Observations

Here are a few observations from recent events in Windsor.

SINK OR SWIM TOGETHER

WeACT is on the City's in camera agenda on Monday I have heard. OMB litigation and all of that.

Funny, I would have thought that the Mayor, Councillors and the citizens ought to be on the same side in opposing a Provincial whitewash audit. After all, don't we all want to know the truth. Hmmmm do you think that maybe some don't.

I wish I could be there to hear what they talk about. Do you think someone might actually say that the audit from the Ministry is a total and complete farce now that we know what the Terms of Reference are. Councillor Halberstadt might but his colleagues will not listen to him.

Will Councillor Marra stand up and say that it is a whitewash and that Council should object since that is not what Mayor, Council and Windsor citizens want. He had said that the Ministry should be given a chance to do their audit and then decide if more has to be done once their report is in! Isn't it painfully obvious now that "more has to be done?" Naw, if he won't do it on his tunneling Motion and fight for a full tunnel as the Motion says, he won't do it here either.

Our Municipal elected officials supported in their Resolution a much broader Section 10 audit which the Minister of Municipal Affairs refused to include as part of the package. They should be outraged and demand it be undertaken since we are spending over $150,000 on the audit.

Oh come now. You cannot be that naïve. Don't you think the Members of Council were told to stick together in a unified fashion so that they can all survive together. They are just going to tough their way through it. And be thrilled when they are exonerated.

NO BOOKS AVAILABLE AT THE LIBRARY FOR CIRCULATION

Sometimes I cannot really believe what the Councillor formerly known as Councillor Budget says. Someone really does need to muzzle him or at least make him think before he opens his mouth.

He is a member of the Library Board. Libraries, in case you didn't know it, dear reader, are primarily in the book business. They also provide computers, the new way that information is distributed, to those members of the community that do not have access to one They buy books so that they can circulate them to members of the Community. They buy computers for information distribution.

So what is the former Councillor Budget's solution to their budget cutting:

• "Instead of following board member Coun. Dave Brister's plan to save $742,000 by making cuts to various library operations -- such as buying fewer books and computers than planned...
  
  Brister, who opposed four library board motions involving the $652,000 cost-cutting package, said afterward his plan would have worked and services did not have to be affected.
  
  "It could have been done entirely without closing."

I have to admit that Councillor is absolutely right. Using his logic, in a few years, the Library System would not have purchased any books or computers and their shelves would be bare and the PC terminals hopelessly out of date for the new technology.

No computers and no books mean that no one would ever go to the Library anymore. They could stay open, "entirely without closing," but no one would show up. Imagine the savings that could be made then!

We should not be surprised however at how the Councillor thinks about cutting. Wasn't he the one that said that the Art Gallery should sell the works of art that were not hanging on the walls of the Gallery to help reduce costs?

But it's okay, we can have a premier sports facility and he can support spending money for Detroit sports extravaganzas.

CANDEREL LEASE

Whew....thank goodness all of the space has now been rented out.

I wonder what the total cost to the City taxpayers will be just for subleases. Don't forget in your calculations the $580,000 to renovate third-floor office space at 1 Riverside Dr. W., and $350,000 for renovations on the fourth floor. I think the City was prepared to spend $20 per square foot on build out costs.

I am having some difficulties in figuring out what the Mayor says the loss to the City will be on the monthly rents. Remember that I wrote a BLOG on the "Deal of the Century."

I speculated on the following on the subleases:

• unbelievably low rent for the initial term of the lease to get rid of the asset


• huge payments for leasehold improvements and renovations where little work is required to be done


• sweetheart renewal deal for a very long term


• nice deal on monthly costs including how tenant space is calculated


• deal on escalators for price increases

I guess we will have to wait until someone at City Hall decides to open up the books before we can find out the real information.

However, I just don't understand the Mayor's numbers, just like I never understood his numbers on the watermain Levy presentation he made at Council.

In the Star story about this matter, it was written:

• "Even though the two floors have been rented, only about 55 per cent of the city’s costs will be recovered, leaving the city still to pay about $450,000 in rent each year, Francis said.
  
  The average lease rate for both floors is $23.70 per square foot, he said."

How can that possibly be? I had blogged previously the City's ad for the Canderel space [December 15, 2005 "Your Tax Dollars At Work"] and had written:

• "Remember I told you that the sub-lease rental was slashed to $10 per square foot because the City could not get anyone interested in subletting the space. (The Star reported the City was paying $18 per square foot plus about $15 in common fees for maintenance and taxes) Does that mean that others were paying $10 before since the $10 being negotiated now would be comparable to what others are paying?
  
  And it may not even be $10. It could be less. City solicitor George Wilkki had said "the city is willing to look at "anything reasonable.... Any offer that would come in the door we would take to council and see what council wants to do with it."

