WEDC---WeWishWeCouldButWeCannot

Why oh why didn't they listen to Tom Burton. If they had not voted him down, we would not be in this mess. Now he can go around to the Council meetings, smiling, and saying "I told you so" to his colleagues:

• "Tecumseh Deputy Mayor Tom Burton's bid to cut off funding to the Essex Windsor Development Commission if agendas and minutes of its meetings aren't made public received little support this week from county councillors.
  
  Burton was accused of "grandstanding" and being "antagonistic." His motion was rebuffed Wednesday night in a 10-3 vote."

Doesn't someone think it is time to thank all of the people on WEDC and get rid of them and start all over again. It happened again. Oh lord, another disaster from the WEDC, the people who brought you:

• "Because of the nature of the region’s strategy, traditional performance measures such as the number of new plants attracted, or the number of jobs retained, albeit significant, should not be the primary indicators of success. These could actually be counterproductive by driving the wrong behaviour. To truly change the direction of this region will require establishing new relationships, new connections and new networks. It will require a “leap of faith” in the ability of the governing body and management leadership of the organization to achieve long-term results."

Yes, dear reader, the Windsor Essex Development Corporation has lost another executive. This time it is Vice President, Director of Corporate Services & Communications, Michael F. Burton. He was their only Vice President too by the way.

While members of the Board are responsible members of this Community and successful at what they do, this Commission is a disaster area. How they have allowed the Commission to seemingly lack focus for so long is beyond me. We need a functioning Commission if we are to diversify our economy.

Apparently, the same people who took an eternity to figure out that they had no brochures for investors and no money to make them have had to put in a revolving door at their main office because they have had so many senior people leaving.

Over the last few years, the Development Commission and its predecessor have had the following people come and go at the senior level, never mind those below: Paul Bondy, Dennis Perlin, Roman Druz and Matthew Fischer. I am certain that investors who come to our area will wonder what the heck is going on here.

I wonder what the neighbouring Development Commissions who are competing with us for new investment are saying to potential investors about our area. Do you think it is complimentary? All they need do is show potential investors copies of the Star articles and that would end whatever hope we had of luring them to this region.

Not even the MITI Minister with all of her sales attributes has the ability to overcome this negativity.

Perhaps that is the reason why our Mayor is doing lots of the economic development work himself rather than giving it to the Commission. Perhaps, he doesn't trust them either. Wasn't he the one who made all of those cold calls to the US? He was the guy who headed off to Europe for the onion importers. He announced the call centre jobs. Quite a vote of nonconfidence wouldn't you think.

Since Mr. Fischer left, a Vancouver-based recruitment firm was retained to find us a new leader. Amazingly, we had to go out West to find a recruiter so that when someone from Toronto, as an example, has to be interviewed, presumably, he/she had to go out West to British Colombia to meet the recruiter with us picking up the tab or the recruiter had to come here. Priceless.

The recruiter in assignment #70208 was Grant C. Smith, Waterhouse Executive Search Ltd. of Vancouver, B.C. I guess they decided that a local recruiter and/or the Commission could not do the job. Last time around:

• "Roger Bryant of KPMG is facilitating the search process and members of the search committee include Skorobohacz, Essex County CAO Brian Gregg, commission chairman Remo Mancini and members Gina Leslie of Casino Windsor and Allan Conway of the Odette School of Business at the University of Windsor."

Nevermind that City and County taxpayers put in so much money into the Commission. Heck, we are used to money being squandered by now so this is something that is not new. Pity though the shareholders and members of the Credit Union who have graciously donated money. Frankly, if I was a member, I would be dumping on my Management already for their foolish actions and would forbid them to put in more money into this organization. I might even demand a refund.

It is how many months and no one has been hired yet as CEO to replace Fischer. I must admit, given the lack of success, I wondered why the Board did not promote its only Vice President to the job. Anyway, he lucked out and got a new position.

Someone needs to find out why quickly why no one was hired. Is there a reason? Is our region's reputation now so bad that no one wants to come to this area in spite of that nice, glossy Star magazine that cost taxpayers several hundred thousand dollars. If that is the case, then we are really in trouble here economically!

