Biz Blogs

Mainstream media commentators are so pre-occupied waving pom poms over the impending Big Box Aquatics Centre they have neglected to look at the dwindling capital budget for traditional infrastructure like sewers, roads and sidewalks. Remember them?

Let’s start today with sewers. While residents across Windsor howl about widespread basement flooding, Council is spending a paltry $8.7 million in 2011 on a grand total of six sewer projects.

They are as follows:
Gladstone Ave., from Wyandotte East to Erie East -- $1,680 million.
Parent Ave.(engineering only), from Erie Street East to Wyandotte Street E. -- $200,000
Marentette Ave., from Erie Street E. to Giles Blvd. E. -- $1.42 million
Tourangeau Road, from Seminole Street to Ontario Street -- $1.900 million
Tourangeau Road, from Seminole St. to Milloy St. -- $2.450 million
Lena Street, from College Ave. to Millen Street -- $750,000

An additional $300,000 has been set aside for engineering only for 2013 projects. Also added in the 2011 capital budget deliberations were sewer projects, at $1 million each, for Watson Ave. and Frncois Crt.

Funding for those two are being pulled from surpluses accumulated from previous sewer projects in South Walkerville.

Appendix A, attached to “Report No. 49, is a letter of engagement from a KPMG official, to lame duck audit committee chair Max Zalev, dated way back on April 20. It states that work on the Audit, inherited from sidelined Lead Auditor Angela Berry, “will start immediately and be completed by June 15.”

Angela is off work and has filed a violence in the workplace complaint against City Council and the lame duck audit committee which includes Zalev. It seems clear that Zalev, who was previously deemed by Council as ineligible to serve on the audit committee because he is employed by a city agency (EnWin), is hanging around to deliver the WFCU audit.

Here’s another question. How could KPMG’s work begin before Council’s formal approval? Mere formalities don’t seem to count for much around City Hall these days.

It appears we are about to learn what AGO experts meant, ironically including Windsor Audit Committee Vice-Chair Bill Carter, when they advised Council that accounting firms will cost a lot more and work a lot less than in-house staff conducting the business of the AGO.

The Council majority has gone ahead with the outsourcing anyway, and now it is likely that taxpayers will be paying KPMG more than $40,000 a month for the arena audit. When the audit is complete, supposedly in three weeks, it will be interesting indeed who gets to vet this potentially explosive document before it goes public. 

In an interesting debate on April 18^th, Mayor Francis and most of Council spoke in favour of direct reporting to Council, suggesting that the auditor generals in Ottawa and Toronto report directly to the Canadian parliament and the Ontario legislature.

I would suggest that the senior political bodies are quite different than their municipal offspring. Partisan politics prevail at the senior levels so it’s not likely that the opposition parties will allow any critical audit reported to Stephen Harper and Dalton McGuinty to be swept under the rug.

At Windsor City Council, I don’t see anything resembling an Official Opposition.

I have argued that there should be a buffer between the new Auditor General, Todd Langlois, and City Council. So far the mayor has hinted that there may be an audit advisory committee to Council some time in the future, but that would appear to be mere lip service.

I have done a little research on the auditor general models in Ottawa and Toronto, and discovered that the AGs at the senior levels do not report to the Premier and Prime Minister and their cabinets – the equivalent of the mayor and Council at the municipal level.

 The Federal and Provincial AGs are independent of government and administration. They table their audits with the speakers of the house, who are elected by all parties. The department or ministry being audited have an opportunity to respond to the audit criticisms and recommendations, but have no power to alter them.

The way matters are lining up in Windsor, the AG will report directly to the mayor and Council, who act as both the executive and legislative arms of our municipal government. Who knows what checks and balances will be in place to guard against interference before the documents become public?

What is most surprising about all of this is the lack of interest from the mainstream media. The news and opinion hounds were all over the mishandling of the 400 Audit a couple of years ago, but seem to have little interest in more blatant bobbing and weaving around accountability over the WFCU audit.

Where are you when the taxpayers need you Don McArthur?

The Mayor and his friends are
Not doing this FOR you, They are doing this TO you.

