Tuesday, September 16, 2014

"QUIT BASHING THE EDTC," HIZZONER SEZ

It must be really bothering Doug Martin that he is now a real Lame Duck - not just on paper like most of the other councillors.  He had to hang it up because he knew that his five vote margin in the 2010 municipal elections would not hold up under tighter scrutiny and more competition.

Still, that didn't stop him from declaring that a discussion about a report on the Memo of Understanding that the town had with the Economic Development and Tourism Corporation was "bashing" the corporation - feudal kingdom ruled by Jim Thibert.  That report was requested a couple of months ago by Ward 6 Councillor Paul Collard and was expected in August. Unfortunately, it was delayed and just became available, now in the so-called "lame duck" period of council where council is limited in what it can do. Council can still discuss a report; it just can't enact any sweeping changes as a result of the report. It cannot terminate an employee of the town nor can it enter into an agreement to disburse property over $50,000. in value. It was entirely out of line for the Lame Duck Mayor to call out councillors for merely asking for clarification of certain aspects of the report, including the rather damning observation that the 1994 MOU had been greatly watered down in a 2007 rewording of the agreement. (cough-cough: Martin and his privy council of sycophants let that one go through)

Meanwhile, the palace blog has re-entered the fray with an "anonymous" letter purporting to be the authority on the Conflict of Issue lawsuit currently stalled (another cough-cough) in the court system (according to the plan hatched shortly after the 2010 municipal elections dubbed Project 4-2-0.)  In that letter comes the startling admission that Mayor Martin, Stephen Passero and Rick Shular violated the confidentiality of closed sessions in order to give former, beaten by a landslide, councillor Tim Whitfield the ammunition needed to proceed with the lawsuit that he admitted later under oath was suggested by Mayor Martin. Here it is:


"Mayor Doug Martin, Councillor Stephen Passero and Councillor Rick Shular provided resident/ratepayer Whitfield with sworn affidavits accounting for the details of a variety and number of closed session meetings and issues.
Those affidavits are now part of the court record."
In his cross examination, Whitfield admitted that he had no interest in anything to do with local politics after his crushing defeat by John Hill in Ward 4. He also admitted that he was approached by Doug Martin about a "legal matter" and was invited to a meeting at the office of Dave Hurren, the lawyer who is on record as the representative of Whitfield as well as others.

So who's bashing whom?  Sounds like Mayor Martin and others are not only "bashing" certain duly-elected council members, but he and his buddies are trying to assassinate the councillors' reputations.

Just in time for the election.  Get ready folks, it will get worse.  There is a lot at stake. Do the people of Fort Erie want to go back to the way it was before the people elected four members of council who did not follow the old boys' script? The last four years have seen many improvements and changes in Fort Erie, yet all the local, highly compromised press can report on is the COI cases and the Kinsmen Pool.  BTW, the reports were true. The Underwater Recovery Unit had not received the lease agreement. According to Eddie Haskell (a.k.a. Stephen Passero) at council last night, er-ah, they were to receive an amended version today and have a meeting about it on Wednesday night. So, the saga continues.  Passero is counting on pulling this off as he has pretty much screwed up everything else he's touched.  How's that cake baking business going, Steve? Where is it? Why hasn't it been inspected by the health department in over three years?  Is it still registered? Inquiring minds (and voters) want to know. It has already been established that you Steve have no problem breaking the confidentiality of closed door sessions and being careless with the truth, so 'fess up. 

The disrespectful gang that disrupts meetings was there in force last night behaving like teens at a high school assembly. And Kim Zanko made a cameo appearance.  I still recall overhearing her say at a council meeting four years ago when she ran unsuccessfully for Ward 3 councillor: "Since I'm running for council, I thought I should find out what goes on at council meetings." Yep. She's one of the "chosen candidates" from the Old Boys Network, ready to fall into line with their directives.
Please read the actual transcripts of the cross-examinations of Martin, Shular, Whitfield and Passero contained in part here in other posts on this blog.  I will be providing more pages very soon.

Speaking of Conflict of Interest:  what do you call it when a council member sits on a committee, making decisions and having discussions regarding the local school situation while his wife works in a school in Fort Erie?  


12 comments:

  1. ninja digger - grow up!September 16, 2014 at 7:18 PM

    I would hazard a guess and say that the anonymous letter was written by none other than Lesley North who is just out to prove how very evil our four councillors are. She scratches the surface and believes she has all the evidence.

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    1. Not Lesley. Grammar and sentence structure too good for her. My guess is Dave Hurren or one of his minions. Says a lot that it is "anonymous."

