Recycling Police

This one struck me as strange for some reason:

More Recycling Urged (SEE VIDEO)
Dozens of apartment buildings still not following three 'R's'

Apartment building bad. I think this is going to be a theme over the next several weeks in Windsor.

Just a guess, mind you.

Windsor Airport

With the Airport takeover in the news recently, I thought it would be worthwhile to post this related video from Alan Halberstadt's blog. This is one of his Council Chat videos filmed in February of this year.

The Shadow Theme

It took some diligent Google searching, but I finally tracked down "The Shadow" theme




PS - City Hall readers might want to turn their speaker volume down a bit in case someone is listening!

Windsor Time Machine

Then Councillor Eddie Francis campaigning, circa 2003:

# The budget process needs to be open and transparent.
# Participatory budgets allow for sharing of information and create new avenues of consultation and greater citizen input.
# Pre-budget meetings will be held with community groups.
# A call for input from taxpayers, business, labour and community groups at the beginning of the process - not a week before the by-law is to be passed.
# Budget details to be posted prior to council deliberation for pubic comment.
# Taxpayers will have a clearer idea of how their money is utilized by the City.

Mayor Eddie Francis finished campaigning, circa 2007:

Municipal Election Financing

With yesterday at 5pm being the deadline for all candidates to file their election returns for the last Municipal election, I was expecting to see at least a paragraph or two in the Star today. There I go with that "assuming" thing again. With roaring Grand Prix engines in one ear and revving tunneling bores in the other I must have got distracted for a moment.

Bring your marshmallows

At the rate this seems to be going, I've got a funny feeling some local arts groups are going to be burning someone in effigy soon. No snowplows to offer for this event - it could get costly.
I hear the North American Frog Jumping Contest is coming to Ypsilanti soon. We better hurry up before we miss the boat.

After years of lawyers fees (ongoing) , consultants (long gone) , PR glitz and glam(gone with the consultants hopefully) we finally draw a line in the sand - choosing the most expensive option that neither level of government is likely to choose. The new council passed Councillor Marra's tunneling motion without even needing a strategic planning session (open or closed), consultants report, engineering studies or failing everything else, a report from our own administration. Amazing. It begs the question - What the hell have we been shoveling money out the door for all the preceding over the last several years?

Now everyone can safely point and say - "We did everything we could, it's (insert name of choice here) _________________ [Stephen Harper] [Dalton McGuinty] [Sandra Pupatello] [Dwight Duncan] [The Tooth Fairy] ' s fault!" If I were DRIC I would endorse the Schwartz Plan now. That would be an interesting scramble to watch.

On a final note, I was happy to see the Mayor being as magnanimous in his praise for Festival Epicure as he was in providing support and leadership in helping find a new lead sponsor.

Mayor Eddie Francis applauded a new sponsor stepping up to keep the festival afloat — despite the strange partnership of two competing border traffic proponents.

“It’s great Festival Epicure will continue,” he said. “We mentioned to organizers they had to approach things in a different way. They were able to reach out to other corporate sponsors and keep the festival going.

“It’s one less festival the city will have to support.”

Asked for reaction about the Ambassador Bridge-DRTP marriage to run the food festival, Francis said: “That’s for them to have to explain.”

I may have mispoke in the first paragraph. I think some business owners may soon be joining the arts groups.

Pass the hotdogs please.

Shadow Poll #6 - Results

I left this one up for a while longer than usual in order to get as wide a range of opinions as possible. While it didn't spark too many comments, I did get a fair amount of emails.

24 out of 28 people gave the Windsor and Essex County Visitors and Convention Bureau website a grade of 5 out of 10 or less. In terms of "branding" for the City of Windsor, this is not very good.

The site is so outdated it's painful. Microsoft Frontpage code, scrolling galore, no keywords, most of the content is displayed in frames which prevents linking to pages other than the homepage. To borrow a phrase from Ronco, the website looks like a "set it and forget" site.

I posted a few sites for comparison before and I'll list them again. We're not even in the same league let alone the same ballpark.

Canada

London

Kitchener-Waterloo

Durham Region

Barrie

Ottawa

Kingston

Hamilton

Sarnia-Lambton

Toronto

Vancouver


United States

New York State

Las Vegas

Toyota and Honda at the University of Windsor

The University of Windsor certainly seems to be hosting all the "must attend" events lately:

UPCOMING EVENTS

Monday, April 2, 2007
Stephen Beatty
Managing Director of Toyota Canada
"Redefining 'Canadian' in Today's Auto Industry."
Odette Building - Room: Basement “06”
5:30 p.m. - 6:50 p.m.


Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Jim Miller
Vice-President of Marketing for Honda Canada
“What’s Hot with Honda”
Odette Building - Room: Basement “06”
5:30 p.m. - 6:50 p.m.