"Consultation" on Relocation/Closure of the Central Library
850 Ouellette
May 18: 6 to 8 p.m.

TO BE AFFECTED: Central Library and South Walkerville and Budimir branches;
Adie Knox, Water World and Atkinson pools; College Community Centre

ATTEND-BE HEARD
Committees For The Survival Of Neighbourhoods.

Neighbourhood cast as villains
I have to object to your assertion in an April 18 editorial that I am doing my best to stir up opposition to the proposed new aquatic centre.

I continue to be on record in support of a new 50-meter pool and aquatics centre, but not at the expense of the vulnerable neighbourhoods around Glengarry and Adie Knox. These people are not against the new facility either. All they want to do is hold onto what they have. Yet they are somehow being cast as the villains, something like South Windsor neighbours were when they “whined and carped” to prevent DRTP trucks from disrupting their lifestyles a few years back.  

As part of the efforts to manufacture a business plan to take the water features away from Water World, great myths are being created. The biggest myth is that Water World is hardly used because people from outside the community are afraid to trespass on the “inner city.”

I urge these fear mongers to take a look at the stats. Last year, 83,357 people visited the centre, which includes a lane pool, leisure tot pool, therapy pool, climbing wall and water slide. Many were from all over the city and county.

Despite this, the water component of Water World lost about $450,000. As the new aquatics centre will find out, swimming pools are labour intensive and energy hogs. They lose money no matter how wildly successful they are in attracting users. 

The big box aquatics centre should help revitalize downtown, but let's not forget the spinoff business of Water World to the Wyandotte Steet east business district.
Contrary to popular belief, Water World is not falling apart. The city has plowed a lot of money into upkeep of the 13-year-old facility -- including $300,000 last year on a new roof.

Another belief from the outlanders is that it’s an easy walk from Water World to the site of the proposed big box aquatics centre. In fact, it’s 10 blocks across several major thoroughfares, and many of the hundreds of Glengarry kids who attend summer camp and after school “homework’ programs are seven to 10-years old.
When Councillors make this decision, they need to be reminded what the city’s Official Plan says about the necessity of strong neighbourhoods:  “Each neighbourhood will have a central area that provides a focus for activities and is within a convenient walking distance. Here, people will find shops, jobs, neighbourhood based services, public places that are safe and inviting, and a place to meet with neighbours and join in community life."

Alan Halberstadt
Ward 4 City Councillor

As described in my previous posting, Counc. Al Maghnieh has attacked Windsor Public Library Board chair Andrew McAvoy for “creating fear” among WPL staff that a relocation of the Central Library would probably mean a major downsizing of branch space, staff and services.

When you take a close look at the “business case” being put forward by City Hall spin doctors on the advantages of building a new Central Library attached to a massive aquatics complex near the Detroit River, you will come to realize that the attack on McAvoy is unwarranted.

The spin says that it cost $4.3-million to run the “half-empty” Central Library last year and there are “big savings” to be had at a proposed new library.

In fact, the existing library, built in 1972, remains in great shape and it is not half empty.
It could be functional at about two-thirds the size. But there would be little or no savings in a new building unless there were dramatic staffing cuts.

Of that $4.3 million cost last year, $3.826,583 was paid out in regular salaries and benefits and $198,237 in page salaries. Supply staff salaries equalled $63,812 and $67,432 went to Sunday Service overtime payments.

That leaves only $141,113 for utilities, leases and taxes. Maghnieh is boasting that he is working with private business to create a LEED certified green building as the replacement. Well and good, but any savings on heating and cooling would only make up a fraction of the grand total.

So McAvoy is right on. If there is going to be any real savings it will come out of the hides of staff.

* * *

The Windsor Public Library is not funded 100 percent by the City of Windsor. The province, which oversees Ontario libraries under the Library Act, grants the WPL $470,000 a year. The library also receives $100,000 in grants from other provincial entities for special programs.

* * *

The Windsor Public Library board may be entering another dark era of partisan politics.

People who were bewildered by the force of Counc. Maghnieh’s attack on McAvoy in the Windsor Star on April 18th, might start connecting the dots when they learn that McAvoy will soon by squaring off with Dwight Duncan in October’s provincial election. McAvoy is in line to be the NDP candidate in Windsor Tecumseh.

