Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Mail Call


More letters from readers. I have still not received yours yet:

1) Come on, Ed, you're a big boy. You know perfectly well why Thomas Sowell and Jack Lessenberry appear instead of local writers. Those guys provide cheap copy. At one time the Star actually did investigative reporting. Not any more. Why pay local people to write columns about Windsor when you can pull stuff off the wire on the cheap about places and events that Windsorites couldn't care less about? Fewer scribes, lower cost. [Note: I was told to expect the Page 3 columns to start again in the next few days]

2) compromise is changing a six-lane, at-grade facility costing about $160 million dollars to a partially tunnelled, $1.6 billion dollar facility.

3) Councillor "X" won't talk to me, Councillor "Y" tells me to ask staffer "Z", "Z" won't reply to my E-Mail : so much for the City motto of working with the public !

4) Do you think Windsor is ever going to learn the lessons like Toronto!!! STOP BITCHING AND STOP RUNNING THE BIG GUYS AND GAL DOWN EVERY TIME IN TORONTO AND OTTAWA JUST BECAUSE IT DID NOT GO YOUR WAY. TORONTO PULLS IN 6-8 BILLION FOR A SUBWAY AND ALL THESE CLOWNS DO HERE IN WINDSOR IS BITCH......MARK MY WORDS THE JAIL WILL BE RELOCATED TO LAKESHORE OR CHATHAM KENT MAYBE PUCE. TALK ABOUT BEING OUTRIGHT STUPID I HAVE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS BULL CRAP...IN ALL THE YEARS I HAVE BEEN IN WINDSOR (I CAME HERE IN THE 50's) IT IS BEYOND BELIEF...

YOU DO NOT NEED EXPENSIVE LAWYERS JUST SOME COMMON SENSE.

THOUGHT GORD HENDERSON HAD SEEN THE LIGHT BUT AFTER SATURDAYS WINDSOR STAR I WAS WRONG. SAME OLD SAME OLD... HE RETIRES FROM THE STAR GOD!!WHY DID HE NOT STAY RETIRED

5) Thanks Ed for posting the CIBPA meeting. This initiative should start some accountability within the sectors involved. I pray CIBPA gets this committee formed and moving quickly.

Your interview was impressive - you are a natural. Are you sure you don't want to run for Mayor? Come on, just one term? You have more knowledge on this border file than anyone else. Windsor/Essex needs you.

6) I was down in New Orleans in January - my first time there - little
did i know that i would find post-katrina new orleans in better shape
than Windsor. Check out this story to find out why:

http://www.nowpublic.com/world/new-orleans-now-0

7) Seems to me Eddie has zero experience in difficult times.
He's trying to come up with mega projects that will make the
public think he is accomplishing something.
He's falling apart...

By the way I went across the bridge yesterday on the new section on the
US side.
How long before the Canadian side realizes the twin bridge is happening?

8) As a HOME OWNER on [Name of street] where I have spent over $40,000 RESTORING my house and one who was promised by Ron Jon[Name of councillor] that an urban village was going to be built in the CCW lands ( I went to various meetings before I purchased the house).

I thought that the small village of original homes (where little crime and a tight-knit community exists) was going to be a part of the new urban village and thus thought I would be a pioneer of sorts to start to transform our downtown neighbourhoods and our downtown into a place where people would want to live and shop.

Never did I think that I may one day lose my house because of some hair-brained scheme by a pathetic mayor who only, once again, wants to leave yet another "legacy" project as a testament to his mayoral past.

I will say one thing. There are a few home owners that live in their houses, like me in the area that are willing to stand up to this (some of the landlords may not because it is $$$ for them). The city is going to have to have a fight on their hands! If the Eddie thinks that Canderel was a pain wait until he see's the fight over a city taking a good neighbourhood, levelling it all It is a PR campaign he will not win and it is going to cost the city a lot not including the cost of this idiotic idea.

