ACTION Man: Swelling Our Chests, Not Our Minds

I am certain that some of you believe that we are really having now an International Multimodal conference and not an International multi-model one in Windsor soon. It had me fooled for a little bit too.

Sure they corrected the typo on the WEDC website but that may have been designed to fool us. It seems clear however to me that in fact world-famous fashion models are coming in Windsor. I do not care what anyone says. I saw the photograph of the fashionista Mayor of Windsor on the front page of the Star on Saturday. And what did it say:

• “Runway dream”

Fashion models strut their stuff on runways don’t they, just like our Mayor.

Our Mayor is truly Action Man. He comes up with one scheme after another. He never finishes anything but he is very good at bringing up new ideas. It is so much easier having these entrepreneurial visions than actually running a City, especially one with horrific problems that Windsor has. He truly has come up with visions that cover the land, and under it, sea and now in the air.

Let us deal with the land first. Who can forget Greenlink, son of Greenlink and its various other manifestations that no one knows about. How many millions have the legal and consulting fees been so far for this grand dream, using a number of FOREIGN consultants as well? Has anything been accomplished? Well you know the answer to that one. It is OK however because it will make us world-class.

As far as under the ground, I do not mean only full tunneling which has also gone nowhere notwithstanding a City Council Resolution in favour of it, but also the Tunnel deal with Detroit. About $2 million of legal and consulting fees has been spent on that extravaganza and all that we know about it right now is that it is dead too. Moreover, we now have the Mayor telling us that his $75 million price was significantly higher than we should have offered considering what has happened to the economy. Good thing that he cannot execute on his transactions or we might be in default already!

I wonder what has happened with the Canal Vision. I thought that it was supposed to be public by the end of February. Given the Runway shot, I am surprised that the Star did not take a photograph of our Mayor walking on water to publicize that idea. Or perhaps one of him in the river with the water up to his neck.

Wasn’t this another project that was going to make our City world-class? However, the dream got a bit smaller back in December when we read:

• “Things are coming along. I'm still hopeful it will happen," said Cooke, explaining that the engineering feasibility study, conducted by Landmark Engineering of Windsor, is 95 per cent complete and the economic feasibility study, by UrbanMetrics Inc. of Toronto, should be finished by the end of February…
  
  So what have they learned to date from the engineering investigation? That this project could be more canal and less marina.
  
  Cooke said the study indicates a marina in the Caron Avenue cut might be prohibitively expensive. "It's feasible. It can be done. But would it be cost-effective?" He explained that an extremely deep excavation would be needed to accommodate boats and that would entail either steep, concrete-reinforced walls along the cut or gradual slopes that would gobble up significant amounts of adjacent land.”

I thought that the cost for this Vision was in the neighborhood of $60 million although I expect it to be significantly less so that it will be palatable. Do not worry. There is a timetable developed that will bring out the canal project at the appropriate time to take our breath away. We do need something to dream about after all to take away the nightmare if Chrysler potentially leaves the City.

Oh well, from Downtown Arena to Urban Village to Engineering Building to Canal, what does it matter. One dream, one scheme, one Plan after another.

Now the Airport… you know the one with one commercial airline that flies out of it on a regular basis on a scheduled service, with a few chartered flights thrown in for fun.

Our Airport General Manager must be sniffing the dream vision too:

• “We have to be thinking big right from the start. The way I run those board meetings is we're putting a Fortune 500 company in place.... If we set the right processes and procedures in place, we'll get there."

Hmmmm how is it that she runs Board meetings. That is not the GM's function.

Oh my goodness. She is THINKING BIG and it will cost us plenty too:

• “Should those plans bear fruit, it could cost tens of millions of dollars for runway additions and improvements, as well as areas for cargo loading, Nazzani said.
  
  During the federal government's budget consultations earlier this year, the city submitted a $30-million proposal for improvements to the airport for which it hopes to get infrastructure stimulus funding, said city treasurer Onorio Colucci. "It was to position ourselves to take advantage of federal funds that might be there for airports."

Our Mayor could not possibly be serious about turning Windsor Airport into a transportation hub could he? Perhaps. It is after all the latest trend for all cities… Aerotropolis in Detroit, London, Kitchener and I even saw that Peterborough wanted to get into the aeronautics game as well.

These Mayors must be sitting in on too many meetings at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. Someone must have said that the latest trend is airports and by golly everybody now has to have a transportation hub. Never mind that the air cargo business is tanking and that our major player, Air America, is no longer in business. I wonder if a major customer of the air cargo business was the automobile companies. If that is the case, then one wonders how an air cargo hub would pay its way.

I do not understand this perishable goods business at all. I thought that the idea at first was that we were to export our onions and not bring into the country perishable products. All of a sudden, it seems to have changed. Now we are bringing goods into the country and not exporting them.