RSVP: Seating is limited
Barbara Barone
519-971-3678 or bbarone@uwindsor.ca

In terms of future high tech R & D investments, Ford, GM and Chrysler are not the only game in town. Windsor has a excellent School of Engineering that we should be doing everything possible to promote. Toyota Hyundai and Honda require research as much as any other manufacturer not to mention Tier 1 giants like Magna. We have the Ford Centre for Excellence in Manufacturing at St. Clair and Chrysler Research at the University of Windsor, why not a Magna University or Hyundai Tech Centre?

Eat hearty, it's only tax money

From today's Star article on Weekly Meetings:

COUNTING COSTS OF WEEKLY SCHEDULE

In 2006 there were 44 council meetings, which occurred weekly, with the exception of the summer months, when meetings take place every other week. The bi-weekly approach adopted for the entire year would result in a cost savings of $46,500.

Here's how it would break down:

Closed Captioning, $10,000

Catering, $28,000

Council services staff overtime, $2,000

Information Technology staff overtime, $3,500

Agenda delivery, $3,000

Anyone besides me still amazed at what the single biggest cost is? The savings in catering from changing to bi-weekly meetings is more than every other category listed.

From a comment on Alan Halberstadt's site, I learned that unionized employees are entitled to a $12.00 meal allowance when required to work over. What wrong with Council actually leading by example for a change?

$12.00 x 30 (10 Councillors, 1 Mayor, 19 staff) = $360.00 per Monday night. 44 meetings x $360 = $15,840.00 for the entire year. Hell - increase it to $15.00 and we'd still have a bargain.

In case anyone has forgotten or didn't hear, right about the same time as the story came out about Windsor's catering budget Toronto Council had a similar dilemma. The Mayor and 49 Councillors voted for a $20,000.00 catering budget for City Council in Toronto and the media and people went crazy.

It really makes me wonder what the taxpayer is paying for catering at other public institutions like Hospital Boards, Local Health Networks and EnWin to think of just a few.

What is the Institute for Liberal Studies?

After the recent Windsor Liberty Seminar, I had a chance to sit down with the Institute for Liberal Studies Executive Director Peter Jaworski.

Cross Posted from Blue Blogging Soapbox

Budget Updates

Whittling Down Windsor's Budget (SEE VIDEO) - A Channel

2007 Budget Process - City of Windsor

Pay-As-You-Eat Plan Rejected - Windsor Star

Bi-weekly Council Meetings - AM800

Council Meal Ticket Questioned - AM800

Around the City - Quick links

Talk of the town today

Keep up the good work. (subscribers only)
"It's never an easy exercise," Gignac said. "Probably with this department more than any other, I find myself torn." Gignac said she cannot continue to accept the downloading of social service costs from the province. She voted against funding some programs, like counselling services and job training programs, because she feels they should be the province's responsibility.

What speaks louder - a $250,000.00 dollar spin doctor communications department or reality.

No need to "Wrestle" with tunnel traffic.

Let fly the Red Ensign - it's the right thing to do.

Take a few minutes to let everyone know your thoughts on this weeks poll (righthand sidebar). Look at VisitWindsor.com then register your vote.

211 a reality

The tax and spend crowd won last night.

Councillors Jones, Postma, Hatfield, Marra and Valentinis voted to take on this new service. Councillors Dilkens, Gignac, Brister and Halberstadt were opposed with Councillor Lewenza and the Mayor not present.

We've just downloaded a new service onto the City with no long term funding available from the Province and an inequitable cost sharing agreement with the County. (The City/County split of the costs does not take into account the large amount of Windsor funds that have gone into the establishment of the current 311 service. )

We've added 3.5 full time equivalent positions to the city with all the associated long term pay, benefits and pension requirements. I'm really looking forward to seeing the cost sharing agreement that will guarantee these costs will continue to be shared between all three funders into the future. (Windsor/County and the United Way).

Things to watch for in the near future:

1. no infrastructure costs to the City as a result of adding 211? (outside of the one-time provincial funding of $200,000)

2. call volume projections - will probably be found to be too low

3. staffing projections - too low requiring the addition of 1 to 2 more staff

4. Database maintenance/upkeep/upgrading - more difficult/time intensive than projected, requiring further staffing/IT resources

5. 24 hr service will require the contracting out of after hours calls to another 211 Call Centre in Ontario. Yet another long term cost that appears rather fuzzy. This cost must be at least on a break-even basis for the other call centre, if not at a profit. Going forward we will be at the mercy of the other centre's funding decisions. Don't like it? Then we will have to in-source that capability. 168 hours in a week, 311 currently operates for 83 hours. We must contract out 85 hours per week.

