The Real Border War Has Started

When the Greenlink banner at the front of the City Hall Chambers comes down, will that be the sign that Eddie has surrendered completely? Will the Voice of Council then be silenced forever? Will it be total capitulation or will the Senior Levels be gracious in victory and allow the Mayor to save face?

The phony war is over and the first shot of the real war has begun. What will the Mayor of our small town do now? He asked for it and now he’s going to get it.

Instead of being a participant in the process, he has squandered all of the goodwill that the public generated at the time that he was first elected. I am certain that you remember when the Premier and Prime Minister were eating out of his hand in the good old days. Do you remember when the US Ambassador was so cooperative?

Look at us now, squabbling with everybody and achieving little of what the Mayor has spent millions of dollars trying to accomplish:

• Schwartz report—failed
• Full tunneling—failed
• Greenlink—failed
• Son of Greenlink—another failure.

Backing off, backing off and compromising. The “C” word was always the City’s position. Councillor Valentinis has in effect told us so on Face-to-Face recently. That is why Councillor Halberstadt was dumped on for revealing the Mayor’s strategy inadvertently. Now Eddie is not compromising; he is pleading.

That is what happens when one bluffs and loses. It is the immature way to negotiate. Demand everything and then back off to what you really want. That only works when one is in a position of power, which this City was never in. It only works when the other side does not understand your game.

I am certain that you saw the ad in today’s Windsor Star run by the DRIC team. Unless there is something in there that caves in to the demands of the Mayor with respect to Schwunnels, then Eddie has lost. Just to be blunt about it, the DRIC Road had 1.8 km of “coverage” previously. It still has 1.8 km of tunnels today. If that is not a slap in the face to our Mayor, then nothing is.

Of course, we can assume that there have been secret negotiations going on between the Senior Levels and the Mayor that even Council does not know about. How else to explain the conciliatory tone by the Mayor over the past few weeks.

Expect of course that Eddie will declare a victory at the appropriate time, no matter what happens. How else can he justify the waste so far of almost $5 million of taxpayer money? He will explain it in the same terms that he did about public interest with respect to the waste of the money over the Tunnel deal.

It was not a waste of money. He was keeping the Tunnel in public hands at a cost of over $1.2 million.

Just like with the DRIC Road, there was a nonexistent enemy against which the Mayor had to protect us. Or at least that is his justification for another failed transaction in which he was involved.

I can just hear it now. The Mayor will gloat and say that because of him, Windsor is getting the most expensive road in Ontario with parkland and quality-of-life solutions that no one else in the Province has been able to achieve. He will claim that he knew that he could not get full tunnelling or Greenlink but that he used them as a negotiating tools. He will say that he will press to get back all the money that the City has spent on legal and consulting fees as part of his settlement.

This is the CAW approach to negotiating. Claim a victory when you have absolutely lost. He has learned so well from his role models, Buzz and Ken Sr.

Of course, what will have been achieved, if in fact this most expensive road is ever built, is commendable. The problem is that it should have started by now so that the thousands of infrastructure jobs would have been created already and so that people would not be losing their homes or thinking about moving out West as the automobile industry is dying here.

We would have started our transition to our new economy with the sign that Windsor is open for business if the Mayor had not stalled for so many years. With someone who actually knew what he/she was doing and how to negotiate properly, this road to the border could have been negotiated years ago and probably be almost completed by now.

Instead, we have become the laughingstock of this country. We are the City in Canada who told the Senior Levels and a private investor to get lost even though they wanted to inject billions of dollars into our devastated economy.

In my opinion, this will be Eddie’s legacy as Mayor no matter what he does or does not do until his term ends. He has made our City a joke.

For Eddie to claim that what he achieved would be a victory for Windsor would be a disgrace. However, watch the cheerleaders and sycophants claim otherwise!

So, what is our Mayor going to now? Threaten a lawsuit again or actually start one using our weapon of mass destruction, David Estrin? I doubt it. If Sandra is right, the start of a lawsuit means the end of 15,000 jobs.

I do not believe that our Mayor has the guts to even try that. Certainly from what I am hearing, our Councillors would be against it. The March, 2003 revolution would become public. Our Mayor cannot afford that.

I even heard that some polling was undertaken to see what the attitude of people in Windsor is. I have no idea if this is true or not. However, given the Mayor’s change in his aggressive position, it would seem pretty clear that residents of this City are worried more about the economy and jobs than about Greenlink or the DRIC road. So much for failed advertising blitzes.

I hardly believe, as I have Blogged before, that the Minister of the Environment will reverse what DRIC is doing given the fact that the Minister of Finance and the MITI Minister seemed to be so in favour of what is going on with this “outstanding project.” After all, the Finance Minister has said that “it's time to start." Infrastructure Ontario is here starting already.

If Eddie wants us to believe that his submissions to the Environment Minister will protect our position then he is deluding himself, not us any longer. He is no longer believable on the border file.

The homes on Indian Road, the Interim Control and Demolition By-laws, Councillor Postma's revelation re the Sandwich CIP and Greg Heil's recent "Heritage" resignation just compound his difficulties in that part of the City too.

The Province is calling Eddie’s bluff in the most public fashion possible. They are rubbing his face in the DRIC road. They are daring him to take the step after “threatening.”

It is put up or shut up time for our Mayor. It is payback time for Dwight and Sandra.

How long will Eddie’s real war last? It will be over on Wednesday when the DRIC Draft EA Report is published.

When Fate is against you, then one has no chance of success any longer. Imagine, the Estrin legal fees report coming out at tonight's Council meeting at the same time as the DRIC ad is published. What a remarkable co-incidence!