# The Mysterious Disappearance of a Pope

An episode of [Rose City Politics](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1247337855), 6 May 2023, 1 h 00 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/53761366/the_mysterious_disappearance_of_a_pope.mp3

Jon, Melinda and Doug are joined by special guest panelist Anastasia Adams as we discuss the alleged retirement of Windsor Public Library CEO Kitty Pope and a new ranking of happiness that places Windsor near the bottom. Rose City Politics is brought to you with the kind support of LiUNA Local 625: Building Better Communities. Support the show at Patreon.com/RoseCityPolitics. Read our stuff in Biz X Magazine or online at BizXMagazine.com and RoseCityPolitics.ca.

## Transcript

[0:24] Good evening, everyone, Welcome to Roastity Politics. It is now May the
[0:27] sixth. Our regular panel includes Doug start Tory, John Merryfield. No,
[0:33] John's not here at all. I'm just reading off the script right now.
[0:35] It's much funny how that happens now, Yeah, Doug start Tory, we
[0:38] have a don substitute. It's pretty exciting. Let's just leave it right there
[0:43] as a pin and we'll come back to letting people try to guess right now
[0:47] who it is. We have me Lindaman Road here as well and myself John
[0:51] lid Key our guest today, Anna Station Adams Annas Station. How are you
[0:56] doing? Hi good? How are you pretty good? It's great to have
[0:58] you here. If you're listen right now, you can head to patreon dot
[1:00] com, forward slash Rose City Politics. We're in bizex magazine and Rosity Politics
[1:04] is able to broadcast live on tape thanks to the kind support of Luna six
[1:07] to five and Building Better Communities Fold Disclosure again, apologies about the sound quality
[1:14] over the past number of weeks. We think that we've figured this out.
[1:18] If we have, at this time, it's the end of the freaking podcast.
[1:23] Okay, saying in a hole listen. That's it. Listen. I
[1:26] feel really important to put this all in context. Right. First of all,
[1:30] Rose City Politics has a rich tradition of shit production values. I don't
[1:37] want anybody to to, you know, denigrate our traditions. These matter to
[1:42] us. But that's not why people should listen. They don't listen for your
[1:46] text skills. Yeah, I'm saying they tune in to listen to your excellent
[1:53] commentary and insights, right, but it can be pretty rough, and it's
[1:56] been pretty rough for a number of weeks. And you also seriousness. If
[2:00] you think back to five years ago when we started as a podcast and left
[2:06] terrestrial radio, it took us months to get the audio figured out, and
[2:10] we fielded many bitter complaints and many people were upset with us as they are
[2:15] now. And to our boo birds and complainers, I only have this to
[2:21] say, following Anastasia, you're all weak if you can't if you can't get
[2:27] past a little bit of a little bit of audio weirdness to get to the
[2:31] goodness in Rose City Politics, you got to ask yourself do I deserve it?
[2:36] We did two years of this show during lockdown, during a pandemic,
[2:42] when there was no content being created other than Stephen Colbert sitting in a bathtub
[2:46] wearing a suit. So you know what, folks, right, we get
[2:50] a little bit of a break every now it was us and people building goddamn
[2:53] legos, right, we're crochet or whatever it was, and all the celebrities
[2:59] just singing bread. And I have to say, people need to understand how
[3:04] you have put yourselves in uncomfortable positions at times, like I remember you guys
[3:07] doing the show upstairs at Reno's kitchen when it was like one hundred and twenty
[3:09] degrees up there. So so yeah, you had a better audio setup,
[3:14] but you like put yourself at pretty in pretty dire physical condition for the sake
[3:19] of the show. So people need to checknowledge that too. Hype up how
[3:22] horrible it was up there. It was like you would just if it pour
[3:27] sweat just to get just to get this show up. But here we are
[3:30] in climate control goodness, so so winds are independent. Also had our offices
[3:34] on that third floor for a while, and yeah, it was god awful.
[3:38] And I just think back to the first time I was ever up there,
[3:39] which was ironically for a hot yoga It was perfect. It was just
[3:46] the ideal location for that, not so much for the whole media production thing.
[3:50] Are we doing the show today? Yeah, let's get into it.
[3:52] How about that? Eh Um. We have been following this story about Kitty
[3:58] Pope and from the winds Or Public Library, the CEO, or rather the
[4:01] former outgoing CEO, and we've been learning a little bit more through a drip
[4:09] drip drip that's been released. So we might as well just start out with
[4:12] where things stand currently and then we can circle back and sort of look at
[4:15] how we got to hear. But right off the bat Wins the public libraries
[4:19] looking for new leadership. A memo was sent out to all staff, obtained
[4:24] by AM eight hundred News. It said that Kitty Pope announced her retirement as
[4:27] CEO effect of Monday coming up. Dana Palladino will be taking over as INTERRM
[4:31] CEO. Palladino has been with the city for thirteen years, including her permanent
[4:36] position as Deputy City Solicitor and purchasing, risk management and provincial offenses with the
[4:42] Legal Department. The current acting CEO, Chris Woodrow, the Library's director of
[4:46] Corporate Services, has already scheduled to retire at the end of this month Ward
[4:49] four Counselors. Mark McKenzie, chair the board of the library, says Kitty
[4:54] is leaving the library in good hands. Quote. I just want to thank
[4:57] Kitty for her many ears of dedicated public service with the library. I know
[5:00] the staff was a big fan of hers as well. She's gonna be missed.