Counc. Maghnieh is a robust Liberal, having worked for Duncan at Queen’s Park before coming home to Windsor to cut his teeth as a municipal politician.

People reading the Page 3 article in the Windsor Star on April 28 must be shaking their heads in puzzlement. In it, Counc. Al Maghnieh attacks Windsor Public Library Board chair Andrew McAvoy for “creating fear” about City Hall’s proposal to close the Central Library Branch at 850 Ouellete Ave. and relocate it as an adjunct to the proposed new aquatics centre on the northwestern edge of downtown.

Maghnieh blasted McAvoy for deciding to go ahead with the regularly-scheduled Library Board meeting in the last week of April. McAvoy told me that Maghnieh previously related a request from Mayor Eddie Francis, in a suspected violation of the Library Act, to cancel the April meeting of the “arms length” board.
Before Magnhieh’s aggressive intervention, existing board members were eager to hold the meeting to provide an opportunity to frame their legitimate concerns around the potential closing of the Central branch, the system’s flagship.

Mayor Franics orchestrated an end run of the library board on the Central Library proposal, working directly with library CEO Barry Holmes. There is suspicion, underscored by Maghnieh’s loose lip in an interview with reporter Dalson Chen on The Star’s You Tube channel, that fancy blueprints are already in place for the new library prior to any official consultation taking place.

This might lead people to question the legitimacy of Maghnieh’s guarantee that public consultation “will be consistent and continuous with the community and with the staff of the library.”

In an administrative blunder, City Hall violated the Library Act which requires municipalities to appoint new private citizens of their library boards within 60 days of the first meeting of the new Council. Municipalities that do not adhere to the Act can put a library at risk of losing its annual grant from the province.
Council is due to finally appoint a new board Tuesday, well beyond the legislative requirement. Given this violation, a legal case could be made that the existing board should remain in place for the duration of the present four-year term.

McAvoy received legal advice to the effect that the existing board has every right to hold the April meeting. Magnhieh, presumably deathly afraid that any board member might speak against the relocation of the central library, ran to the Windsor Star, which like any populist newspaper could not resist a controversial story.
McAvoy called the meeting for Thursday. Magnhieh and Counc. Hilary Payne, appointed as minority Council representatives to the board before Easter, called in their regrets as a way of protest.

That morning, the sensational Star headline appeared: Library chair accused of ‘creating fear,’ and three other volunteer members of the board apparently decided that discretion was the better part of valour. They decided not to attend, and killed the quorum that killed the meeting.

Four members of the existing board – McAvoy, Maxine Jones, Lorena Shepley and Ron Bertram – have applied for re-appointment. Ray Guillet, Jim Stuart and myself did not re-apply. It’s my educated guess that Bertram and Shepley will be re-appointed on Tuesday, along with one or two other citizens, and they will elect Magnhieh chair.

Jones fell on her sword by attending a meeting of residents, along with McAvoy, last week at the Cencourse Building. Magnhieh told the Star he and Payne were not invited to the meeting (McIvoy indicates otherwise), but that he attended anyway.

Actually, there are reports that Magnhieh lurked outside the meeting room and allowed his adorning media to ambush him afterwards, at which time he refuted McAvoy’s presumption that the relocation would probably mean a major downsizing of branch space, staff and services.

Certainly, that would be a reasonable assumption given an April 9 assertion by a Star columnist linked closely to Mayor Francis, that the present library is “half-empty.”

I understand the people who attended the Cencourse meeting have a petition they wanted to present to the board Thursday. Now they will have to wait.

Magnhieh, in his revealing You Tube interview, gave assurances that the new board will fall in line with the city’s vision for a new central library. It’s an educated guess that the new members are already hand-picked by Counc. Magnhieh and Mayor Francis.

As former chair of the Library Board and delighted to be liberated from this kind of nasty politics, I don't have a problem with the WPL having some sort of nominal presence in an aquatics centre setting. Perhaps a book deposit, e-books and some computer stations. But not at the expense of further neglect of other branches in the nine-branch system, and closing the Central branch (which has served seniors and public housing residents in the neighbourhood so well for so long).