By the way, check out Oklahom's canal and the Riverwalk in San Antonio that Eddie is comparing this to. Both are much longer. Some are over 8kms long, and most have century old buildings that were restored to give it character.

This is my house! My house that I bought, that I wanted to restore, where I could raise a family in an urban environmnet and a place where I could retire and die. So much for following our elected officials. So much for believing that a city would protect a neighbourhood or invest in one. Never would I thought I would have to defend my property (and trust me I will) from the very city that I live in!

Welcome to the gulag!

9) "X" be assured that all of US are behind you 100%...
We will NOT let the Canal happen!
Eddie's Pipe Dream is never going to get any support if:
- reality has anything to do with it;
- we can start right off building some opposition to this scheme.
He apparently was talking about "only $60 Million"
-ya, right - Just to draw-up the plans and hire a few lawyers!
We cannot let X's neighbourhood just disappear..

We have a starry-eyed dreamer leading this Council and what we need right now is a tough-minded LEADER (not a dreamer)to get the City through the next 5 or 6 tough years that are coming!

10) The best explanation comes from Horwitz.
It can't be rinky dink.
Somehow that just fits.
I really want to see how the engineer plans to get water from the river to
street level as depicted in the cute PDF files.
The water level would be at least 50-60 feet below the street.
There must be something else ready to break loose in the city. This
release may be a diversion from some other big story disaster ready to happen
at city hall.

11) OK folks here I am the hypothetical Canal Lot home buyer. I watched the CBC already and I know that property taxes are lower in Southern Florida than in Windsor. The climate is warmer. The water saltier. The clincher, well the executive quality previously $400K+ canal homes are being short sold by the banks under power of sale or foreclosure for less than $100K in US dollars. Can Eddy beat that? So unless I am so bad I cannot get a passport or a pardon if I did something stupid in the past I see the benefit a lot more attractive in the land of the hurricane than in the land of WUC.

12) Gary Cunliffe, managing editor of CBC Windsor, which is also facing layoffs, said traditional methods of news delivery were being challenged by citizen journalists or the "one-man bands operating in Windsor's basements, Windsor's highrises and Windsor's streets."

I wasn't insulted by this at all. I actually got quite a chuckle out of it. It tells us that the traditional media still don't know whats happening to them.

13) If Eddie is so damn keen to get whatever version of Greenslink built, why doesn't he go whole hog and bury EC Row from one end to to the other and build on top of it. If truck pollution is bad for the west end, then truck pollution for a larger population has to be badder/baddest. Now if can only get aircraft using Windsor's cargo hub into tunnels!

14) I knew DRTP would again be seen in Windsor. Perhaps my having saved flags and bumper stickers was not for naught after all.

15) Thought you might be interested. If the province can do it in the GTA, they can do it anywhere....Windsor? In a bid to speed up transit improvements in the Toronto region, the province has evicted all municipal politicians from the board of Metrolinx and merged the transportation planning agency with GO Transit. Integrating GO with the planning expertise at Metrolinx will help get "shovels in the ground" faster on projects, Transportation Minister Jim Bradley said. "All you have to do is get on our roadways at the present time and crawl along to see what it's like to understand the need for these projects moving forward," Bradley told reporters.

16) Now we know where so much of our tax dollars go; to the head of departments at city hall. The same ones who are driving this city into the ground...literally.

As for the Windsor Police Services, shame on them for such reckless spending of tax payers dollars. How about cutting some of those salaries and hiring more police? Nah! Instead they want SUV's so that criminals aren't cramped in the back of the cruisers. What a shame!

17) {Re Francis going to Toronto to hear Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan deliver the Ontario budget) I find it amazing he had to go to Toronto to hear the speech.

18) My investment advisor told me today about his very recent dinner conversation with an engineer employed by a company retained by Chrysler. The engineer has been devoting all his time to estimating the costs involved in removing everything from Windsor’s van plant and then moving it to St. Louis. To say the least, everyone at the table was chilled.

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