[5:03] Pope had served since twenty fourteen as the CEO. Mark McKenzie says he
[5:09] is excited for future possibilities of what could happen with the library, saying that
[5:13] community hubs could be possible, including workshops and digital and he says, maybe
[5:18] we start doing some website classes or coding classes. Maybe they can all learn
[5:23] a code, Doug, it's a good idea. I've been hearing more and
[5:25] more about it these days. Says also, maybe they could start building a
[5:28] podcast studio in the classroom. So we're gonna have to get the classrooms,
[5:30] but then the podcast studios and afore still effing audio issues. Yeahary, and
[5:36] maybe maybe Mark McKenzie could to revive his pandemic podcast. I hear that was
[5:44] some pretty hot talk. One could only hope. Of course, he deleted
[5:47] all the episodes, so we just don't know. Release the archive. Mark
[5:54] McKenzie goes on to say, there's lots of ideas about how to modernize the
[5:58] library system. There's gonna be a hiring that will be established to begin the
[6:00] search for the next CEO. Hopefully it's a better hiring committee than some of
[6:04] the ones that we've had over the past number of years that have I guessed
[6:08] brought in some terrible, terrible people because they've all been dismissed in one way
[6:12] or another. And obviously it's reflected on the individuals and not the corporate entity
[6:17] or the leadership of our corporation. You know, sarcasm aside here, what's
[6:24] being fed to us right now is not quite the story that we saw last
[6:28] week which came out and without going over all of the details, then Mark
[6:32] McKenzie said that Kitty Pope was absent. He couldn't comment because it was confidential
[6:39] and it involved an identifiable individual. He said it was business as usual,
[6:45] although of course now we know that it wasn't business as usual. It was
[6:46] dealing with a immediate and spontaneous retirement in quotation Marks winsor Star though did include
[6:56] in their peace and glad that they did they said Kitty Pope could not be
[7:00] reached for comment. When they reached out to her, they said that the
[7:01] cell phone number for her that was included in a February board meeting agenda package
[7:06] was out of service, and that her library email address had an automatic reply
[7:12] saying that she was away from the office and to just get in touch with
[7:15] Chris Woodrow. Now this is all, you know, perplexing, because I
[7:19] mean, Kitty Pope been on the Sunshine List one hundred and sixty nine thousand
[7:24] dollars last year, and this follows a string of letting goes from the city
[7:31] in one form or another. We had CEO Jason Rainar who left. We
[7:38] had Windsor Police Chief Pam Mazzuno. Of course there was the BIA dissolution isshoe
[7:45] citywide. And now here we are with Kitty Pope. And we know that
[7:48] our highest paid employees last year at the city one was only on the job
[7:55] for three months, and that was Jason Rainar, who was able to pull
[7:58] down two hundred and seventy nine thousand dollars and thirteen thousand and tech tactual benefits
[8:03] that was on the Sunshine list. We are speculating Ama Zuno's gonna be on
[8:09] a Sunshine list that pops up next time as well. We've been told by
[8:13] Mayor Dilkins just wait and see hilarious, hilarious response when it comes to so
[8:22] much money. But I guess let's just start the conversation here. We've been
[8:26] chatting a little bit in our chat about, you know, the first names
[8:31] on the enemy's list a little bit here, Doug, do you think this
[8:35] looks a little bit like a purge of some kind or is that too extreme
[8:41] of a phrasing. I think that's one lens that you can look at it
[8:46] through and evaluate the facts and see if they fit. First things, first,
[8:52] folks, if you think that Kittie Pope retired voluntarily, then I have
[8:58] some very bad news for you of that dog you had as a kid that
[9:01] went to live on a farm. Let's just clear this up. I mean,
[9:07] like, I think it's pretty clear this was a very clumsily handled departure,
[9:13] you know, and it certainly doesn't appear to be any kind of normal
[9:18] retirement to me. So it does go hand in hand, I think with
[9:22] the surprise sudden retirement of police Chief Pamazuno and with the firing of former CEO
[9:31] Jason Rayner, um Yeah, I think purge is one lens that you can
[9:35] look at it through um that this is an effort to consolidate control over the
[9:43] municipality and all of the different, um different aspects to it. Another possibility
[9:50] that I want you to consider is the possibility that it is a defensive move.
[9:56] So what if you are Mayor Dilkins and Mayor Dilkins associates, and you
[10:03] look at the political landscape and you think that you're in a very secure position
[10:07] today, but who knows what tomorrow will bring, and who knows what the
[10:11] twenty twenty six election cycle will bring. And one thing that you could do
[10:18] if you have everything, all of the threads in your hands right now,
[10:22] is make sure that you get loyal people in place everywhere where you need them
[10:26] to be. And so even if you may not be in the mayor's chair
[10:30] anymore, or a loyal friend of yours may not be in the mayor's chair
[10:33] anymore in twenty twenty six, it would certainly be a break on any winds
[10:39] of change in terms of a new administration if there are tons and tons of
[10:46] loyal, long term, loyal people placed in all of these key positions.
[10:52] And I think that you can make that argument as well. You know,
[10:54] that's an interesting way to phrase it. Does like, what does loyalty mean
[10:58] in this context? Like what when we're talking about all of these professional public
[11:05] servants Jason Rainar, Pamazuno, pity Pope. They're loyal, They're fundamentally loan.
[11:09] They've been long serving public servants, and they know about the expectation that
[11:15] they are independent, that they do their job, they get the best advice
[11:18] they can, and they are loyal to whoever is the senior executive. So
[11:22] when you talk about, well, are they loyal to this mayor what is
[11:26] his loyalty tests? Right, I'm talking about political loyalty, not loyalty to
[11:30] the institution. Right, So he's got a loyalty test which is different than
[11:33] the loyalty tests you would ordinarily apply to a senior executive, that you are
[11:39] that you are loyal to the institution, that you are not going to do
[11:41] anything to drop this mari into the goo, You're not going to do anything
[11:46] to deliberately undermine them. And I don't think any of these people can be
[11:48] described as having taken any steps to deliberately harm this mayor, if anything they
[11:52] may have said to him. This thing you want to do is not the
[11:56] greatest idea you've ever had. But we have no evidence as they ever did
[12:00] anything to try and embarrass the mayor, they did anything to try and undermine
[12:03] anything that he was trying to do. They were doing their jobs as senior
[12:07] senior civil servance. So what is this loyalty test that he's trying to apply
[12:11] to them that they that they seem to be failing to meet. And I
[12:16] think I want to return to something else you said about the retirement, which
[12:18] is that I mean, I've negotiated these arrangements where somebody is leaving a job,
[12:22] you know, perhaps unwillingly, and you negotiate for a statement about a
[12:26] retirement. We have an executive here with forty years of experience, ten years
[12:31] at this library. She should be having a retirement galla fundraiser for the library
[12:37] if this is truly a retirement, Like the president of the university retires,
[12:41] there's a big party. We know that Patty Frances retiring, so she's getting
[12:45] lost, she's getting the key to the city. She just won the mcc
[12:48] award. There's going to be a big gala event that raises money for Saint
[12:50] Clair College. The search committee is on. When OC retired, there was
[12:56] a huge party, right, this woman should be getting a huge part her
[13:00] career, should not be ending in this shabby, embarrassing the grading way.
