What We Have Here Is Another Failure To Execute

In Windsor, what we have here is a Mayor who can communicate, when it is in his interest to do so, but who cannot execute on the ideas that he communicates. He is afraid to do so.

Want a perfect example? What helped Edgar beat Bill Marra for Mayor: Citistat.

It was a very interesting idea that had been used in Baltimore and spread to many other cities. Its purpose was to help save the City millions of dollars annually. Whatever happened to it and to the savings?

NOTHING: a failure to execute.

If you want to understand Edgar (aka Eddie), then understand that he has mind's eye visions but that he cannot produce. Talk, talk, talk is all that he is good for. He can pretend that he wants to act but he does not dare do so. Like all of those judicial reveiw threats on the DRIC road. Or the canal that may turn into only a transients marina.

You see, he cannot close the deal because then there are measurable objectives against which he can be judged. And if the project, whatever it is, does not measure up, then he can be criticized and blamed. Just like the $70+M arena with only an $800K profit and trying to get Summer Fest there to boost the numbers. Oh don't worry, if the Spits get knocked out early, Edgar has his excuse too for the low return on investment.

These thoughts came to mind when I saw this absurd quote in the Star story:

"Windsor area skilled trades workers on the move
Many still can't find local jobs"

When you read his statement in this BLOG , it was at the end of the story so no one would read it, don't choke on your coffee:

• "I think the fact that people have run out of unemployment and they have bills to pay, they're pretty desperate at this point," said Tony Masciotra, a skilled trades peer counsellor at the CAW-Ford Workers' Adjustment Centre on Walker Road. "I don't know if going out of town is the solution, but I think people aren't very patient at all."
  
  Some are finding work again in the oil and mining sectors in Western Canada, but there is no major hiring going on, he said. "From where I sit, the recession isn't over yet."
  
  Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis said the city has been contacted by an Alberta oil patch recruiter and an airline that shuttles workers back-and-forth. It will take several months to determine the demand and see if special flights from Windsor can be arranged."

Doesn't it make you sick? Where have we heard that song and dance about studying the issue and lining up an airline before? Gee, this sounds like Edgar's great Jobs scheme years ago to send people out West to work and have them commute to Windsor.

• “Employees could go to work during the week and come home on the weekends,” Francis said Tuesday in a telephone interview.
  
  “That would keep their paycheque here and keep their family together. It helps cities out west because they get an immediate supply of labour.”

All that talk with the Mayor of Saskatoon, the commuter airline, the survey to see what people wanted.

Here's what the Mayor said in his speech about his conversations with the Mayors of the Western cities:

• "Recently, at a meeting of the Big Cities Mayors’ Caucus I spoke with my colleagues about our challenges. And in turn the mayors of Calgary, Edmonton and Saskatoon told me of their issues and challenges.
  
  They told me about how there is an ever-increasing labour shortage out west. They need skilled tradespeople, and people to fill any number of construction-related positions...
  
  So we’ve started to develop a plan. A plan to help long-distance commuters living in Windsor to access jobs that exist today in Western Canada but to keep their roots at home in our community."

What was the result of the Edgar PLAN; he is so good at drawing up plans?

NOTHING: a failure to execute.

So fasten your safety belts, whenever there is an employment problem, expect Edgar to pull out his script again. Just you wait too, he learned from the Michigan DRIC meting, talk about all of the jobs that the DRIC road will produce.

Oh you don't think he will do that. It has happened before:

• "Did you feel the same way that I did when I read the headline in the Star yesterday about the 19,000 man years of work that Greenlink would produce. Man years mind you, not number of jobs. [I refuse to use person-years]. Do you feel like a jerk to be blunt?
  
  I could just picture in my mind's eye the Mayor, the Eminence Greasie and their legions of cheerleaders and sycophants laughing at what fools we have been since the Mayor's State of a City speech. How dumb we were to believe that the Mayor's Jobs Today plan was a serious one.
  
  I wonder also whether the Mayor's colleagues at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities feel the same way when they read what the Mayor just announced. I wonder if the Mayors of Saskatoon, Regina, Edmonton, and Calgary, think that they have been played as fools the same way Windsorites have been played. But who knows, perhaps they were in on the joke as well.
  
  Can you believe it, on March 17 the Mayor is preparing to send everybody out of town who was looking for work and then, barely 10 days later, there are jobs, jobs, jobs totaling 19,000 man years in town, working on the City's solution for the border road. No one has to move from Windsor at all now. Hallelujah. We are saved.
  
  I am not sure if this is the worst case of cynical, political manipulation that I have ever seen but it comes very close to it. I cannot believe that any caring person would play with the lives of so many people this way, all to score a cheap political point for himself and his future career."