It's March 4, 2003 All Over Again

In case you have forgotten, that day was a Tuesday. Because Premier Ernie Eves was in town on the Monday to accept an award, and that night was memorable for a number of events that took place, the regular Monday Council meeting was rescheduled for the next day.

When Councillor Charlie Hotham stood up to then Mayor Hurst and told him in no uncertain terms that there would be a vote that night on a number of border matters, Hurst’s mayoral career ended. From that night on until the end of his term, Mike could not win a vote on anything that he was interested in, no matter what the subject.

The whole episode around that evening became very controversial and right in the middle of it was then Councillor Eddie Francis. He should have recognized when he became Mayor that he should never allow such a split with Council to happen to him.

Has he forgotten that the lesson of history? Has he so conducted himself as Mayor that Councillors have finally had enough? Has the rebellion started such that our Mayor is now in the position that Mike was in just over five years ago?

Ironically, it may be the border issue that will bring Eddie down the way the border issue did with Mike.

Unfortunately, citizens may never know for quite some time what the answer is. With Mike, it was easy. It happened in public at a Council meeting. I saw it happen live because I was in the Chambers that night while many others watched it on Cogeco Cable TV. Still others could learn about it through the traditional media who reported on it the next day.

However, with this Council. Things are still done in secret, in in camera sessions, behind closed doors. What we have to do is to try and guess what is going on.

Two strange events that have taken place last week that may give us a hint of what is going on:

1. the offer from an unnamed person to buy the City’s parking garage that was presented to Council ( We now know that it was the Mikhails who wanted to be the purchaser thanks to Gord’s column disclosure)
   
   
2. Eddie’s interview on EH News where it appears that DRIC rejected his latest compromise Greenlink solution.

I must admit that the parking garage matter was most bizarre. I am not sure that I understand why the matter was even brought in front of Council the way it was. That is not how the City ought to do business. Why the proposal was not rejected out of hand before it even got to Council is beyond me.

I suspect that it may have had something to do with respect to the TD Bank building that is to be constructed downtown because whoever controls that garage might have a leg up on getting the Bank of business.

• “What's the first question everyone asks me? 'Where's the parking?' I want to be able to say to those people (CEOs and boards of directors) that I have control over parking, to induce them to go downtown," explained Mikhail.”

It is not really worth speculating about.

The Henderson column was quite brutal I thought to members of Council if one wanted to look at it at way:

• “Money is apparently not an issue for the Velcro-sealed minds on council who turned thumbs down this week to an offer from Mikhail Holdings Ltd. to acquire the 578-space parking structure at Chatham and Goyeau as a tool to lure white-collar investment to Windsor.
  
  Note and file. With those slam-the-door words, council told developers Joe and Lou Mikhail, without even finding out their names, to take their money and their big ambitions for downtown and buzz off. In the end, only three -- Fulvio Valentinis, Dave Brister and Alan Halberstadt -- had the smarts to want to pursue the issue further and at least get some questions answered.”

However, this was one of the Sheriff’s columns. He was at the head of the Star Reporter posse again leading the charge provided you understood what he was really saying. Forget the rest of the column; here was the key line. It comes from Joe MikHail’s mouth, not Gord’s to protect the innocent:

• “Mikhail said Mayor Eddie Francis and CAO John Skorobohacz are a pleasure to deal with. But it bugs him to no end that councillors weren't prepared to learn more.”

What this tells me is that there is a significant split on Council that we had never seen before. Eddie did not get his way. What Eddie has done throughout his entire mayoral career is to try desperately to maintain a façade at least of unity amongst the Councillors. He did not want his term in office to be called dysfunctional caused by a split Council as happened under Hurst. So while seemingly attacking Council, the Sheriff is telling us that there is a split with the Mayor.

Wishful thinking on my part? Perhaps. But I would not be making the comments I am making based on this alone. It was the television interview that clinched it for me.

What a wimpy performance by the Mayor. Some called it sombre, others called it subdued while others called it defeatist, as if he knew it was all over. Here he is spending of thousands of taxpayer dollars again on a new Greenlink proposal and the Province rejects it out of hand with the Mayor saying that he doubts if they will ever change your mind.