[13:05] Yeah, where is where's her honorary doctorate? Are you pointing? I don't
[13:11] know. I could make fun I've met Katy more than a few times,
[13:20] and she's someone that is very passionate about her job, very passionate about the
[13:24] library, very passionate about advancing the library as we move forward and making sure
[13:31] that it's seen as an essential community resource. So none of this jibs for
[13:35] anything that I know about her. I know about how she's done her job,
[13:37] and so yeah, it definitely seems like a disgrace that someone who is
[13:43] genuinely passionate and articulate and good at their job has this other layer of politics
[13:50] that gets washed over it, and they don't guess just to be good at
[13:52] their job or do their job, they have to deal with someone else's ego
[13:56] or someone else's idea of how things should shake down in the political landscape.
[14:01] And I think that's pretty disappointing. I think that is such an important point
[14:05] and perhaps underrated when we talk about institutions. But the quality of talent that
[14:13] an institution attracts is directly related to the reputation of that institution. And professionals
[14:20] are not dumb and if if and they're they're finally tuned antenna relating to things
[14:28] that may impact their career. So, if you are a career minded individual
[14:33] who happens to have, oh, I don't know, high personal ethical standards,
[14:37] and you see all the nonsense that's playing out in terms of how people's
[14:41] lives are being disrupted for reasons that seem to have no bearing on their job
[14:48] performance, how likely are you to think City of Windsor that's the career for
[14:52] me. Not very likely, Unfortunately, Well we do. We wonder why
[14:58] it's so difficult to find a CEO with the specific skill set that's required from
[15:05] within the city. There's just there's no one available that has these type of
[15:09] skills. Maybe in Toronto or something, we could find one of those people,
[15:11] but down here in these parts, Oh, you mean the chief of
[15:13] staff, sorry, chief of staff. Yeah, because we've got a new
[15:16] CEO who has the skill set, who comes from a career started his career
[15:22] in the nineteen eighties and is going to end his career, and you know,
[15:26] no doubt going there's going to be in a big event to celebrate Joe
[15:28] mancing his retirement in the next bond of ten years. But why can't we
[15:33] you know, why can't we bring someone in? We talked about this when
[15:35] we talked about the new CEO is why can't we bring people here and have
[15:43] them stay, and have them like the community, and have them be community
[15:46] builders, and have them last in the community and not just you know,
[15:50] exited, either get exited or exit at the first possible opportunity. And maybe
[15:54] later in the podcast we'll talk about a particular piece of data that might actually
[15:58] help us with that are not helpous with that. But I think, you
[16:02] know, it's been really interesting how this story has spooled out if this had
[16:06] been handled. So I want to also say this mayor and whoever is supporting
[16:11] him are really lousy at doing this work, because had this been what they
[16:15] wanted, the conversations could have been going on for some time to get to
[16:19] a place where Miss Pope was able to announce her own retirement and have an
[16:23] excellent package and go out the door in a respectable way. What we know
[16:27] about what happened is there was an in camera meeting of the library about held
[16:32] at City Hall, not at a library branch, out of which immediately we
[16:37] find that the phones have been cut off, the email is cut off.
[16:40] There's no kiddie Pope anywhere to be found. So what happened? Was there
[16:44] a shouting match in that meeting? Was there some report a table drop?
[16:48] Was there a staff report presented at that meeting to the library board to explain
[16:52] what was going on? And then suddenly we have this vacuum of information for
[16:55] several weeks, and now we have Oh, she's retiring, isn't that wonderful?
[16:57] All We're just so proud of all the work. It just sounds stupid.
[17:00] It's embarrassing. It's embarrassing for the city. It's embarrassing for whoever was
[17:06] giving the mayor legal or HR advice. It's embarrassed. It's shabby for everyone.
[17:11] If this is what you wanted, there are ways to do this where
[17:14] everybody looks good, everyone comes out smelling like roses. This is not it.
[17:18] So this mayor is not good at firing people. One hundred percent agree
[17:22] with you, Melinda, And it's a very very ham fisted approach that has
[17:25] very specific fingerprints on their idea and you're like, oh, where have we
[17:29] seen this before? And yeah, too bad? And then I would just
[17:32] like to say too oh, touch my mic Sorry as someone who's just like
[17:37] a community member, who is an avid supporter of the library and avid user
[17:41] of the library, my kids are the changes that are going on at the
[17:45] library and the changes that are going on within the library board are not encouraging.
[17:48] They're very disappointing. You've seen the trajectory of how the library has been
[17:52] much more community forward and looking to integrate into the community as a whole and
[17:59] try to stay relevant, and then you see some of the choices and even
[18:03] just like the current chair, like I understand he is being tagged or tapped
[18:07] for comments to the media and he wants to put out a certain narrative,
[18:10] but some of the comments that he makes, it's like, did you not
[18:12] pay attention to any of the work that the library board has been doing for
[18:15] the last eight years? No, And so is that I'm excited about this
[18:18] and I'm excited about that. It's like, well, maybe some of those
[18:22] things have already been in the works, or maybe there's other things that are
[18:25] have already initiatives that already been started, so kind of it's just really disjointed,
[18:29] and you're it's concerning, for sure. It's just the whole thing's obviously
[18:33] haphazard, and I just I wonder why it happened when it did happen.