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  2. Are you saying the council meeting was disrupted again?. People must be attending just for the entertainment value. Thats just sad. Now winter is coming and that probly means its only going to get worse. Or better if youre one of those. It would help to remember that if the council meetings get too strange its only going to allow a lot of underhanded business to go undetected. It wouldnt be the first time the weenies in charge let the kiddies run stupid in the dollar store while the shoplifters made off with the expencive stuff. How about the excuse for yet another closed door meeting because the peanut gallery wouldnt shut up. This is no side show. It seems to be a system of dumb and dumber, and the cheap seats are eating it up.

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    1. The group consists of people like Greg Bonito, Lesley North, Mia and Nick Russell (Mia always proclaimed that she was better than people of Lesley's ilk) and a few others, who do a lot of complaining and blame everything that they see wrong with Fort Erie on the four councillors, American summer residents and those who opposed the giving away of public beach front lands to a high rise developer.

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  3. How dare you Madam Editor or anyone question King Jimmy and his court!!

    After all the millions he has managed to make disappear for COMPLETELY NOTHING IN RETURN, you would think that thinking intelligent people would just shut up.

    As for Dirty Doug and his massive twisted corrupt split a town in 2 ego, ....you must realize he didn't score his lucrative Bay Beach golden handshake and now must kiss King Jimmys boots and score a job on his board instead.

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  4. Definitely written by a lawyer or their assistant for them!! Why are they fighting for Heather so much? Why is she allowing them to use her for a patsey, Is she hoping to get her job back? Really the woman was let go, because she was obstinate and did a poor job!

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    Replies
    1. Na, too many grammatical and spelling mistakes and if you look up "retalitory", it doesn't exist. This was not written by a pro and if it was, it was made to look amateurish trying to pass as pro.

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  5. Well the crazy ninja's are on a mission to tell us who to vote for, and spread as much garbage and nonsense as they can against candidates they don't like (hate). Their latest is interesting, they want to make negative comments about Anne Marie Noyes but can't really say/publish anything because they admit they have no proof. Hey when has that ever stopped them. Anyone supported by these idiots will not get my vote, and anyone they feel is not a worthy candidate will get a second look by me and my guess many others.

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  6. Big Bouquet to the staff at the (now not Dube)Times for finally allowing the other side of story to be printed in FE.

    Don Lubberts getting the word out to the public who pays for all this lunacy that the EDTC is virtually un-accountable to council. Thats right people, you give ol boy Jimbo lots of money for him and his hand picked board to do whatever the hell he wants with and no outsider looks over his shoulder.

    No doubt Dirty Doug and the Thugs are burning the wires up throwing water on the story and slamming staff at the Times.

    PS, any newspaper people out there who want recognition, come on down to FE and ask just a few questions at how things have been run here for decades. Most of the local media(until this article) are too scared or under the influence of FE's ruling elite aka the Ol Boys Network to report the rampant corruption.

    SUPPORT THE FOUR!!

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  7. The Town lawyer never should have been hired in the first place, her lack of knowledge of the Municipal Act, her letting Molinaro write the Bay Beach contract and unable to make a simple brief to the OMB without outside help, also stonewalling at every turn , not giving answers to questions from Council, about the deal, a deal that in my opinion was made in the bowels of hell it's- self.

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  8. It still bothers me quite a bit. Why did the Town move the land into land titles so it could try to transfer it to Molinaro when in truth, it has yet to be determined whether or not the Town even owned all the land. Were they trying to avoid the opposition it knew it would get by trying to get in a back door? If there were no problem with the title, why is it taking so long for the answer?

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  9. If the Mollys had presold the number of units they wanted to in order to begin the project this would be an entirely diferent conversation. Just thank the planners for promoting a project that was overpriced and without very little input from the neighborhood except for a few carpetbaggers that saw the opportunity to sell a little more restaurant food or overpriced preowned furniture. A proposal to incorporate a navagational light on the structure might have brought in the support of the federal department of inland waters, a much more determined group than probly could have been blown off by weak presales. Thank the minor gods of the church of real estate for not having the wisdom to put that group into the picture. However we might not be so lucky next time this property comes under that sort of distructive development. The road allowance issue brought foreward by Mr. L. should remain unresolved in case its needed again in the future. To settle this and other questions such as mentioned by jason would only open the door again to greed and shortsightedness as we saw during the promotion of the "kondo" fiasco. As in the case of the COI cases if the legal dweebs want to use legal means to tangle up progress in the council and other places, the fight to stop development on public lands will do well to learn from this activity. If keeping open questions unresolved is what it takes to protect the beach from some concrete monolith, we should be hoping those questions are never answered.

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