Rumour has it that there was a short listed candidate who had experience in economic development but for whatever reason he was not hired. In the meantime, I assume that the Chair will continue on as the interim leader. I wonder if he gets paid a salary as if he was the CEO or whether this is part of his Chair's duty.

Mind you, I believe that it will be very difficult for the Commission to find someone to head the organization. Their criteria seems to me to be very difficult. As stated by the Vice Chair:

• "The WEDC is immediately launching a national search for a new CEO. Schumacher said he hopes to have a new person in the position in six months.
  
  "One of the things that would be great to have is someone who has had private sector business experience," Schumacher said. "Also somebody who has had experience dealing with senior levels of government in getting things."

Why if I did not know any better... no, I cannot be that cynical.

While I am certain that some of our Development Commission members worked hard on their European jaunts, given their lack of success, I would strongly urge our Mayor and Council and the County politicians to reconsider strongly the following suggestion made by Eddie in his State of the City speech. Even though it appears that the amount of money to be given to them has been reduced from $100M-$60M, frankly I would not give them a penny:

• "Jobs Today is an initial proposal. A set of initiatives to help our Economic Development Commission. To help our community attract jobs. To keep jobs...
  
  The first part of this program, is a new Economic Development Investment Fund. A fund that will provide direct investment into smart projects that leverage our local strengths, and create jobs...
  
  How will we finance an Economic Development Investment Fund of our own?
  
  By leveraging money from the new National Community Development Fund, recently established by the federal government, to be administered by the provinces.
  
  And by taking the bold step of putting municipal dollars on the table, to make the promise of these new jobs a reality...
  
  Thanks to our city’s prudent financial management over the past four years, we are in a position to make this happen – by putting existing money on the table up front, leveraging federal and provincial dollars to rebuild our economy.
  
  I will also be asking City Council to make a historic, one-time $30 million dollar investment from existing sources to kick-start this fund.
  
  Kitchener needed a ten-year tax levy to finance their fund. Our strong financial position means we can do this without new taxes, and without new debt.
  
  We will also be inviting Essex County to consider supporting this initiative, and to stand with us as partners committed to an investment in the future of this region.
  
  In all, we have the potential to build a $100 million Economic Development Investment Fund.
  
  We will need the help of our Development Commission to establish detailed criteria related to accessing money from the fund, and to help ensure that these taxpayer dollars are being used as effectively and efficiently as possible. I want to thank the Board and the Commission staff for work already done and encourage them to be actively engaged during this critical transition and renewal time in our city...
  
  So with Council approval, we will begin engaging the provincial government, Essex County, and our regional Economic Development Commission to make this vision a reality."

In passing, look at how our strong financial position has deteriorated since the date of that speech, St. Patrick's Day. It is so bad now that Councillor Mom, the Chair of Transit Windsor, accused the City of nickling and diming and thereby putting citizens at risk on bus safety:

• "The board's not willing to compromise safety nor to compromise what we are mandated to do," she said after a Transit Windsor board meeting.
  
  "When you look at the size of our budget and you look at what transit's asking for, it's really nickel and diming it."

I should not be too critical but if only the Councillor had not gone along with what the Mayor wanted and paid the extra money for those hybrid buses...

One last thing. I am sure that you remember the story the other day in which Warden Nelson Santos and Tecumseh Mayor McNamara said:

• "They believe establishing a fund of up to $60 million can help push this region to the top of the consideration list and provide an ability to quickly react when opportunities arise.
  
  “The timing is appropriate to put together a package that shows our communities are willing to put our best foot forward in terms of economic development,” said County Warden Nelson Santos...
  
  Tecumseh Mayor Gary McNamara has also thrown his support behind the fund"

Given what is going on at the Commission, might I suggest that Tecumseh Deputy Mayor Tom Burton owes it to his County colleagues and perhaps the City ones too to arrange a meeting between them and Vice President Michael Burton while he is still part of WEDC. They should ask him if the Commission is up to the task given the disarray there and ask him whether he still believes, as he said in the Star story:

• "This is an excellent initiative that would go a long way in helping us diversify the economy.”

It may be but not with this Commission.