[18:37] I mean, this is one second or third meeting of the board. Again,
[18:41] a bunch of neophytes on the board who quite frankly somehow came up with
[18:47] an agenda. And if they didn't come up with an agenda to do this,
[18:49] and they just decided a you know, on a whim at the second
[18:53] or third meeting, hey, you know what, or a new board,
[18:56] let's fire the CEO and we'll find someone who we've of course, that's not
[19:00] what's happened. Such a good point. It's such a good point that you
[19:03] bring up, Like anybody who has sat on a governance board or chaired a
[19:07] governance board, when you join that, you know you're you're going to take
[19:14] more than a one or two meetings to figure out where the washrooms are shut
[19:18] up. You know, a big organization that's very complex and has a lot
[19:22] going on and a lot of history, no matter how comprehensive. The onboarding
[19:26] is. It's going to take time to get yourself oriented, to understand the
[19:30] staff. I'm going to argue that it is impossible for a person who sits
[19:37] on a board to know whether their CEO should be replaced or not after two
[19:41] meetings unless there is absolutely egregious stuff going on. If there was absolutely egregious
[19:48] stuff going on, we would know about it because they would be screaming it
[19:51] from the top of the mountain. We would have our very homes situation happening
[19:56] right now with knowing exactly what the numbers were, or with the media being
[20:00] leaked told hey go do a FOIA on this specific period for a credit card
[20:04] record to see you would be seeing your Ed Sleeman on counsel, who I
[20:10] imagine would probably be would accu you're Hillary Pain, who I imagine would be
[20:14] Ed Sleeman this time around, coming out and saying this is awful, this
[20:18] is egregious. We have to deal with it someone who's you know, and
[20:21] we don't have any of that. What we have is, you know,
[20:23] a ham fisted approach where we're all able to sit here and speculate, which
[20:29] isn't good. That's bad for the corporation. It's bad for the library,
[20:33] it's bad for the public. There should have been like what when you have
[20:37] Mark Mackenzie saying, oh, it's confidential and she's away, but we'll have
[20:41] it. We'll have the message, you know in coming weeks. It's like
[20:45] you guys didn't even bother to craft a narrative on this one. You didn't
[20:49] even bother to put together some bullshit story that you could have spoon fed to
[20:53] the media. Lord knows, it would have just been a stenography and fed
[20:57] out and you could have dropped it on you know, Sunday. I don't
[21:02] know, it would have gone straight to web on a Monday, or wouldn't
[21:03] even make a print and you get away with it. You're right. And
[21:07] if this, if this was a situation where we have three leaders, but
[21:11] this one in particular, who were so incompetent that they had to get the
[21:14] guillotine right. They didn't get the you know, the gentle ushering out the
[21:18] door, they got the guillotine in camera meeting. You're gone. Your phone
[21:22] has cut off at six, you know at midnight, it's it's got us
[21:27] an overtone. The similar to the BIA in this sense, which is that
[21:30] the person they put in perfectly competent, you know, civil servant Dana Palladino,
[21:34] but not a librarian. So now for the next six months that it
[21:40] takes to do a proper search for a chief librarian, we have a stalled
[21:45] situation. So Chris Woodrow is retiring in May. Chris Rodro, no doubt
[21:49] has said I've done this interim job enough times. I'm done. Sorry,
[21:53] thanks, you know, And I tried to be the CEO and you didn't
[21:56] hire me, so I'm not going to be there for you during this interim
[22:00] perient. So they have a non librarian and they've lost their most senior and
[22:04] experienced deputy CEO when he retires in May. So nothing new and interesting from
[22:10] a librarian perspective is going to happen until we have a new chief librarian.
[22:15] Now does that mean change will not happen? I don't know. Perhaps part
[22:18] of this project on the part of the Mayor's office is they want to do
[22:25] a bunch of stuff when they don't have a chief librarian who's there to say
[22:27] that's not allowed for libraries, it's not good for libraries, it's not good
[22:30] library practice. Or is it just simply like the baas, we're just going
[22:34] to put down tools. Nothing interesting is going to happen at the library for
[22:40] six months to a year. Do you think that they'll wait for a new
[22:42] library CEO to determine the location of the new main branch. I'm so glad
[22:48] you brought that up. That's the only thing that stands out as to what
[22:53] could be done right now. Is there something about the new branch that needs
[22:57] to be done and it needs to be pushed through quickly without having some kind
[23:02] of it's going at the airport? I was hoping. I was hoping.
[23:07] I feel bad for the staff too, Like what does this do for morale
[23:11] at the library? Like terrible? Just terrible. Well, any kind of
[23:17] any kind of leadership transition is going to have an impact on morale. People
[23:22] like the leader, people don't like the leader. There's you know, they
[23:25] think of whatever the process. But a process like this to outsiders, to
[23:29] all of us, it looks like a pile of shit. What does it
[23:32] look like if you're inside the library, it's it's got to be pretty devastating
[23:36] to morale, much like I think the termination of Jason Rayner was pretty devastating
[23:40] to morale. So What'll be interesting too is over that next six to twelve
[23:45] month period is see who trickles out, See who trickles what professionals, what
[23:51] experience, what institutional knowledge trickles out of the library And as you may perhaps
[23:56] have seen at the city and at certain points and time and h is that
[24:03] good attrition or bad attrition? Are the people who are leaving people that maybe
[24:07] will be replaced with one better, one newer, when fresher, or are
[24:11] they people who will be very difficult to replace and will leave the institution weaker.
[24:17] One last thing I want to mention on this because I feel like we
[24:19] might be running out of gas on it. And that is something that struck
[24:23] me when in this whole situation was I kept having the image of counselor Geniac
[24:30] in my mind, uh, really really raking Kitty Pope over the coals,
[24:38] over the mobile library truck. And it just got me to thinking about about
[24:47] Geniac's influence in general, and I think we underestimate it. I think we
[24:52] underestimate how much impact Joean Geniacs has on decisions that get made because she's she's
[24:57] not flamboyant, she's not out there in the media all the time. But
[25:03] if you you know, what really got this to crystallize in my head was
[25:07] thinking back to how obvious it was that Joanne Jeniac detested Jason Rayner. It
[25:14] was very clear. It was clear in council meetings she could not hide her
[25:17] contempt and dislike of the man. And I kind of felt the same way
[25:22] at her interactions with Kitty Pope over the over the bookmobile or Fred And I
[25:29] just wonder, and I think it's interesting to think about maybe Joanne Jeniac is
[25:33] a large more far larger figure on the inside than some folks assume. Certainly
[25:38] the rumor Mills suggests that she was a big part of the Rose landing of
[25:42] Phil Roberts. Interesting, of course. Then I'm so glad you brought up
[25:48] the Rose landing of Phil Roberts, because that was really the start of the
[25:52] era of sort of Soviet style control I kind to do with their problems from
[25:56] now on. And that was so. Helga Rodel had left the role of
[26:00] CEO not that long before, and she'd been a part of hiring Phil to
[26:04] be the head of the Parks Department, and then Oc takes over as CEO.
