Council's Indian Road Pain

The ball is squarely in the court of the Mayor and City Council now. It is their problem, and their problem only to solve.

They have been put on notice that the Bridge Company is concerned about the risks to the neighbouring community and to City firefighters themselves if the City continues to prevent them from tearing down the abandoned homes on Indian Road. The absurdity if you read the letter is that the City is also preventing them from building a higher fence to try to keep people away from the homes.

As I Blogged previously, one of their homes was destroyed by fire just at the time when DRIC made their announcement about the new bridge.

A coincidence? A fire at the property owned by the Company described by the City of Windsor in inflammatory language as its "enemy." In the A-Channel news story yesterday about this matter, the reporter used the word "arson" in describing the fire that took place http://www.achannel.ca/windsor/news_59246.aspx

In my opinion, the Mayor has no choice but to instruct Administration immediately to deal with the Bridge Company to resolve this issue immediately. After all, Eddie has claimed that he is the Voice of Council so the responsibility is his. If he refuses to do so, then Council, and especially the Ward 2 Councillors, better do something very quickly. They no longer can close their eyes to a public safety concern that has been presented to them in black-and-white.

It is fine for the Mayor to try and pass on the responsibility to the Bridge Company to act. He always has to pass the buck because he refuses to take the blame for anything. However, as the Reporter stated, not only have their demolition permit requests been refused but their proposal presented to Council with the Green Corridor group was ignored. My recollection as well is that someone from Planning stated that even if the Bridge Company applied, Administration would recommend rejection of their demolition requests while the CIP was in progress.

I'm afraid that the Mayor and Council have boxed themselves in. They are finding that this matter is a much larger problem than they thought. If they are not careful and something serious does happen such that there is personal injury or property damage, then they may suffer personal "pain" as well.