I'm so confused. How can the average lease rate be $23.70 per square foot when it looks like the City was prepared to take even less than $10 per square foot? Does the Mayor's number include common fees as well which would make for a rental of about $8.70 per square foot so that the City is losing about $10 per square foot on the lease rate?

I really would like to know how the Mayor calculated the average lease rate. I am going to write to 311 and ask to be provided with the basis of that calculation. If I ever get the answer I'll post it here.

I wish we could get the facts easily. But that would be a novelty for this City.

FREE WINDSOR STAR "FOR LEASE" ADS FOR LANDLORDS

Congratulations to the Windsor Star and to Dave Hall its business editor for attempting to help reduce the vacancy rate of business premises in downtown Windsor. I suggest that any landlord that has vacant space immediately contact Dave and ask him to write a story about your premises. It costs nothing. How else to explain the following story:

• "NEW CENTRE PLANNED FOR FORMER RESTAURANT
  
  Despite the fact the property will eventually be expropriated to accommodate a long-planned $30-million expansion of the Windsor-Detroit tunnel plaza, a new pharmacy and laser centre is planned for a former restaurant on Goyeau Street.
  
  It will be located in the former Trevi and Musashi restaurants, according to Abe TaqTaq, whose family owns the property in addition to the adjacent tunnel duty free shop.
  
  TaqTaq said he's still trying to attract interest from physicians and a pharmacist to lease space in the 5,500-square-foot building.
  
  "We're also in discussions with a company that operates laser centres," said TaqTaq.
  
  Plans to expand the tunnel plaza "appear to be off in the distant future and in the meantime, we're just trying to fill the space," he said."

I would suggest that Mr. TaqTaq change the sign on his building since it suggests that the premises have already been leased out to a pharmacy and a laser clinic. He may be losing perspective tenants who think that the space is already gone when it looks like no one has made a firm commitment yet. Mind you, who would want to lease space in the building where it may be expropriated at some indefinite time in the future.

If you want to see what the sign looks like just go to my BLOG September 27, 2007 "A Picture Is Worth A Lot Of Dollars."

The story is interesting from another perspective as well. Since Mr. TaqTaq is involved in the duty-free shop at that Tunnel, presumably he would know what is going on at that location. Accordingly, it appears that the Tunnel Plaza improvements are not going to happen for a very long time and it may also mean that the US$75 million deal with the City of Detroit may be in limbo as well.

I wish I could give you more information about both of those transactions but only the Mayor's office knows for sure and they don't tell mere citizens anything. I guess the only information that we can get is from reading tea leaves based on the slightest of facts.

DETROIT'S TUNNELLEER HAS LEFT

According to Crain's Detroit, Derrick Miller, the Chief Information Officer for Detroit's Mayor has left the employ of the City. Apparently, he is to be involved in a "new entrepreneurial venture."

What makes a story interesting for Windsor is that my understanding is that he was the key person on the Detroit side responsible for the transaction with Windsor with respect to the Tunnel.

The timing of his leaving combined with Mr. TaqTaq's comment above suggests that the Tunnel deal may not be done for quite some time, if at all.

Now I have heard, but do not know if this is true, that Mr. Miller's new job may involve municipal finance. If so, perhaps his first client could be our Mayor. He might be able to help him find US$75 million since so far it would not appear that there is a financial backer on this transaction unless {gulp} it is Windsor taxpayers' money!

HALF EMPTY MATH

We have heard about the overwhelming support behind Greenlink but...as the infamous Councillor of Ward 1 would say, since it's only about 2-3% of the 200,000 people who live in Windsor, it is hardly an endorsement.

Here are some numbers according to the Star: 32,800 website hits, Ward meetings attracted 2,925 people, 829 comment cards, 1,624 callers to 311.

BUT, approvals have come so far from less than 10% of those people according to the Mayor's percentages. I'll let you know what some of the other 90% think this afternoon in my BLOG based on a random survey of concerned Windsorites. And it is NOT a pretty picture.

If we look at the Ambassador Bridge YouTube numbers for their animation of the Enhancement Project http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrVM_ReGCSE they have received over 14,000 hits with minimal publicity compared with what this City spent on Greenlink.

GAZELLE FEEDER AWARD

Congratulations to Matt Fischer, chief executive officer of the Windsor-Essex Development Commission, for winning a President's Award from the Economic Developers Association of Canada for developing and writing "a comprehensive guide to economic development.

I'd like to give him an award if he has created some jobs in Windsor since his appointment in February with the Commission. They were supposed to have some kind of a game plan during their 120 days of action for "plans to restructure the office with a stronger focus on business attraction and retention."

