London, July 4, 2008 - An exciting new initiative this summer aims to cut down on the amount of festival garbage ending up in landfill.
Visitors to Sunfest, the Home County Folk Festival and Ribfest will be introduced to this year's pilot project, which includes an emphasis on reducing, reusing and recycling. All of the three festivals will be featuring "Eco-Stations", specific locations throughout Victoria Park where waste can be separated into three different streams - recycling, organics for composting, and garbage to landfill. Volunteers will be on hand to assist and answer questions.
Also new this year, the City of London is installing three water fountains in Victoria Park to provide free accessible City water and reduce the reliance of festival visitors on single-use plastic water bottles.
“In recent years, we’ve certainly witnessed a heightened concern for our environment emerging around the world, and action begins here at home,” says Mayor Anne Marie DeCicco-Best. “As Londoners, we can all ensure a clean and healthy environment for future generations by actively reducing our waste - and these new eco-stations provide a great way do that.”
Another idea being tested at the Home County Folk Festival in July is bring-your-own picnic ware, and a dish lending and dishwashing service.
The Greening of the Festivals is a partnership between the City of London, the three major festivals and Waste Free World - a local group of engaged citizens. Along with the goal to introduce waste diversion to these three major London events, is the hope visitors will be encouraged to continue good environmental practices after they return home.
1. The City of Windsor's Press Release on the Detroit Grand Prix listed the City website and the VisitWindsor.ca as locations to visit for more information, unfortunately, the information wasn't there when the City issued the News Release. The City has now placed a link to the "comprehensive event info" where they said they would - in the News Note section on the front page of the City's website. The only problem is, the link for more comprehensive information takes you back to the same press release. I guess that's what they call circular thinking.
At least the City has made some attempt. As of this morning, I could not find any information on the visitwindsor.ca website. Even a search through the event database yielded no results.
2. The relentless march to establish a $220,000.00 dollar (2008 dollars) spin department at City Hall continues. The reasons outlined in the report for justifying this expenditure read more like a failure of the current administration to lead rather than justification for further expanding the bureaucracy. The fact that the City has five different logos in use and can't decide which one should be used by everyone or policies and strategies regarding media inquiries are not consistent across the corporation are several of the reasons listed for at least requiring an immediate appointment of an Executive-Director of Corporate Communications. My guess is that this position will be in the $75,0000.00 to $90,000.00 dollar range. If the City spent half as much time actually addressing the problems identified in the report as they have in studying this, there would be no need for this ridiculous expenditure.
3. When 211 was first approved (March 19th, 2007), administration was directed to negotiate an operating agreement with the County and the United Way of Windsor. Although the resolution authorizes the General Manager Corporate Services and the CAO to sign the agreement on behalf of the City, I have not seen the actual agreement come back before Council for their information. It's possible that it may have been dealt with at an in-camera meeting or that I may have missed it. I'll have to look into this one further.
4. A Letter to the Editor today with yet another example of the City's habit of do as I say, not as I do. While the Windsor Essex Environment Committee considers a 3 bag limit for Windsor, it seems we can't even recycle at our own festivals. Summer Fest had it all, except for recycle bins
There are two things I liked about yesterday's Windsor Star Editorial. First, they're actually encouraging citizens to pressure City Council for a change, although they're still using kid gloves when it comes to the Mayor. Secondly, Councillors Lewenza and Jones have been outed as the chair warmers they are:
Reaching conclusions on the project's success in the absence of all the information, with the knowledge an audit of that project lurks behind closed doors, seems an incredibly irresponsible thing to do. Just because Councillors Ron Jones and Ken Lewenza Jr. have no problem doing it doesn't mean taxpayers should wilfully wear blinders as well. You should demand the release of the draft audit and pressure councillors to do the same.
The audit committee has announced it will hire KPMG to examine the audit to ensure, in the words of committee chairman Max Zalev, that "the work is done properly." Regardless of what KPMG ultimately finds, you paid for that draft audit and you deserve to see it in its original and unedited form. It can be a first chapter and the report from KPMG an additional one.
If there are legal reasons for withholding any information, those reasons need to be specific and explained fully to taxpayers. If the draft audit is indeed incomplete, then its release can be accompanied with a disclaimer and additional documentation outlining any errors, omissions or inconsistencies. But it must be released
The City continues to use questionable accounting practices like including Federal contributions and the future sale of lands in order to try and reduce what they claim is the actual price of the building.
The two maxims of politics are in play here. Follow the money and it's never the actual issue or incident it's the cover-up that inevitably generates controversy.
Lost in all the confusion over the 400 building is the fact that Dunbar also completed other audits prior to his departure, which we still haven't seen. I believe one of them was on the new Huron Lodge.
Come out and support the 50th Anniversary Tour di Via Italia Road race on August 31st, 2008. You can find all the details on the Road Race website or through the Facebook group.
It's bad enough that Windsor continues to pour money into the Detroit Grand Prix, but now it looks like we're giving away City Services for free in order to further support a Detroit event. I say "looks like" because we never get an accounting of what we get for our investment in the Grand Prix. The City of Windsor News release highlights discounted packages that include free parking in municipal lots and free tunnel bus transportation. This year, the City will once again hawk tickets at the Transit Windsor terminal and all customer care centres. What a great way for taxpayer paid municipal employees to spend their time.
