Chicago Is NOT My Kind Of Town

Not the bloody canal. Again.

I was told just a few days ago that Eddie's mayoral campaign, assuming he did not run for some other office, would be based on the canal. I did not believe it. Boy, was I wrong!

It is almost as tedious as Gord supporting Greenlink. I wonder how Gord will support a "political" tweaking over the DRIC road. How will a so-called "inferior" solution be justified so that ignoring death and destruction and kids' health is no longer considered"unconscionable" any more. I wonder how Eddie (and probably Spanky but NOT Sandra) will be praised over the Compromise. OMG, the "C" word.

Does Gord Henderson ever do the slightest bit of research when he does a Column to mouth off to try to save another absurd idea of the Mayor? He writes a column on Saturday about Chicago and Monday is the day when Chicago is forced to close down!

Aren't there any fact-checkers at the Star. Oh I forgot, their parent company is in big financial trouble these days.

Take a look above at the Press release of Chicago. They are in serious financial difficulty with a budget deficit that makes Windsor's entire budget look puny!

"Live and learn from the folks in Chicago"

Gord, I think not!

• "Opened four years behind schedule and carrying a US $475 million price tag, triple the original budget, it's the kind of runaway project that gets labeled a debacle, and gets mayors run out of town.
  
  But not in Chicago where Richard M. Daley, the "greenest" mayor in America, a ruler with the powers of a Persian potentate, is aggressively building on a can-do dynasty established by his legendary late father. Millennium Park might have been an accountant's nightmare but today it's a must-see attraction drawing hordes of camera-toting visitors who fill the city's hotels and restaurants.
  
  Under Daley, downtown Chicago has become one big hunk of streetscaping eye candy."

Gord finally tells us the kind of Mayor that Eddie wants to be. Fortunately before the next election. After all, Eddie prides himself on being close to Mayor Daley: "Behind schedule," over-budget, a ruler, powers of a Persion potentate. All Eddie wants is "eye candy" like a canal

No wonder that Gord is still the Sheriff!

Eating too much candy causes painful cavities and tooth decay that results in days off for employees and inconvenience to taxpayers to save some money so the City does not have a financial melt-down. And this is after almost $2B was taken in by the City in a P3 deal on one of their toll roads.

Think about that when Gord try to tell us that P3ing Enwin shortly is a brilliant idea that will allow us to finance the canal and other Eddie visions. Just like Gord tried to tell us that Eddie was a financial genius for trying to do a deal on the Tunnel that would probably be in bankruptcy already with the fall in traffic volumes:

• "A solid investment
  
  How the heck did little old Windsor snatch a blue-chip infrastructure investment opportunity out from under the money- sniffing noses of Canada's major pension fund managers?
  
  You can bet your bottom dollar that the boards of these massive institutions, which have been pouring billions into a hot new field, longterm infrastructure investment, are asking themselves that awkward question following the revelation that Windsor has entered into a US $75-million agreement with Detroit to take full possession of the Detroit-Windsor tunnel.
  
  They'll be kicking themselves where the sun doesn't shine for not recognizing, as the City of Windsor did, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to purchase a safe and reliable revenue stream for the next century and beyond...
  
  If and when Detroit signs off, and we shouldn't take anything for granted, the City of Windsor will join the club of canny, longterm investors."

Yea right....canny Windsor! We would be in the equivalent of Chapter 11 if not worse after this dumb deal!

When I lived in Toronto, the media there always told us local yokels that we were the equivalent of New York City. Until one actually visited the Big Apple and figured out that we could never compare. We had been deceived about what we could ever hope to be.

Same here.

• Huron Church is going to be turned into the Champs-Élysées by the Big Apple's traffic guru, Sam Schwartz, as his Report gathers dust somewhere.
• An award-winning Greenlink that was used merely as a stall tool that will be compromised for political reasons into the "unconscionable" DRIC road.
• During the CUPE strike, we saw what our world-class Park on the Lid and Central Park equivalents would really look like with all of Eddie's Greenlink parks for which we had no money to maintain.
• We "host" world class sports events by spending millions of dollars for sponsorships that put us on the world's stage as our tourism figures plummet and even the Casino is in trouble with the Detroit competition.
• We have to build a canal so that we can compete with San Antonio and Venice as we ignore the miles of riverfront that we already have to create canal-front condo and apartment complexes that no one will be able to afford since there are no jobs.
• A huge muti-million dollar piece of pie in the skies cargo terminal at an airport that has one scheduled airline serving it and whose major cargo operator went broke. Please.

We do have a world-class border crossing owned by a private company. Do we take pride in it? Hardly, as our Mayor has to help destroy it for a Government-owned one.

Why can't we be happy that Windsor is Windsor and not be something we are not.

• Chicago's Metro population is 9,157,540. Ours in Essex County is about 400,000
  
• Chicago's Metro Area alone is 5,618.9 sq. mi. Windsor-Essex is 685 square miles
  
• Chicago's tallest building is 1,451 ft high. We have the scaled-down Canderel embarrassment.
  
• Chicago's Harold Washington Library Center, with more than 2 million books available, is the world's largest public library. Here we cut back our Library system.
  
• O'hare has 53 scheduled and charter airlines. We have Air Canada Jazz
  
• Chicago's estimated 2010 budget is $6.2 billion, with a $3.32 billion corporate fund. Chicago estimate a shortfall of $519.7 million in the 2010 corporate fund. In Windsor
  "1. That the 2009 Net Operating Budget for the City of Windsor and related Boards in the amount of $321,915,174 as recommended by the Operating Budget Committee BE ADOPTED.
  2. THAT the 2009 Capital Budget in the amount of $92,456,000, BE ADOPTED subject to
  a decision on the use of the $20.6 million Investing in Ontario Act provincial funding and any other stimulus funding requirements."

Get over it Gord, not even you can save Eddie from his failures. You still have not figured it out yet. Eddie is incapable of being a Mayor. The CUPE strike is proof of that. He has no interest in running a City whatsoever. It is too boring. He would rather play finance games at no risk to his cash but at my risk and those of other taxpayers.

Why be a Mayor when one can be a world-class union buster, land developer, sports jock, border operator, road and tunnel builder, P3 financier, entertainment impresario and onion marketer. And now a canal builder.

What is sad about this is that while we are looking to be on the world's stage and being compared with the world's great cities, we are dying. Highest unemployment rate in all of Canada and Eddie has still has a non-functioning Undevelopment Commission with no CEO hired yet!

Our Francis mayoral legacy: talk about eye candies, a College bridge that had to be shut down, roads full of potholes, sewers flooding and this:

• "While the mayor and council appear keen on the idea, the hard part seems convincing a reluctant administration to support a downtown bar's application to build Windsor's first curbside boardwalk...
  
  "Everybody thinks it's a great idea," Mayor Eddie Francis told Whibbs...
  
  When Francis told council the wooden boardwalk may be contrary to provincially mandated sidewalk standards, Coun. Percy Hatfield asked staff how much of Windsor's sidewalks are currently not up to those legal standards.
  
  Executive director of operations Mike Palanacki said about 28 per cent of the city's 900 kilometres of sidewalks are considered "deficient."

Heck, now we can understand Eddie. Athens and Germany are more fun that sidewalks aren't they!