[26:10] He's actually out of the country in Italy, the decision by counsel is
[26:14] made to roseland Phil Roberts and there's zero pushback, and that you could start
[26:22] from that moment you started to see that basically the fear in the eyes of
[26:26] any senior civil servant at city Hall. And no one has ever said no
[26:30] to this mayor when he wants to do something like that. And so now
[26:34] I guess he feels like he's just got an open season on whoever is pissing
[26:38] him off right now. So aside from electors every four years, who could
[26:42] say no to him, Melinda, Well, there's like a ten other people
[26:47] sit around that council table. The good say don't to him once in a
[26:49] while, and every now and then one or two of them do. But
[26:52] I don't understand. Well I do understand and where it comes down to for
[26:56] me, And I know I've harped on this many times. Too many people
[27:00] that sit around that council table describe the mayor as their boss, and they
[27:03] are wrong in law, and they are wrong in reality. He's one amongst
[27:07] equals. Every single one of those eleven people has the same amount of power.
[27:11] He happens to have a bunch more money and he's a bigger bully,
[27:15] But all of those people have the same amount of power, and if four
[27:18] or five of them could get together once in a while and say no to
[27:22] him, it might be able to create a different dynamic. And I get
[27:26] that it's confrontational and ugly and hard work to do that. But the successes
[27:30] we've seen, and I keep coming back to Counselor Coustante and Counselor Agacino,
[27:36] what, in fact, the whole situation around the CTS was a great example
[27:38] of using that capacity to build relationships, to work with the community, to
[27:44] get the votes to get the thing done that needs to get done. Now
[27:47] are they paying the price in the back rooms with frowning from the mayor,
[27:51] bad treatment from the mayor's office, threatening to take their ward funds away?
[27:53] I don't know. We know that stuff he's done in the past, but
[27:59] it can be done. And why did we elect you so that you could
[28:03] sit there and make your fifty thousand dollars a year and you know, get
[28:06] to go get the key to the city and go to cut some rims at
[28:08] parks. No, No, that is not why we elected to How much
[28:12] do you want to bet that we see the targeted enhanced capital budget come back
[28:18] again sometime over the next couple of years. Where remember the first time when
[28:22] he came in as mayor, they only gave the enhanced funds to like his
[28:26] friends on council and then selectively blocked out the other half. I remember,
[28:30] yeah, really like that. That to me showed exactly like what he wanted
[28:38] to be day one when he became mayor. You know, it's vindictive,
[28:42] it's my way, it's my fist on the table. Deal with it.
[28:45] And then things changed a little bit with the political landscape, and I wonder
[28:51] if you know Melinda's we chatted about before with the losing temporarily, albeit on
[28:56] the CTS issue. It was just know what I'm done, he exploded.
[29:03] I'm just decided, I'm done with all of this nonsense, no more opposition,
[29:07] full stall in us to control to the bias this and who knows what's
[29:11] coming or all payback for embarrassing amount the CTS or even just like I'm not
[29:17] going to be embarrassed again in the future. So I don't care what has
[29:19] to be done now. I'll burn you all down, I'll tear it all
[29:22] down, whatever it takes to make sure the next headline isn't one that shows
[29:26] that I'm weaker. You know, that is a really good point. I
[29:30] was having a discussion with friends about this stuff yesterday and and I think like
[29:37] there's a distinction right between what is politically damaging and what is embarrassing. And
[29:47] I certainly think that there is an element of political defense in all of these
[29:52] moves, except that I think on the other side of the coin, all
[29:56] of these moves have created their own potential political liability, much like the six
[30:02] four era, that first Dilkins term. You know, by the end of
[30:07] that term, Dilkins was in trouble. His reelection numbers were not good.
[30:12] There many of his loyalists were defenestrated at the elections in twenty eighteen, and
[30:18] it actually took, you know, a very talented chief of staff and a
[30:25] lot of effort to turn that impression around and to kind of paper over it.
[30:30] So on the one hand, I think to finally answer your question,
[30:34] On the one hand, I think it would be nuts to go back to
[30:37] that. Did you not see that it almost led you to disaster and you
[30:41] have a much smaller stock of political capital available to you after all these years
[30:47] than you did back then. But on the other hand, why not,
[30:51] Okay, Alex screwy and the media again is a very different place this time
[30:56] around than it was over the past four or eight years. I mean,
[31:00] not at all to knock on my colleagues, because I know they work really
[31:04] hard. There's only so many hours a day when there's only four or five
[31:07] of you available to do crap. And unfortunately a lot of it is stenography,
[31:12] simply because that's what the time period allows for. So they get a
[31:17] press release and they write the piece up on that side, then the other
[31:19] side responds and a press release goes out, and then that's the next story.
