Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Quickies


Another day of lots of news in the media that require short Blogs

City hires agencies to collect fines

$20 million in outstanding fines and the City only expects to net $500 thousand? This cannot possibly be true. "In 2004, $5.7 million was recovered. After expenses were paid, the city and county shared about $1.9 million." Something seems odd.

City looking for ideas on how to beautify Windsor

Why are we talking about it other than as a pre-election gimmick. Remember that we already spent $150,000 for planting 64 trees on Dougall and Howard for the so-called PHASE 1 of the program. That was a strange deal anyway too since the project is really five years off and will cost lots of money. It's just a checkmark for the Mayor's report card for streetscaping. Another "talking about something rather than doing" exercise.

Doc recruitment effort boosted

Take a new doctor to lunch I guess to make them and "their families feel welcome so they'll remain here long-term."

We will only be successful in recruiting doctors if City Council gets behind the drive to find more doctors AND if we can bring foreign trained doctors into the country and have them commit to work here for at least 5 years. It is not all that hard to do either if the Province would allow the doctors to come here. Call them "physician assistants" if we cannot afford to pay them as "doctors" and let them work under the supervision of a doctor like a paralegal.

Again, the new Medical School at the University of Windsor along with St. Clair College should become the "specialist" in Ontario for training these doctors or rather upgrading them to meet Ontario standards.

Perhaps the new Medical School can be built in the Western Super Anchor lands to become the focus of an "urban village" that will actually succeed and not just be talked about.

Strike issues don't apply here

"We have great relations at St. Clair and what management is doing across the rest of the province is nasty business," said Sandi Webster, vice-chairwoman of the faculty bargaining team for OPSEU Local 138."

Why don't the local union and St. Clair figure out some way to act as "strike-breakers" so that other colleges across Ontario can be operated as ours is!

Funny, it is the College in the so-called union town that leads the way.

Bam, Kapow---take that London Economic Development Commission! I'll bet you won't show this story to companies looking to set up a new plant location.

Smoking ban help wanted

"The casino's senior managers have told the union they are predicting at least a 30 per cent drop in business." What will this do to cross-border traffic and the need for a new bridge if the numbers stay like this!

We have to be happy about one thing at least: that construction started already on the Casino expansion. Can you imagine if no-smoking and a need for a border ID were already in place. Do you think that there would still be the need for bigger space?

U.S. Congress kills proposed security fence

"The legislation had called on Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to "conduct a study on the construction of a state-of-the-art barrier system along the northern international land and maritime border of the U.S."

The concern to Canadians about this story is that the House of Representatives voted to approve a similar measure in the first place. It tells me again that the Americans are going to decide on where the new bridge is going to go, not us in Windsor, and we should have ensured that we had friends on the US side.

At one time the US Ambassador to Canada supported us but now...

Former Villa Maria sold

I like how Dan Stamper answers questions. He still does have a sense of humour in a matter that frankly drives me crazy: the border.

"Asked whether the property was in a strategic location for possible future twinning of the bridge, Stamper said: "it's also in a strategic location for student housing."

I see also that Councillor Jones also repeated his famous Detroit line about "homes, businesses, churches and graveyards."

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