The old Francis would have denounced DRIC and the Province in language that I could not post because this is a G-rated BLOG. After all, instead of being pleased as the Chief of Police was about having a new Jail in Windsor that would create jobs here, Eddie denounced the Province because it might cost a few extra dollars to transport prisoners to the Courthouse. He could have come up with the solution that the Chief did which was to ask the Province to pay for the costs. Instead, he whined and was a naysayer.

Why didn’t he do this with respect to the DRIC rejection of his new brilliant Greenlink compromise solution? I did not hear David Estrin’s name thrown around. I did not hear about another threatened lawsuit or Statement of Claim being issued. He just whimped out and said that the City would present some material to the Minister of the Environment for him to consider.

How could this be? Clearly Eddie was the Voice of Council and did pretty much did everything he wanted to do with respect to the border matter. He would go to Council and update them when he thought it necessary and get a Council Resolution when matters got iffy. After all, if something fell apart he would want to blame it on Council. And what would be better than a nice Council Resolution to which he could point and say if things turned out badly

• “It is all of their fault. They voted on it. They made me do it.”

Accordingly, one has to believe that Eddie would never start a lawsuit on his own. He would, for his own protection, get Council authorization or perhaps even a Council Resolution that he could wave in the face of the DRIC guys if push came to shove.

One has to make the assumption then that he went in front of Council in the in camera session on Monday and told his colleagues that he was going to be meeting with the DRIC on the Tuesday. I am certain that there must have been conversations that had been undertaken between the City and DRIC before Monday so that Eddie would have a pretty good idea of what DRIC’s position would be during their meeting. Alternatively, Eddie would want to cover himself for every eventuality.

Whichever is the real situation, and it does not matter, Eddie must have asked for permission to threaten or even sue DRIC if they did not knuckle under to his compromise. And this time, I am sure that he must have told Council, he was going to litigate. After all, how many times can he be allowed to “Cry wolf!”

Clearly, given his poor performance during the Daryl Newcombe interview, Council rebuffed him and did not give him the authority that he must have demanded. Instead, it seems that Council must have told him NO to litigation.

I can just imagine how furious our Mayor must have been when he did not get his own way. It would have been interesting to know who is this Council’s Charlie Hotham! Someone would have had to have led the charge.

I wonder if there was a vote and, if so, how many opposed the Mayor. I doubt if the Mayor actually called for a vote because if he had then it would be officially written in the in camera Minutes that he had lost. Presumably, everyone was doing number counting as Councillors were speaking and it was clear that the Mayor would not get his majority.

Was it a matter of trust? I remember for example that the issue of trusting Eddie came up with STOPDRTP around the time of the Schwartz Report. There was a real split within that group about the answer. Did the same issue arise at Council? Did the majority of Council no longer trust the Mayor to be able to do the job? Can it be considered that if a vote took place, it was a vote of non-confidence in his ability? Has Council finally realized that Eddie has failed on the border and that he is dragging down their careers along with him?

Was it annoyance? Were some of his colleagues finally tired of accurate but narrow answers from the Mayor? Imagine how they must feel if they only found out about the results of his Tuesday meeting by watching television news. Did they consider that his interview on television was designed as a pressure ploy to force them to reconsider what they had just agreed upon a few days before.

Was it fear? Did someone to talk to them and say that if there was litigation, then the Senior Levels would walk away as was suggested by the MITI Minister’s Office call to Chris Schnurr?

Was it self-preservation? Perhaps Councillors were contacted off the record by private industry who is fed up with a nonfunctioning border or the construction industry who is losing out on all of this work or the unions who want those 15,000 jobs. They understand that they cannot make enemies of everyone in this City and expect to be reelected!

I wish I knew what the answer was. But I don’t. I can only speculate and read tea leaves. In Windsor, with this Council, even if they oppose the Mayor, they only do it in private. So far.

It will be interesting to see if the advocates of open and transparent Government finally have the nerve to let the people know and to let us see what is really going on.

In the meantime, if you see me ordering at a restaurant a cup of tea, then you will know why. I am becoming more involved in tasseography.