[31:25] Unfortunately, what's missing is the thing that links them together in the same
[31:29] story, and then the opposing narrative and the foreign narrative that we used to
[31:33] have from editorialists that just it doesn't exist anymore. So, you know,
[31:37] going to just what we were chatting about, the idea of like, why
[31:40] why do such a reckless strategy now? Is it so reckless with the way
[31:44] that the current mediast landscape is. I don't think so. So I would
[31:48] I would I would argue that I hear you, and I think you're right
[31:52] I think that you can get away with a lot more today than you could
[31:56] in twenty fourteen, and in turn, in twenty fourteen, you can get
[32:00] away with a lot more than you could in nineteen eighty eight. There's no
[32:02] question, you know, um, um, we've had we've had mayor's careers
[32:08] end because of like you know, um taking a taking a city hall girlfriend
[32:15] to on a trip to Mexico like we've had, and stuff like that has
[32:19] happened. Um. But I don't think that if something like that happened today,
[32:23] I don't know if we would even ever find out about it. So
[32:25] there's certainly some truth to that. But um. But at the same time,
[32:30] like information still does get to the public, and the public does have,
[32:35] uh, you know, some sources of information, and people are able
[32:39] to make judgments. And I think that the overall impression that this first um,
[32:45] you know, the first five months of this this term of council has
[32:49] created is not a favorable one. Um. And I you know, is
[32:52] the mayor in a stronger position today or a weaker position than he was on
[32:55] election day? I don't think it's been helpful. I mean, it gives
[33:04] us a lot of fodder and anything that gives us fodder is usually not a
[33:07] great thing for the community. It's like my theory, but when windsor shows
[33:10] up in national news coverage, it's not a good thing, folks. What
[33:15] a nice segue. Yeah, let's take a look here, Doug, at
[33:19] this story that you shared out with US. Happiest cities in Canada. It's
[33:25] an elusive term. I'm not going to go through the bullshit that they put
[33:29] out here. This was from Point two, which is a real estate group.
[33:31] They looked at the hundred largest cities in the country and they created a
[33:36] happiness metric to find their own happiness index from media after tax, income,
[33:42] poverty rate, perceived health, sense of belonging, commute rainfall, air quality.
[33:47] They split the metrics across four happiness relevant to pensions. Oh my god,
[33:52] it's so terrible, economy and real estate, location and demographics, health
[33:55] and well being, and community and environment. If we take a look here
[34:00] at the country writ large, happiest is Caledon, Ontario at a sixty seven
[34:07] point four one, followed by Milton, Holton Hills, Clarington, Burlington,
[34:12] and then we move over to a Levee and Quebec and then Oakville, district
[34:16] of North Vancouver, BC comes in at number eight, and if you want
[34:21] to look at where Windsor is, we are at the almost bottom of this
[34:24] listing. Number eight ninety eight is Windsor, ninety nine North Bay and one
[34:30] hundred London. Doug, you shared this one out, so I'm just gonna
[34:34] let you pick up here as to what your thoughts are. Okay, So
[34:37] first of all, in your face, London, yes, everything else,
[34:44] everything else aside London, You're right where you belong. Now looking at this
[34:51] post, you know it's it looks very comprehensive. It's full of information,
[35:00] charts and graphs, and it certainly appears that a lot of serious work was
[35:06] done here. I have some issues with it, though. The primary issue
[35:10] that I have with it is that we just don't know how this report was
[35:16] built. There is a methodology section in the blog post, but it's pretty
[35:22] vague, and I'll read to you the meat of the methodology. The report
[35:29] uses a combination of ranking scores and weighted averages. We analyzed thirty metrics,
[35:35] each graded on a one hundred point scale, with an index of one hundred
[35:38] representing maximum happiness. Metrics were grouped into four happiness dimensions or categories with equal
[35:46] weights. That's it. That is their description of their methodology, which is
[35:53] not too bad. I mean, it gives you a pretty like a vague
[35:57] idea, and they go into detail in terms of what specific statistical indicators that
[36:02] they used to construct the different um the different indices, but um, these
[36:10] results are impossible to replicate based on the information that has been provided. A
[36:17] serious piece of research is going to give more detail about its sources, and
[36:23] it is going to provide enough information that if you have access to the source
[36:28] data, and all of this data appears to be publicly available, if you
[36:32] have access to the source data, you can you can reproduce the analysis and
[36:36] generate your own numbers or um, maybe adjust some of the weights and um
[36:43] and see if you get a different result. We don't even know how these
[36:46] metrics are weighted. So although I think it makes for interesting discussion, um
[36:52] in the in the broad uh, you know, in the broad sort of
[36:57] sense of well is windsor a happy place and what is that mean to be
[37:00] happy? I think that there's a lot of fodder for good discussion here,
[37:04] but at the end of the day, we're just not able to tell you
[37:08] how seriously we should ticket and that is a bit of a problem. And
[37:13] then I think kind of transitioning from that into one of my favorite things to
[37:19] do on this show, which is just a little bit of media criticism.
[37:22] These folks write a very professional looking blog post. They obviously have some very
[37:30] good communications people on their staff. They send out a press release. This
[37:34] article has been shared three hundred and seventy two times. I have seen innumerable
[37:38] news articles on it in the past twenty four hours. Great work, But
[37:44] the media outlets who are sharing it, the media outlets who are repeating it,
[37:49] do you not think that if you are going to publish the results of
[37:53] a report as a media organization, that you have a responsibility to assess the
[38:00] quality of that report and perhaps report on the indicators of quality. Because nobody
[38:06] did that. I saw. Nah, that's hard. When I when I
[38:09] see things like this get floated out, the first thing I always say is
[38:12] who's putting this out? And why? So? Who's putting this out?
