Doing The Tunnel Twist

I wonder if Chubby Checker would come to the Casino to perform. If he did, would he do the Tunnel twist dance there.

There are almost as many twist and turns in this file as in the DRIC matter.

I really have to wonder if Detroit ever knew how much money Infrastructure Ontario was going to provide to Windsor supposedly to do the transaction on the Tunnel deal whatever form it was going to take.

I suspect that they had a good idea that Windsor was never going to get $75 million. In fact, my bet is they were happy to pretend that Windsor was going to pay them $75 million because it certainly solved a budget problem for them for quite a period of time.

Our Mayor was played like a violin as far as I am concerned. He was used I suspect to get the price of the revenue stream up to the hundred million dollar mark. After all if a Third Party who happens also to be the owner of half the Tunnel like the City of Windsor believes that is worth $75 million, someone else might be convinced that it is worth $100 million. After all, why would Eddie be offering an amount where he cannot make extra money. Eddie was used to boost the price for Detroit!

Of course, where Detroit went wrong on this was that the marketplace for infrastructure opportunities has gone into the toilet and there is not a lot of cash around for these types of deals anymore. Of course, if you remember, I also suggested that a Pension fund in Detroit that had a surplus could have helped the Mayor solve some of his financial problems so that a deal with Windsor was not necessary.

It looks like the Detroit Mayor wants to package together all of the infrastructure deals and offer them to one party in order to get his $250 million rather than doing it piece by piece. It that was his intention, then Windsor is out of the picture.

I wonder who the successful party will be with Detroit if there is one. Depending on which private investor it is, it could be a kick in the you know where to our Mayor. His worst nightmare could come true. And I do NOT mean that it is the Bridge Company.

What I find somewhat troubling about all of this is that it appears that Detroit may have been misleading our Mayor and our Lawyer. That is hardly the way to be a Good Neighbour. Both Eddie and Sutts claimed that they were told that the only party being talked to was Windsor on the transaction. Neither of them were given any suggestion of anyone else. My bet is that they really wanted to know if the Bridge Company was their competitor.

Yet in the Star now we read the following:

• “Anthony Neely, spokesman for Cockrel, said Monday.
  
  “It’s not proposed as a deal with the City of Windsor. It was proposed as a deal with an outside, private business that would operate our end of the tunnel for us and and pay out that amount of money to the city in exchange for regular collection of fees from the tunnel.”

Perhaps Detroit has not yet started looking for an investor so what our people were told was the truth. Accurate but narrow in Detroit as well I guess.

Mind you, it all worked out very well. Cockrel now has a budget that he can use in the Mayoral election in Detroit. Eddie has a reason now that he can pull out from the Tunnel Deal with his head held high saying that you cannot blame me. He can point the finger at Detroit and accuse them of bad faith.

Well almost. Windsor Taxpayers are out a couple of million dollars.

I wonder now if the Windsor Councillors will have the nerve to ask the Mayor to answer the questions that have been outstanding for a year since the deal is dead. There ought to be in no concerns over confidentiality now. There should be accountability on how this matter was handled by our Mayor and how the money was spent. Or will he just brush them off saying there is no need to waste time on this subject any longer.

This whole episode certainly will help me with my Freedom of Information Application so I can learn the facts.