Council Matters

The interesting stuff you find looking around the Council Civic Corner pages.

EDDIE VS. FAST EDDY'S LANDLORD

Here is another claim for the expropriation out of the Canderel matter.

The Ontario Municipal Board found that the owner of the premises where the video arcade was located should receive an extra $143,000. The City opposed the request for additional revenue at the OMB but lost, tried to have the matter reviewed by the Divisional Court but lost again and then tried to get leave to appeal the issue in the Court of appeal and lost another time.

Above is what it costs you and me as taxpayers to fight the $143,000 claim. You will note that the interest award alone is about $100,000. Legal and appraisal costs for the other side are over $120,000. Presumably, there are costs for the City as well that are additional but the City Report does not set out what they are.

To be direct, I am not sure what the matter of interest was in this matter that justified all of these additional costs that taxpayers now have to pay. Perhaps the Mayor can let us know because after all

WHO IS DEVELOPING US NOW

With the Undevelopment Commission Board gone, with no CEO and with two politicians in charge who is doing what in this time of economic crisis?

Councillor Marra posed a Council Question at the beginning of February to have Administration prepare within 30 days a process for setting up a Forum on Jobs and Economic Development Strategy.

After all, since he is only a Councillor, he can be been ignored. Accordingly, he has written to the Mayor and his Colleagues asking for action to be started to get this Forum under way.

There is no doubt that he will be ignored again. After all, he will be told that what is being proposed would undercut the new Development Commission. Of course, it will be interesting to see how long it takes to set up a new Commission.

However, I hope that Councillor Marra reminds his colleagues that the new Airport Board was undercut by Council when they allowed the Mayor and two Councillors to fly to Frankfurt to hire a FOREIGN CONSULTANT to do an airport study.

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY

I am not sure if “eternity” is the same length of time as “in perpetuity.” I will leave that for philosophers to decide.

Here are the terms that our Mayor has decided that the Bridge Company must agree to before allowing the Company to submit its plans it seems. Even then, even if the Company agrees to all of this, there is no guarantee that Council will approve anything as the Mayor has stated.

It is the arrogance of it all that disgusts me.

Shhhhhhhhh. Don't remind Council that they already know about the Plans. It's that amnesia disease again.

The Bridge Company did come to Council quite sometime ago along with the Green Corridor people to explain their billion-dollar proposal but that Council only gave them 10 minutes of time to make your presentation and did not have the courtesy to extend it. Compare that with the amount of time that the City's experts have been given to explain they are failed Greenlink project. Not one single Councillor would permit it.

Oh well, Councillor Mom can now write on her BLOG that she is fully supportive of this initiative because her heart went out to all of the residents in the impacted area. And if there is no approval, then it is no longer her fault if the homes do not get torn down. Blame it on her colleagues for not approving this. Or, more likely, blame it on the Bridge Company for not doing something that the Councillors believe is absolutely essential.

SANDWICH IS STILL FROZEN

Can you imagine… certain residents in the West End at Council last week out of the blue wanted Council to impose an Interim Control Bylaw on lands east of Huron Church Road. As a Council report sets out, the lands west of Huron Church Road are still covered by the existing ICB because of appeals.

If those residents had been successful, a good chunk of Ward 2 could not be developed. One might ask then who would need any Ward Councillors for years if effectively nothing could be built in their Ward!

I raise this issue with you because if anyone thinks that the Bridge Company has a hope of being successful with Council after Eddie’s invitation, then those people are delusional. Look at how this fellow who wants to build a double duplex is going to be stalled off for who knows how long and what reasons are given. And this is just one property too.

STALLING OF THE LIBRARY

I thought the crisis with the Windsor Library was over. Or is their some new and improved agenda designed to destroy the System.

Council is stalling. If there was such an emergency, then one would have thought that the City would act in a very quick manner.

Check out some of these comments in a letter to the City from Councillor Halberstadt who is also the Chair of the Library Board

I DON'T KNOW ABOUT ART BUT I KNOW WHAT I LIKE

I cannot believe after that long, very long, very, very long speech by Councillor Hatfield in support of the Windsor Symphony at Council that the Councillor might be against giving money to the Art Gallery:

• “Coun. Percy Hatfield said the AGW faced a "harder sell" because it had assets it could hawk for operating cash or use to secure a bank loan.
  
  "The art gallery has lots of art that's been in the vault for 10 years or more that's never seen the light of day," said Hatfield.
  
  "Maybe it's time to sell off a few pieces instead of coming to the city of Windsor. As sacrilegious as that may be, these are difficult times," he said."

I can just picture Councillor Brister bristling over this suggestion because he talked about it years ago and was rebuffed.

I have to admit that pleading for taxpayer money because they did not invest properly will not go over very well. Who do they think that they are, OMERS!

As for a contribution from the County, here is what a BLOG reader sent me:

• "Re: Request to Appear Before Essex County Council with Grant Request
  
  I have been forwarded your request to appear before County Council as part of the budget deliberations for 2008.
  
  Dating back to 1991, Essex County Council adopted a resolution stating,
  
  “THAT County Council eliminate the practice of awarding grants from this budget session forward”.
  
  The Procedure By-law was amended at that time to delete the former section that outlined the process for submitting grant applications. In accordance with that direction, the award of discretionary grants has been eliminated as an element of the annual budget preparation process for the County of Essex.
  
  The difficulty that confronted County Council was that it received numerous grant requests and the delegations advancing the requests were all worthy causes. County Council deemed that it was not the role of a municipal government to provide operational financial assistance to external organizations and agencies, unless legislatively obligated to do so. While there have been discussions about the ‘no grant policy’ by subsequent Councils, over the years Essex County Council has remained beholden to the principles embodied in that original resolution adopted in 1991, to eliminate the concept of discretionary grants from the County budget process.
  
  Accordingly, I am obligated to decline your request to appear before County Council during their 2008 budget deliberations."