The Eddie And Sam Road Show

Nice crowd that came out Monday night to see the Eddie and Sam show at Massey Collegiate. Can you imagine how upset Eddie would have been if no one had come after spending all that taxpayer money on three full-page ads in the Windsor Star, oodles of radio spots on CKLW and a flyer sent around the City in which we're told that we "deserve a greener future."

Does this exercise all feel surreal to you? It does to me. However, I must admit that I feel cheated as well.

I like a nice orderly world. Everything in its place. I play by the rules and expect others to do so too. So explain to me one thing if you don't mind: how can the City possibly support the latest and greatest Schwartz report? It's a simple question. The City passed a resolution that said:

• "THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the City of Windsor advise DRIC that they must have a tunnelled solution as the design of the highway through the corridor determined by the final DRIC process"

How then can the City even consider a "partially tunneled" solution. It violates their position doesn't it? If the City wants to change, my understanding is that there would need to be a "Reconsideration." That would mean that citizens are allowed to appear as delegations at Council. I sure hope the City Clerk requires the City to follow the Procedural Bylaw since she is such a stickler with the rules.

I believe that Councillor Marra has no choice, since he introduced the motion, but to stand up at the next Council meeting and demand that the Schwartz position be rejected out of hand. Oh I know, I'm being silly. No one on Council has the guts to do anything like that. They do what they're told.

Back to Monday night. I didn't stay very long at the high school since the throngs were around all boards and I wasn't going to fight my way to the front. If I knew that all that I would see was on the Internet anyway, I probably wouldn't have gone in the first place. However that's not what bothers me.

I'm hardly an expert in the area. I have lots of questions I would like answered but shouting above the din of the crowd probably wouldn't have given me too much information. I might have liked to have asked some of my questions in a five-minute presentation at Council as a delegation but that wasn't going to happen either. You see the Mayor and Council prevented mere citizens from speaking at Council so that other Windsorites might be able to hear them.

Here's what troubles me. I have no idea how many reports Mr. Schwartz prepared and what was in them before he presented at Council last Tuesday. It must have been something else since the Windsor Star editorial told us in July:

• "Schwartz has apparently come up with new ideas for a border access route and has shared them with the city, provincial cabinet ministers and the Detroit River International Crossing team. But the city, which has shown a disturbing tendency toward secrecy on multiple fronts but especially the border file, has opted against sharing those ideas with the people they would most affect."

Even before then, Gordon Henderson told us in June:

• "Negotiations between Windsor and border route decision makers are in the ditch over bureaucratic preference for a below-grade truck route that city officials fear would devastate parts of South Windsor and isolate west-end neighbourhoods.
  
  According to informed sources, the talks collapsed when the Detroit River International Crossing team (DRIC), in response to a tunnel proposal prepared by New York traffic guru Sam Schwartz and U.S. engineering giant Parsons Brinckerhoff, offered only token improvements in plans for a depressed roadway running parallel to Huron Church Road.
  
  The Schwartz proposal, which involves eight to nine tunnel sections of varying lengths, designed to shelter adjacent communities and create new parkland atop the tunnels, was presented to the DRIC as an olive branch -- the city's first significant concession since this process began -- but it apparently made little impact."

Those people are a lot smarter than I am and have a whole bunch of experts to help them out. There must have been problems or something wrong or else why would they have rejected what Schwartz and Parsons Brinckerhoff had said. I wish I knew what those problems were since what Henderson described seems so close to what was being presented today. I wonder what the issues were: fires in tunnels, exhaust and pollution, fun with figures over costs, who would pay for what or was Central Park mitigation or enhancement.

So it appears that Sam had to go back and rewrite what he presented before and do it all over again. What happened next? The new and improved report was presented in camera to City Council. The Council has been involved in this matter for years and years and years and have listened to experts for years and years and years and have experts on staff who are experienced for years and years and years.

I don't really think it was fair for taxpayers not to know what Councillors asked Sam. In fact I don't even understand why there was an in camera meeting since it doesn't appear to meet the criteria for secrecy under statute law.

According to Drew Dilkens who was interviewed by John Fairley, there were lots of questions asked. Mind you, it probably didn't matter what they asked since it it was too late for them to make any changes since the report was to be presented several days later. Now Drew was away when the in camera presentation was made, but he got to have his own special briefing he told us. I bet he got answers to all of his questions too.

Didn't you like a stage managing of questions at the Council meeting. I think that Councillor Halberstadt must not have received the memo not last too many questions because he kept going on and on and on. I believe Councillor Lewenza passed him a note. Do you think it was telling him to keep his mouth shut? I sure wish I knew what it said.

Now it looks like, contrary to what it appears, that there have been some intense conversations between the City and the Province anyway. At the CCG meeting, as I told you before, the Ministry of Transportations's representative, Dave Wake, said that the two sides were not too far apart and that we should not believe everything that is written in newspaper. That sure sounds promising did it not.

Why just the other day on Melanie Deveau's show, even Sandra said:

• "every time the DRIC has introduced our next round... the city has responded in an official way...
  
  And this is simply that next round of the city responding to that report that came out in the middle of August. So right from that tabling in the middle of August, those people got busy. There was an awful lot of interaction between the Ministry of Transportation experts and Schwartz and his experts working on behalf of the city; questions back and forth comparing data."

Gee that seems seems very strange don't you think. There were conversations in June, there were conversations after the latest DRIC report. From what Sandra said, it look very collaborative to me and hardly confrontational. Why even Sandra was involved:

• "Well, I've seen it [Sam's Report]. I've certainly been in on a lot of the questions going back and forth."

Sandra tells us

• "But I'm really pleased because I think we've worked well with the City. We've listened carefully. You know there's going to be fighting back and forth on detail, experts comparing notes, one engineer says one thing, another engineer says another and that's fine. We're just being very open minded. The Premier is determined to listen to the City. And I'm going to make sure that that happens."

So all of these people have had all of these conversations with all of these experts and the only ones who really have no clue as to what is going on are us, you and me, Windsor taxpayers.

This is a multibillion dollar transaction and all that we get is stage-managed questions by City Councillors, very little real information, looking at boards at a high school gymnasium and knowing that all kinds of things are being done behind closed doors.

There has to be some reason why were to be spending two months and wasting thousands of taxpayer dollars on advertising campaign. I really wish I knew what it was.

One final note. Sandra made it simple for all of the proponents who were rejected to sue and to sue successfully. She stated

• "it [Schwartz Plan] has to meet the EA first. And that really is important because any of the proponents that have been pulled off the table, they're going to say does it meet the EA? And if it doesn't meet the EA then why is this going forward and mine not going forward?
  
  And then those people will be in a legal position, frankly, to stop it altogether."

To be direct about it, can the Schwartz plan meet the EA since it is in violation of the City's official policy as fixed by its Resolution.

Utter and complete chaos rules again.