Another question I have regarding this event is how many free tickets do we get and who gets them?
Speaking of the News Release, in typical cart before the horse fashion, it mentions visiting the News Notes section on the front page of the City of Windsor website or the visitwindsor.ca website for links and more information. Ooops - guess they forgot to check and make sure the information was actually there before issuing the news release. Hmmm... I suppose if we spend a quarter million on a new communications department, it will fix problems like this.
Meanwhile, the Via Italia Road Race, celebrating it's 50th anniversary, must compete with the City's subsidized offerings in order to put on their event.
I'd sooner see the $50,000 per year (or more?) that the City spends on the Grand Prix be dedicated to replacing the "temporary" stage in the Riverfront Festival Plaza. I actually heard a great idea on John Fairley's Face to Face show the other night regarding the stage. He proposed a partnership between the City, Festivals that use the Riverfront and various corporate sponsors to work together on building a new permanent stage. The festivals could contribute through a 50 cent or 1 dollar surcharge on ticket sales, dedicated towards the building of a new stage. An excellent idea that should begin as soon as possible. (In Windsor time, that means about two to two and a half years. )
Accounting firm KPMG will be hired to examine an audit -- kept under wraps for more than a year -- of the construction of the 400 building in City Hall Square.
The decision made Tuesday by the city's audit committee, following an hour-long closed-door discussion, means the long-awaited audit won't be released to the public for at least several more months.
Meanwhile, the creation of the Auditor-General's position so sorely needed in Windsor continues to crawl along in typical Windsor time.
Now you can stay connected to Mississauga.ca with our convenient E-Mail "Alerts" feature. You can sign up to be notified directly via e-mail whenever we post or revise News, Events, Bids, Agendas and Minutes.
For your convenience, we combine all the day's Alerts into one user friendly daily e-mail summary. You won't be flooded with multiple e-mail alerts during the day. It's fast, it's FREE, sign-up today. View Sample E-Mail Alert.
You can pick and choose which ones to sign up for, or take all 5 to be really in the know!
* City of Mississauga News Releases
* Events
* Bid Opportunities / RFPs
* Agendas
* Minutes
What a nice simple and cost effective idea. It's not original, offering email alerts, but it's the fact that they've also added Events, Bid Opportunities, Agendas and Minutes to the typical News Release offering.
Instead of trying to figure out how to get the public to accept a quarter million dollar communications department, Council should be focusing on cost-effective ways of communicating with the public.
While the City is revamping their website, these are exactly the types of tools that should be considered, along with simple social bookmarking tools standard on many websites today. While email represents "push" technology in distributing content, RSS feeds accomplish the same through "pull" methods. By offering RSS feeds for the above items, and many more, the City affords the public the opportunity to pick and choose what content they want, when they want it. Personally, my RSS reader checks for new content every 15 minutes. Even though I have over 300 feeds, RSS enables me to monitor a wide variety of site in the same amount of time it takes me to check my email.
Better communication with it's citizens shouldn't require buckets of cash and an increased bureaucracy, in fact, it should be the complete opposite.
Here's yet another Auditor General's report from a City other than Windsor. Ottawa's Auditor General was established in 2003 and since the recent Municipal Act changes, has assumed the statutory powers granted under that act.
From reading the Ottawa A-G's report, it would seem that Windsor is on the right track so far in terms of funding (currently $550,000.00).
The budget of the OAG is set at 0.08% of the total operating budget of the City. For 2007, this resulted in an office budget of $1.7 million, including $200,000 devoted to the Fraud and Waste Hotline. The budget remains one of the lowest in Canada for municipalities with a similar audit function. All of the audits presented in this report were conducted within the 2007 budget.
Ottawa is roughly three times the size of Windsor. For the $1.7 million budget, the Auditor General conducted 23 audits comprised of planned audits, follow-up audits from previous years to ensure compliance and additional audits initiated as a result of tips to the city's Fraud and Waste line.
For those interested in seeing what Windsor might be able to look forward to in the near far distant future, you can view the complete Auditor General's report here.
Had a great time Friday night sampling food and culture at the riverfront Carrousel festivities, but that's not what this post is about.
Considering the debate that has opened in Windsor regarding recycling and garbage I couldn't help but notice the number of garbage cans placed throughout the plaza. I counted 32 bins Friday night, with another collection off to the side ready to be called into action. The number of recycling bins spotted? Two.
Water was available to all who wished, although it was of the plastic bottle variety. For all we hear about how Windsor water is cheap, clean and available, the one place it's lacking is within the City's own parks. I looked throughout the riverfront plaza but could not find one single water fountain.
Just a couple things noticed in passing.
There are two things I liked about yesterday's Windsor Star Editorial. First, they're actually encouraging citizens to pressure City Council for a change, although they're still using kid gloves when it comes to the Mayor. Secondly, Councillors Lewenza and Jones have been outed as the chair warmers they are: 