One other thing, while not directly related, is worth noting. I was quite surprised at some of the cheap political shots that occurred during this debate at council and at several other times during the evening. It has certainly motivated me to move forward with something that I have contemplated for a while - digitally recording Council meetings. Thanks to a snazzy PC TV Capture card, a little bit of software, a few clicks and some hard drive space that task has now been completed.

Discover Windsor Part II

Related to this week's poll question and a post from last week - Discover Windsor, regarding our local efforts at a Convention and Visitor's Bureau website.

Here are a few other websites to compare Windsor's with:

Canada

London

Kitchener-Waterloo

Durham Region

Barrie

Ottawa

Kingston

Hamilton

Sarnia-Lambton

Toronto

Vancouver


United States

New York State

Las Vegas

Shadow Poll #5 - Results

Pretty much a slam dunk for last week's poll. The entrepreneurs win.

Whatever happened to the review of City assets?

Windsor Council Essex County's Gastronomical Winners

Noun

• S: (n) gastronomy (a particular style of cookery (as of a region)) "New England gastronomy"
• S: (n) gastronomy (the art and practice of choosing and preparing and eating good food)

Take-out bills for most town councils are modest

Amherstburg spent about $5,000 feeding councillors and staff
By Roberta Pennington, Windsor Star
Published: Thursday, March 15, 2007

Windsor councillors weren’t the only ones to have dined at the expense of taxpayers in 2006.

Rural municipalities in Essex County reported spending up to $5,000 in taxpayer dollars to feed councillors and bureaucrats last year, according to a survey conducted by The Star.

Amherstburg spent the most, about $5,000, on take-out food from restaurants such as Naples Pizza and Pasta, Pronto Delicatessen, Papa Paninis Pasta and Sandwich Shop and Sobeys last year, its CAO Frank Pizzuto said.

Spread the news

Help the City of Windsor spread their message of positive news. You can include this widget on your blog or website - FREE!

The code is available here. Just a simple cut and paste to include on most sites.

Quick hits

Reality, not spin

The real price of a Capitol bankruptcy

This page will be updated in the near future -

When? 2008?

211Service - can the City afford yet another expansion of services?

Your own comments/links in the comments section if you so desire!

Discover Windsor

Speaking of branding...

Is the budget at the Convention and Visitor's Bureau that small?

Microsoft Frontpage and scrolling iframes?

Nothing a stick of dynamite and some professional TLC couldn't help.

Budget rhethoric

It's budget time - time to roll out the same old rhetoric. If you want to save money, the only way to do it is to cut services.

CITY BUDGET PROPOSES A 2.6% HIKE
Windsor City Council will have a tough time deciding whether to settle for a 2.6 percent tax hike this year or try to lower it and abolish programs or positions. City administrators have handed in their tentative budget proposals that would see a 1.6 percent hike in operating costs and a 1 percent capital levy. Mayor Eddie Francis says councillors may object to some of the proposals that are recommended. In past years, administration has recommended closing Atkinson pool and the Lanspeary rink to save money. City council voted to keep those facilities open.

rant

The never ending mantra of City Hall at budget time.

This is what the Modified Zero Based Budgeting was supposed to eliminate - Administration presenting budgets as a fait acommpli. "This is the budget and if you want to save money then you must cut this, close this and reduce that"

The Mayor can spin it any way he wants but this year's budget process is not the Modified Zero Based Budget process that was followed in recent years.

What happened to starting at ZERO on all discretionary items and requiring each department to justify each expenditure? It's now March 14th and to my knowledge, Councillors have not received the budget documents as yet. The public certainly hasn't.

We're back to a closed door process.

What ever happened to the monthly departmental reports that were supposed to be presented to Council? This was to assist Council in tracking individual departments performance vis a vis their budget. The end of the year is not the time to find out about increasing overtime costs, the impact of fuel prices on budgets, absentee rates etc.

There are many tough questions that should be asked each and every year at budget time, especially on the operations side.

The City opened 4 more Service Centres last year. Was staff shifted from the Clerks Office or other City Departments to fill these positions or did we simply hire more staff?

What is the City's absentee rate? What steps are being taken to achieve the lowest rate possible?

What is the City travel budget for conferences and such? While items like this are often defended as being very worthwhile, educational and a relative small amount in the overall budget - look at it another way. Reducing the Council food budget from $35,000.00 to $10,000.00 would produce $25,000.00 in savings. Ten $25,000.00 dollar reductions equals $250,000.00. Ten $250,000.00 dollar reductions equals $2.5 million.

The answer is not "cut this entire program" or "close this facility". This is the standard administration tactic of providing Councillors with politically unpalatable choices in order to reduce spending.

/rant off