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Written by BBS
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Monday, 22 February 2010 03:54 |
1. Phog rocked the country by winning CBC Radio 3's "Best Live Venue" contest last year and they did it with your help. Now FAMFEST needs your help to win this year's version of the contest for the country's "Best Musical Festival". Visit the site, register and vote every day.
2. Welcome to the newest blogs on WE Speak:
Work and Play
Downtown WO
Windsor Blogger
3. Welcome to the newest candidate for Council in this year's Municipal election and congrats for managing to generate some press. Not an easy thing to do as an unknown candidate. The race is on in Ward 7!
4. Hottest rumour to date regarding the next Municipal Election - will Sheila Wisdom jump in and make the Mayor's race interesting? Unlike a sitting Councillor who might be wary of declaring now and beginning a campaign, were Sheila to do so now she would have an open field to campaign, forcing the Mayor and other potential candidates to either declare or cede the early campaigning to her.
5. Interesting article in the Globe and Mail on Windsor real estate.
6. This is one I didn't hear about last week - Google Street View Removes Windsor Murder Scene
7. It's certainly not Heart Smart but it is lip-smacking good - Phog's new All Poutine menu! Served Tuesday thru Saturday, 5pm to 10pm. Options available for both vegetarians and meat lovers.
8. If you're not afraid to expand your horizons a little bit, make sure you stop in Scaledown to catch Mark Bradley's News for the week.
9. Demonstrating what can be done with some simple Web 2.0 tools, my fellow Torch blogger (and blog founder) Damian has an interview from Kandahar with the Commanding Officer of the Canadian Helicopter Force (Afghanistan), LCol Smyth. (inteview conducted by Skype and posted on YouTube)
10. What's your story for Windsor/Essex today? Leave a note or link in the comments.
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Written by BBS
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Saturday, 20 February 2010 03:44 |
Hold the phone, a monumental event has occured in Windsor. I'm currently awaiting a call back from Environment Canada to see if the reports are true that Hell has frozen over.
It's only taken twelve years, but Windsor Star columinst Gord Henderson has actually almost, kind of, admitted that he might possibly, once, have been wrong.
Health care is a provincial responsibility
We've been down this road before. In the spring of 1998 I was among those who were urging councillors to ignore the public hysteria and approve a $14-million levy (a surcharge of about $25 annually on an average property tax bill) for the much-needed expansion and renovation of area hospitals.
I conceded at the time that I "wasn't thrilled by the concept of compulsory giving" and hoped it wouldn't become "a handy tool to raise funds for every worthy cause under the sun."
I clearly remember this being pitched as a one-timer, an unprecedented and not-to-be-repeated emergency funding tactic to help bring Windsor's hospitals out of the Dark Ages at a time when the Mike Harris government was perceived as giving this Conservative wasteland the back of the hand.
Wrong, shouted older and less naive critics. The levy, they warned, set a dangerous precedent and it would be only a matter of time before some well-meaning group with a mom and apple pie cause would be back at this tantalizing trough.
How right they were.
I'm heading out early tomorrow with my binoculars to watch the unheard of spectacle of pigs flying throughout the Windsor region.
PS. A suggestion for Council when they consider this and any other requests. Insert an option box on this years final tax bill offering taxpayers an option to contribute $25 dollars per year towards a fund that will go to community initiatives such as the requests from Hotel Dieu, Windsor Regional and the McGivney Centre. Many will argue that it's a worthy cause and it is. If the County wishes to contribute taxpayer funds, that is their right and they will have to face their electors this year to explain their decision.
In Windsor, let's give taxpayers a choice. Those that wish to support this would simply have to check a box on their tax bill, those who don't won't be forced to contribute, or at least will have the option of contributing directly to the charitable foundation and reaping the benefits of a tax deduction.
Municipal governments should be focused on running and funding the services and infrastructure they are mandated to support. The remainder should be quickly and loudly rejected back to the appropriate level of government to fund.
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Written by BBS
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Friday, 19 February 2010 23:30 |
It's certainly been a long week. For those that noticed WE Speak and the Shadow down this week (amongst others) it was because of a rather catastrophic failure of the server. For the geeks, the server was using RAID 5 and when one drive went, everything was switched to a second drive which promptly failed taking the whole server and all of it's data with it. A new server using RAID 10 was put in place and a long and painful backup process began. The deep backup software being used has some drawbacks, one of which was a very long restore process. The whole process took approximately 30 hours. Fingers crossed that this is the last of my server problems for a while. I've got more than enough on my plate without having to deal with this kind of stuff.
Over the weekend I hope to catch up with posts here and begin moving forward with some stuff on Citizfaction. A Candidates Info night has been booked at Phog for March 31st, starting at 7pm. Once I have all the presenters finalized I will be publishing all the details. I had a quick chat with Chris Holt this evening and Citizfaction and Scaledown will be working together to present Town Hall/Candidates nights for all of the various wards in the city. Ultimately I would also like to do one for the Mayor's race, but that is a somewhat bigger project and I would like to stay focused on the Wards to begin with. Anyone interested in helping out with Citizfaction during the campaign,
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
and we'll chat.
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Written by BBS
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Tuesday, 09 February 2010 00:24 |
 Congratulations to Rino Bortolin, owner of the Black Kettle Bistro on his decision to run for City Councillor in Ward 3. I'll personally be supporting Rino and doing everything possible to help in his election campaign.
Slowy, but surely, candidates are beginning to step up and register their intent to run. As yet, we haven't seen any of the current Councillors register. Often, this is a strategy used by incumbents to discourage other candidates from running. A strategy such as this worked much better under the old five Ward, two Councillors per ward system. With the new smaller wards incumbents now risk giving newcomers a chance to define both themselves and their opponents on the doorsteps. An energetic candidate should be able to canvass the entire ward at least once, possibly twice if they start now. That kind of work can go a long way to erasing any name recognition advantage that an incumbent has.
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Election Countdown
left until the 2010 Windsor Municipal Election
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