FCM And The Media

This is our City's wish list of items for which funding is being sought. Click on the image and it expands so you can read it better. The last column represents the number of jobs to be creeated by each project.

Here is an interesting finding from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. Do you think our Mayor knows this? Perhaps this might convince him and Council to reconsider their ridiculous opposition to the DRIC Road and the Ambassador Bridge project:

• "Make jobs the priority
  
  Each $1 billion invested in new infrastructure creates more than 11,000 jobs—more than twice as many as an equivalent tax cut. A significant number of new infrastructure projects must get underway during the 2009 construction season in order to offset a recession. Any countercyclical infrastructure program should have job creation as one of its key policy objectives.

While I would like"shovel ready" projects started right away, I am NOT in favour of the method for doing so "Allocated by population, to all municipalities in Canada."

Our Mayor likes that approach as he said at Council some time ago. As a taxpayer, I would prefer the money to be given for specific projects. The last thing I want is any of this cash available to be used at the whim of the Mayor and Council. In Windsor, they would spend it on that absurd canal project!

But here is something strange that suggests to me that the City has bigger financial problems than we know about and cannot possibly do the Tunnel deal or other major projects except pay for the East End arena:

This was one of the projects for which the City wanted money. I thought we had set aside the funds years ago when the Phase 1 Agreement was signed with the Senior Levels. Each level was to put up $10M for the project

Where are the City funds now? What happened to them? Do we have the money available for our share? If not, is the whole deal dead since the Senior Levels would not put their $20M into a project that cannot pay for itself.

By the way, we do know that the costs of the project have increased dramatically above the $30M mark. We were told that at Council a long time ago by Mr. Tyagi. I speculated that it was due to increased expropriation costs as well as increased construction costs.

Is this why the City has done little for years on this project: no more money. If so, why is Eddie wasting millions on trying to do a deal with Detroit if we cannot afford to improve the access to the Tunnel.

This Tunnel deal is so bizarre.

Oh and have you noticed, none of the traditional media have picked up my Infrastructure Ontario story about how much that Organization was prepared to loan to Windsor for the deal ie $75M or less and asked for answers to the obvious questions I raised.

There are all kinds of stories that flow from it that could win Pulitizer prizes for good investigative journalists eg why is there a refusal to provide the relevant information so that I have to do a Privacy Commission FOI appeal, why were there so many meetings over such a long period even after the project was put "on hold" by the City over a project that could not be financed if I am right in my assumptions, why was so much money spent on legal and other fees, were there any text messages sent from our Mayor's office about this deal and so on.

To be totally unfair because she HAS written some good exposes on what is going on here, I would quote from a BLOG written by Monica Wolfson of the Star:

• "Free Press rules for exposing Kwame
  
  By Monica Wolfson 09-04-2008
  
  The Detroit Free Press had better win a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
  
  The daily shouldn't just be recognized for bringing down a mayor who will soon be jailed for obstruction of justice and assault.
  
  The honour shouldn't be given just because Kilpatrick was ordered to repay the City of Detroit $1 million after city council unknowingly paid out $9 million in hush money to keep Kilpatrick's philandering with his chief of staff secret.
  
  They should be given journalism's top award for bravery, ingenuity and resiliency.
  
  The scandal never would have come to light without the Free Press reporting...
  
  The Free Press should be given a nod for its perseverance and hard work. The Free Press kept up a flow of stories -- sometimes five or six a day -- over an eight-month period. Some days I'm sure it was easy, but it was probably also a struggle on other days when reporters probably had to shake city hall to dislodge some news."

What an indictment of the lapdog, Windsor media!

Want another example of the media not doing its job. Read Henderson's column today:

• "Feuding over FOI"

Here is what the Star's provocative city columnist's hard-hitting views on City Hall did NOT include....nothing on the 400 audit or the Tunnel deal story or the WEDC secrecy.

Perhaps Monica should circulate her BLOG to her Windsor media friends, including the Windsor Star Editorial Board.