Has the Voice of Council Been Silenced

Did you happen to watch the EH-News last night. It was fascinating to watch the interview with the Mayor. If you wanted to see someone who has totally lost in everything that he tried to do on the border and wasted millions of taxpayer dollars doing it, there was our Mayor. He looked completely defeated and sounded it as well.

If you can, watch the full interview. It is a completely different Eddie Francis than I have seen before. http://www.atv.ca/windsor/news_62399.aspx Moreover, if I was the Eminence Greasie I would tell Eddie NOT to be interviewed by Daryl Newcombe any more. Daryl destroys him every time just by letting Eddie speak! Even offering Daryl a scoop re the new Greenlink "compromise" plan did not earn Eddie any favours!

Perhaps Eddie will go back just to giving the Star the big stories. As for the poor Bloggers in town, no one wants to tell us anything. We just have to keep trying to figure it all out by reading tea leaves.

How many tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars for consultant fees and trips to New York and elsewhere were wasted on creating another variation of Greenlink? Can anyone believe our Mayor when he says that something is not negotiable after he effectively caved in? He has lost his credibility as a negotiator.

I wonder if City Councillors were aware of what was going on and approved the spending of that money. Did they know about the Tuesday meeting in advance or the results or do they have to depend of the media as we all are forced to do?

I am so glad that the Mayor is going to share this new concept of a roadway with us especially after the Province has rejected it. I’m not sure what the purpose of that exercise is except to show us some pretty new artists’ renderings. I wonder if the CAO was asked to approve the payment for them as well or did Council authorize it.

What was also interesting to me in the clip above was the lack of legal threats especially when he said that he does not see DRIC moving at all. I did not hear him threaten to start a lawsuit or suggest that his lawyer draft a Statement of Claim to be ready to serve it. It would seem that the Mayor has finally realized that he can no longer use David Estrin after the Bridge Company won their victory in the Court of Appeals in United States. Whom will he use now?

Perhaps I could get my $25 back as my share of the Estrin legal costs now.

In listening to the full interview, there is no doubt now that the Province is merely tolerating the Mayor. They don’t really care what he has to say. He seems to have lost his bargaining position with them. I do not understand why the Mayor proposed what he did in any event since the Province was clear that they had no intention of having Schwunnels of a kilometre in length. Eddie is still proposing three of them.

I hope this means that the Greenlink sign will finally be taken down from the Council Chambers. He really should do it immediately because it is a symbol of another disaster for which he has to take the responsibility and the blame as the Voice of Council. He wanted the title… he gets the loss.

Again, if you had listened to the full interview, you would not have heard the word “Council” mentioned at all. That was a surprise to me since Eddie usually likes to pass the blame onto others.

The best that he can do now is submit something for the Minister of the Environment to take a look at. We know what the Minister will do with that!

Of course, I don’t expect the Mayor just to sit there and take it. He’s got to come up with some brilliant alternative. He must have a PLAN, Eddie always has a PLAN. I can hardly wait to see what it is and how much is going to cost us.

To tell you the truth, I am still very suspicious of all of this. There has to be more going on than we know about. But then again, we are mere taxpayers. Who cares what we know.