The current board, at the petulant urging of Mayor Francis, spent considerable time, money and human resources developing a Strategic Plan. In that document, I don’t recall any immediate concerns around the Central Branch. Quite the contrary. But the board did formulate and set some priorities for South Walkerville, Remington Park and Budimir branches which we all know are less than desirable.

In fact, City Council set aside capital budget placeholders totalling $2.1 million in 2009 for renovations and expansion of Budimir in South Windsor and the expansion of the Optimist Community Centre to serve South Walkerville and Magnhieh’s Remingon Park.

Council has now re-allocated that money to the library component of the proposed downtown aquatics centre. That action would tend to lay bare Counc. Maghnieh’s claim that WPL is “not anywhere near” finalizing the future of the Central Library Branch at 850 Ouellette Ave.

I suspect the finalization will materialize in a hurry-up business plan for the aquatics complex, to be tabled at Council as early as mid-May. Expect glitzy pictures to be attached.

Residents in the neighbourhood of the Windsor Central Library have called a public meeting tomorrow night, April 20th, at 7 p.m. at the Cencourse Building, 30 Tuscarora Street, to vent their views on the proposal by City Council to close the building at 850 Ouellette Ave. and move it to the western edge of downtown Windsor.

The proposal by Mayor Eddie Francis would have a new library built within an new aquatics centre complex and to sell the existing building on the open market. Many of the residents around the present library, built in the early 1970s, live in seniors apartment buildings and frequent the library, travelling by foot, walkers or motorized wheel chairs.

Tonight's meeting is in the Friendship Room on the second floor of Cencourse.

A public meeting has been scheduled Wednesday night at 6 p.m. at the Drop-In Centre of Thompson Towers to allow residents in and around Water World to vent over the proposal to close the 15-year-old facility and consolidate its activities at a new aquatics centre on the other side of the city core.

Water World has become a fabric of the Glengarry community, and outrage has been the initial reaction to the sudden news of the pending doom of Water World and Windsor Arena. The feelings run the gamut as follows:

• This arbitrary decision is not fair. The city is always taking things away from us.
• This happened without consultation. Since we are low income, our voices don’t matter.
• There are already many properties sitting empty in the neighbourhood and criminal activity is already in evidence. This will turn the east side of downtown into another Detroit.
• Many of the over 1000 inhabitants of the Glengarry housing units are on Ontario Works or Ontario Disability pensions. They have discounted admission fees to Water World.
• Transit Windsor buses to the western anchor lands, and admission fees to a proposed new $64-milllion aquatics centre, will be prohibitive.
• The bus route is circuitous across town and a round-trip costs $5, which adds up in a hurry for low income people, especially those with children.
• The Water World gym is used for community meetings, health care events and after school programs for Begley and Immaculate Conception School students.
• A successful, five-year-old homework club has been drawing 40 kids per night five days a week. Free swims and basketball games in the gym – which normally rents for $75 – have been a vital drawing card to the homework club, run by the University of Windsor's school of social work.
• The programs delivered by the university partnership have been stuck together with band aids and bubble gum as it is.

The common room at Thompson Towers can pack in 80 people. Many of the Glengarry inhabitants are new Canadians and have a hard time articulating in English. But except the room to be overflowing for Wednesday night’s meeting.

A second pushback to the aquatics centre development will be the impact on 1000 vulnerable residents at 920 Ouellette Ave., another public housing property with a population of seniors and people with disabilities and ethnic origins.

The city’s central library is next door, and many 920 residents attend programs there after a short walk. Mayor Eddie Francis plans to shut down the central library and attach a new one to the aquatics centre.
I anticipate a public meeting or two is on the horizon over the library situation also. I have recently stepped aside from the library board, and the central library is no longer in my ward. Nor, for that matter, is Water World in my ward.

Both facilities are in the new Ward 3, represented by Counc. Fulvio Valentinis.

The negative  impact spills over into Ward 4, however, with Howard Ave. being its western boundary. So I do feel obligated to stick up for people who may have a hard time articulating for themselves.