that it and its affiliates have sold South Staffordshire Plc, the UK based water company, to the Alinda Infrastructure Fund, a USD 3 billion institutional fund managed by Alinda Capital Partners LLC, an independent private investment firm, for an undisclosed amount.
  
  Arcapita acquired South Staffordshire in November 2004. Since then, Arcapita has worked closely with the management team in building the business and this is particularly reflected in the growth of the three non-regulated businesses, which include the establishment of the Echo outsourced customer contact management operation in Belfast and of the specialist Water & Wastewater businesses serving the UK water utility industry.
  
  South Staffordshire Water has been consistently ranked in the top three in Ofwat’s performance assessment for the past seven years and has 99.97 per cent compliance with EU water quality standards.
  
  Qaisar Zaman, Arcapita’s European Head of Asset-Based Investment, commented:
  
  "We have been very pleased to have owned South Staffordshire and to have contributed to its growth. We are particularly proud of the high levels of service and quality it has achieved. It is one of the best performing water companies in the UK with one of the lowest household bills for customers."
  
  Chris Beale, Managing Partner of Alinda, said:
  
  "This is an excellent strategic fit for us. South Staffordshire is a well established business with an outstanding operating history, a reputation for customer excellence, a strong management team and dedicated employees. This transaction will be seamless for South Staffordshire’s customers, who will continue to receive the same high quality and service."