[38:15] And what are they trying to get from this? So is it just clicks
[38:19] because everyone's going to click on it and say, oh, where's my city
[38:21] fall on the list? And then you know, say haha, London,
[38:22] we're above you or whatever wherever it falls. But like, what's the point
[38:27] and what's so that's always like where I go. So your analysis, Doug,
[38:30] is obviously coming from your skill set, which is nowhere near my skill
[38:34] set in terms of analyzing that. But but yeah, like who put this
[38:37] out and why? What's their goal? Well point two Homes, which is
[38:43] one of Canada's leading real estate blogs, they put it out, So I
[38:46] think you're right. I think I think exactly what has happened, driving clicks
[38:51] to their website and improving the recognition of their brand is was the purpose of
[38:57] this piece. I don't think. I don't have any reason to think that
[39:00] there is a particular slant one way or the other, which I think would
[39:04] would perhaps lead you to maybe give more weight to the results, because I
[39:07] don't think there's an agenda here beyond getting attention for the organization, right,
[39:13] So to me, it's just super fluff and superficial. So that's how much
[39:16] weight I give it. I don't think the risk, right, I don't
[39:19] think the risk is that this analysis is biased. I think the risk is
[39:23] that the analysis is not sufficiently rigorous. I think some of the Some of
[39:30] the points makes sense. Some of the data points make sense in the sense
[39:32] of, you know, are you happier if you own your own home,
[39:35] or if you are you happier if you're not broke? Are you happier if
[39:37] you're not your children aren't living in poverty? Obviously those things would be true,
[39:42] but if you think about some of it, it's interesting from a political
[39:45] perspective. So I look at one of the happiness metrics, which is economy
[39:49] in real Estate, and so the headline is economy in real Estate one hundred
[39:53] and forty four thousand dollar media and after tax income puts a smile on the
[39:57] face of wood Buffalo, Alberta. So as you, oh, no,
[40:00] I consume way too much Alberta political media. So Wood Buffalo is basically for
[40:05] McMurray. So they might be happy because they have lots of money. At
[40:10] the moment they are in the process of they have elected a current MLA who
[40:16] wants to separate from Canada because they hate Canada so much that they have to
[40:22] leave. So are they happy that they're going to separate? Is that what
[40:24] they're happy about? They have all this money because they have fossil fuels that's
[40:30] not gonna last forever. And they're really really really really really hey justin Turtle
[40:32] because he's taking their fossil fuels away from them. I wouldn't describe the people
[40:37] of Wood Buffalo as happy in the political sense. But are they happy because
[40:42] they have money? They currently have money, but they might not always have
[40:45] money. And there are like massive wildflowers burning across northern Alberta right at the
[40:47] moment and have been for several years. It's been a risk for them.
[40:52] So are they happy? Like? What is as as they says? What's
[40:57] the meaning of are they rich? Sure? Richness to make you happy?
[41:00] Maybe? And what's the point am I going to move to for McMurray because
[41:06] they're happy because they have one hundred forty four thousand dollar income. People did
[41:08] that, you know for the last twenty five years. They're not going to
[41:10] keep on doing that. The economy in for McMurray is going down, not
[41:15] up. So this is such an interesting point and I want to pick up
[41:20] on it, Melinda, the the question of who is happy? So when
[41:28] we talk about the political expression of a community, So the political expression of
[41:34] Wood Buffalo is as you've described, but as we know here locally. A
[41:40] lot of times the winners in the game of electoral politics have a power base
[41:49] and a support base that is geographically or demographically concentrated or both. So who
[41:55] has the privilege to speak and how do they represent and the happiness of their
[42:00] community? And with that lens in mind, I want to Windsor was ninety
[42:07] first on this list for that category. You mentioned economy and real estate and
[42:14] um, and I think that's so fascinating because the political messaging, the messaging
[42:21] that comes from our elite in Windsor, from our our municipal leadership, is
[42:28] that this is the best time ever to be a Windsor. Right, the
[42:31] good times are coming. There's a new hospital coming, there's a big giant
[42:37] battery plant that's going to be built, and we are in the middle of
[42:42] a giant economic boom and Windsor is looking better than ever. And then we're
[42:46] ninety first in economy and real estate on this measure of happiness. So so
[42:52] I've criticized it enough. Now let's look at what the metrics are in the
[42:55] detail on that on that particular pillar of this research, percentage of owner households.
[43:02] Okay, all right, I'll accept that as a measure of happiness,
[43:06] media and after tax household income percentage of population spending less than thirty percent of
[43:12] income on housing. I bet you we do like shit on that one.
[43:15] Unemployment rate, poverty rate and Ginny index, which is inequality. The inequality
[43:23] based on after tax household income. So what what The official story coming out
[43:31] of the city of Windsor, and the official story coming from political leadership is
[43:37] not focused on any of these things. It's not focused on any of these
[43:39] things. It's focused on well, maybe on unemployment, on raw employment numbers,
[43:44] and on how much profit potential there is in Windsor for business. Right
[43:51] this is a great time because businesses will be doing better than ever. Windsor
[43:58] has one of the worst Jenny indexes in Canada, so I'm not surprised that
[44:01] that brought us down. If that was included in economy and real estate.
[44:06] We are one of the most unequal cities in the country. We have.
[44:10] The gap between the rich and poor in Windsor is a real problem. Is
[44:14] a real issue as much as it's an issue for anybody in Canada. Because,
[44:17] of course, the federal and provincial social service regimes and so forth are
[44:24] the biggest impact the biggest factor, and that's why Canada is far more equal
[44:30] than the United States, for example. But within that band, within that
[44:34] band of inequality within Canada, we're pretty bad. Is that something that you
[44:39] have ever heard anybody talk about from officially in the city. Have you ever
[44:45] heard a politician who's elected utter the words inequality? Well, probably Lisa Gretzky
[44:53] has fair enough, right enough. I don't know if Brian has done very
[44:58] often because he's too busy talking about national parks where he is not consulting with
[45:02] Indigenous people in putting on Tim Hortons skates, I don't know if Eric hash
[45:07] and I expect that none of the Conservatives ever have. I'm sorry, I
[45:14] just laughing about the skates. I'm still not over the fact that Brian Massey
[45:21] did not properly consult Indigenous people about the jewe actual problem I got, but
[45:24] I know we're not on that. Off the rails, everybody, Okay,
[45:29] it's the airing of the grievances. We got a few minutes left, well,
[45:31] I think so. I think when we had like a we were just
[45:35] having a quick cursory conversation about this the other day, and I think I
[45:37] mentioned it to you, Doug that I'm just waiting now for the documentary that's
[45:39] going to come out in response to this report about how actually Windsor is the
[45:45] best place to live and you are all wrong and we're right, just like
[45:49] when it was it came out that Windsor's one of the worst place to live
[45:52] as a woman, and then we some people put together a documentary saying it's
[45:58] actually not. These five white proof women have had great experience here and they
[46:01] did a whole documentary about it, and that was just solved the issue for
[46:05] everybody. If happy and we can find happy people. So you're full of
[46:12] shit? Yeah, exactly exactly, Shanny Happy. Bring us home, John,
[46:16] because I'm about to start talking about doctor who. Oh no, Well,
[46:22] you know, I think we've successfully run the gamut on this conversation.