What goods are we going to bring in? I do not believe that anyone has yet said what our focus is going to be. Surely not fruits and vegetables although the Government Agencies to be located at the airport hub deal with agriculture. Wouldn’t that mean that we are bringing competition for our farmers in the County? Does that make sense?

Moreover, I know that I cannot bring fruit into the United States at our border crossings… I think there is a big sign saying that… so how then can foreign fruits and vegetables be brought into the United States through Canada. I assume that there is a way but I do not know how easy or difficult that is.

I found our Mayor’s strategy rather interesting:

• “The Star, however, has learned that the city's strategy would include a centre consolidating U.S. and Canadian inspection and security agencies. "Concentration of all inspection and border processes would be located under one roof, including the Canada Border Service Agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Department of Agriculture, Transport Canada" and other U.S. and Canadian authorities, according to city documents.”

I wonder how this will be possible since at the Peace Bridge the concept of Shared Border Management has died because of supposedly insurmountable legal reasons. How then would US Customs agree to come into Canada when Canada has not allowed it?

Do you remember a few years ago when the Bridge Company wanted to set up 200 booths on the American side of the border to handle both Canadian and American Customs, here is what was said at the time:

• “Mark Butler, spokesman for Transport Canada, said the single inspection facility proposed by the bridge has raised fears over border security”
  
  
• “Swann said McLellan also has security and "redundancy" concerns about creating one Canada-U.S. superplaza.”

Unless the Canadian Government changed its mind and allowed Shared Border Management on both sides of the river, which means that the Bridge Company would be able to build a huge plaza in the United States for Joint Customs, (and that would kill DRIC) then Eddie’s latest dream is dead before it even gets started.

There was one very interesting line in the Star’s story which some Councillors might want to consider to save us about a quarter of a million dollars:

• “Even in good times, the industry is overcrowded, said Nils Haupt, spokesman for Lufthansa Air Cargo. "Actually the air cargo market already sees a lot of overcapacity -- not only in the crisis. Adding capacity now might be difficult."

We don’t need to hire Lufthansa now. We have the answer now don’t we. Moreover, as I Blogged before, their cargo business is down considerably.

I really have difficulty stomaching this nonsense anymore. How many dreams and visions can this Mayor of ours come up with so that he does not have to deal with the real issues of our City and Region? We cannot afford this any more. We have the highest unemployment and the worst housing and rental vacany conditions in Canada and we are being fed more dreams.

I have to admit I was surprised Henderson was not on the bandwagon on Saturday cheering this latest dream on too.

We have a Mayor who identified early on the need for economic diversification and yet we have an Undevelopment Commission that has done little for years and is reorganizing again.

We have a Mayor who has stalled off a border solution for years and is opposing vigorously billions of dollars of investment in this City for reasons that I do not understand at all.

We have a Mayor who loves to play entrepreneur but with my money, not his and is extremely unsuccessful at it to date.

I read this interesting article in the Globe and Mail that really is applicable in Windsor:

• “You may recall that Forrest Gump had a shrimping boat. Returning home from one of his many trips at sea, he discovers that every other boat in the fleet has been destroyed by Hurricane Carmen. Forrest was none too smart, but he knew an opportunity when he saw one. So he built a dozen boats (all named Jenny) and created the biggest shrimping fleet his side of Biloxi.
  
  What is Forrest Gump economics? When others are floundering around you, recognize your strengths and invest aggressively in them.”

What troubles me is that our four Liberal MPPs have understood what our area’s strengths are and are trying to build on them with their conference. Our Mayor seems to totally ignore it and is more interested in his schemes and visions.

I will leave you with some excerpts from an article from the London newspaper. To me, this article puts the Windsor vision in a proper context:

• “City council has endorsed the concept -- but not the funding -- of a proposal that would make London's airport the cornerstone of a strategy to turn the city into a gateway for cargo to and from North America…
  
  But how to finance Baker's proposal was left to another day as a key difference emerged between what he wants and what city finance chief Vic Cote suggests…
  
  Yesterday's debate began with a caution from chief administrator Jeff Fielding, who warned councillors to not allow more controversial elements of the gateway proposal to sidetrack the bigger goal of creating economic opportunities to replace manufacturing jobs lost during the recession.
  
  While Fielding didn't mention specific elements, it was clear he was concerned about reaction to a proposal to build a costly sewage plant that would open up the city's southwest to an industrial park and development.
  
  A passionate example of that concern came from Coun. Nancy Branscombe.
  
  "In the absence of a real plan, are we reaching out to an idea that swells our chests instead of our minds?" she asked.”

We are just not using our heads at all in Windsor.