It would be nice to know what the herd of gazelle feeders have accomplished

IS LARRY HORWITZ RUNNING FOR MAYOR

He has to be. No one in living memory, other than a politician, has been in a Gord Henderson's column so many times as Larry Horwitz in so short a period of time.

To be honest, when I saw his name again,I was hoping for another Pamela Anderson story. Instead, we got another "let's help Eddie bring something else from St. Clair College downtown so he can justify spending money to bring them there because he failed with the University."

I wonder if, in their tour of those successful cities in Michigan, they asked businesspeople some questions. The most obvious ones are:

• Do you have a City Hall that works with business or one that fights with business


• Do you have a City Hall that won't allow a garage to be built or to replace at a house that is falling down


• Do you have a City Hall that chases developers and businesses out of town and won't work with major companies but calls them enemies


• Do you have a City Hall that has to call in outside auditors to review their books


• Do you have a City Hall that threatens to sue the Senior Levels of Government, the same ones from which they want grants


• Do you have a City Hall that for a period of over five years has not taken advantage of $300 million of funds to build a road to the border that would have created thousands of high-paying, badly needed, infrastructure and related jobs


• Have your license fees increased dramatically over the period of the year


• What are your water, sewer and electrical charges and have they increased dramatically


• What are your property and business taxes like and have they increased dramatically

Gord is right about one thing. As he said, "we also need a change in attitude." Of course that will not happen with our Mayor and Council.

There was also a hilarious joke in his column:

• "With the arena under construction, the riverfront done and a border deal just months away, Horwitz argues that Windsor's next great civic crusade must be about downtown revival."

DUH...if the arena was downtown, and not stuck out in the boonies invisible for most people, our downtown would be in the midst of its revival now. And guess who has to take responsibility for being silent when the arena could have been downtown but instead was moved to the East End in a behind the scenes deal that never worked out.

So tell me Larry and Gord, How can we "Git-R-Done" downtown now!

ROSS PAUL HITS BACK

It seems that the University through its President has decided to take an offensive position with respect to the downtown Engineering Complex. I guess they got tired of being the fall guys for Eddie's urban village failure downtown

Mind you it's their own fault. The University and its Board have been just about as secretive with respect to the Complex as is the City with almost anything. If they had been open and transparent with the community about what they were doing with the Complex, then they would not have been subject to the attacks in the Star and the President would not have had to have written the guest column in the Star's editorial page.

Oh please, don't write me and tell me that it was purely coincidental about the timing with Gord's column and Dr. Paul's comment. Regular readers know better than that. We had Gord's front-page story in the Star on Thursday too.

I must admit I wasn't sure if Gord had been demoted to a newspaper reporter when I saw the story in Thursday's paper "Engineering building doubtful for city core." I guess it must have meant since his name was on the byline that it was a "BIG STORY."

Why he just didn't say that one of the University's big-time, expected contributors said that a downtown campus made no sense for the Complex is something I don't understand. That probably killed any chance of the Complex going downtown.

The University is a strange beast. It seems that they are not prepared to go into a financial hole in order to help out our Mayor. Gee, if the University is "cash-strapped" as Henderson claims, then the University Board should be congratulated rather than condemned for their actions.

Didn't we read something recently about universities and debt in that Star:

• "The University of Windsor has $108.8 million in debt or $7,522 per student, which is the third lowest debt-to-student ratio of the 13 universities in the study.
  
  Before June 2006, the school had $45 million in debt. It floated additional debentures to pay for the new medical school and the Centre for Engineering Innovation.
  
  "We were very careful about debt we took on," said Sandra Aversa, associate vice-president of finance. "Our debt ratios are very strong. All our debt costs are budgeted for. The university probably took a more conservative approach by establishing a (fund) to pay off the debt. We've always been fiscally prudent to ensure the long term financial future of the institution."

Hmmmm perhaps Ross Paul should run for Mayor since his term as President of the University is ending soon. We could use someone who is prudent in handling his constituents' money.

DIEFENBAKER'S "THEY" ARE BACK

I was reminded of this whenI heard an interview on CKLW involving Councillor Jones after the Ward 2 Schwartz road meeting. Here is the transcript:

• "Announcer: While most approve of the proposal, there has been some negative feedback but Ward 2 Councillor Ron Jones isn’t buying it
  
  Councillor Jones: This proposal has been something that the people have totally bought into. Once again, there are some who are here and we know why they are here. They are here to be negative as to this proposal and we know who sent them."

Dief the Chief used to sprinkle "THEY" in his speeches all the time. If it were not for the Chief, THEY would get us! He had to protect us from THEM.

Well, THEY are still around it seems but have moved to Windsor. I never had the chance to ask the former Prime Minister who THEY were but perhaps Councillor Jones could reveal their identity so I can sleep better at night.