[46:28] But before we put the show to bed right now, Doug, I know
[46:32] that you had a four year consideration that we wanted to touch upon of the
[46:37] social media variety discussing Twitter. Yes, that's right, So I forgot about
[46:45] this tweet. I tweet so many silly things. But a couple days ago
[46:51] I happened to notice we were a few friends of mine and I were discussing
[46:54] blue checks on Twitter and the sort of how the new verification regime on Twitter
[47:04] is destroying the platform and turning it into garbage. But curiously, I got
[47:09] curious about who's paying for a blue check in Windsor, and I started looking
[47:14] through my list of followers. Some friends did the same and we started to
[47:17] get a sense of who has a blue check. I'm not going to pick
[47:20] out any individuals. You spend eleven dollars a month on Twitter, that's your
[47:24] business. But there are some organizations who are verified. And digging into that,
[47:32] a Twitter verified organization subscription is one thousand dollars US per month and fifty
[47:40] dollars a month for each additional affiliate. Now that's in the US, so
[47:44] prices may vary in Canada. I don't know if they're paying twelve hundred dollars
[47:46] a month Canadian or a thousand dollars a month Canadian. Didn't get into that
[47:50] level of detail. It's a thousand dollars to apply and a thousand dollars a
[47:53] month. And there are two local institutions who are paying for Twitter blue and
[48:00] WHEN Utilities and the Greater Essex County District School Board pr account. Why on
[48:08] earth are you people spending twelve thousand dollars on Twitter Blue? Are you nuts?
[48:14] Especially the school board? Right right? Oh my god? So so
[48:22] what do you get? John? I'm sure that you you're an avid social
[48:25] media maven. You you must have looked at the benefits of Should I get
[48:30] Twitter Blue? Do I want to be a blue ee or whatever they're called?
[48:32] And what are the privileges that the institutions get for their thousand dollars a
[48:38] month. I'm not going to blue myself on air right now, and there
[48:44] are dozens of us, to be perfectly clear, I had Twitter Blue last
[48:49] year, about a full year ago before Elon took over, and I had
[48:52] it for a month. I was interested in seeing what some of the features
[48:54] were. Longer tweets was one of them. Ability to upload in full HD
[49:01] video with a one hour window of uploads, which is a lot more than
[49:07] the two minutes that you're allowed with regular Twitter. One of the most interesting
[49:10] features was the ability to see articles that the people that you follow are reading,
[49:19] and then it also said that they were reading that article though, which
[49:21] was very weird because like the opportunities for learning far too much about the people
[49:24] that you follow online existed. I guess you could find out why the people
[49:30] that you're following what they're like they're consuming on Twitter. Yeah, and it
[49:35] would say, like, here's an article about the happiness metric of windsor it
[49:38] was shared or it was read by Doug and Melinda. Well that's worth the
[49:43] fee right there if you don't have any ethics or Yeah. But it also
[49:46] opens up like the window for just like some of the people that you follow,
[49:52] we're reading some really weird shit and here's a list of it publicly.
[49:58] I don't, I don't, I don't get the pe of it. Today,
[50:00] we just saw a new story that came out that said half of the
[50:04] existing Twitter Blue subscribers left. So that's seventy five thousand. There were only
[50:09] one hundred and fifty thousand, which makes it so funny to think that Enwin
[50:15] and the school board are part of a number of seventy five thousand. What
[50:22] a small number. Maybe they went to the same seminar. I don't,
[50:25] I don't know what's going on here. I don't know why they thought it
[50:31] was it was a good idea, but I'm I'm I guess, like at
[50:37] your communications professional, John so do you think it's legitimate for a public institution
[50:43] to pay for something like Twitter Blue if you're afraid of, you know,
[50:46] someone impersonating you, I could see there being a purpose for it. I
[50:51] think NWIN has far more exposure in that sense than the school board does quite
[50:54] frankly, but if you're not concerned about it, and way frankly, there's
[51:00] a two institutions that have enough followers that you'll be able to determine which one's
[51:04] the real one and which one's the false one. Not to mention I mean
[51:07] boring institutions. You're going to know the real end when from the fake end.
[51:12] When when the fake end one goes the city's on fire, you know,
[51:14] it's burning down a power like it's just it's nonsense. Um But I
[51:20] mean, Doug, you and I were chatting, um well, in the
[51:22] chat that we have with all of us. To me Twitter Blue, it's
[51:25] like it's only four reply guys, Like that's the only thing if you just
[51:29] want to get your response, yeah, because you can't do it organically and
[51:34] get up to the top of the thread. And I've never used Twitter in
[51:37] that sense of replying to people. I try to get followers and then I
[51:40] put out my messages and it's sort of a one way street is how I
[51:45] use mine. So I'm not the target audience for it. But I mean
[51:52] you done, Yeah, definitely what's a reply? Guy? Like? You're
[51:58] just you have such a big ego that you want to be heard, so
[52:01] you want to tweet. But the problem is as if you are a nobody
[52:06] with seven followers, you're not going to be heard in the void. So
[52:08] elon went and let anybody pay eight dollars a month or eleven dollars a month,
[52:14] whatever it is to get to the top of everyone's messages and reply guys
[52:19] have always been there though, because if you reply to a big account,
[52:23] you're going to get a ton more eyeballs on your tweet then you would if
[52:27] you just tweeted your thoughts. I think, okay, yeah, you're just
[52:30] you're you're riding the wave of someone else's profile and exposure. Is this an
[52:34] accusation or just an observation about done? It's both, yeah, So I
[52:40] don't I don't understand, Like I mean, with Enwin and with the school
[52:44] Board, they're not replying to ship unless Nwin got like a really snarky social
[52:50] media manager who decided to be like the Taco bell social media when it's just
[52:54] like four twenty yo awesome, turn off the power at four o'clock for twenty
[53:00] afternoon. Like, I just I don't see at all what the use of
[53:02] this money is to just hand to a feign billionaire when you could shower that
[53:10] twelve grand over local media who would love it, or hell, donate it
[53:15] to a nod for profit or a charity, because that at least has more
[53:19] tangible benefits for these organizations than what Twitter Blue does. I mean, I
[53:22] just I don't see any value for these organizations. So was your search exhaustive,
[53:30] Doug, and you came up with these two local organizations? Or was
[53:31] this just like you just wouldn't say, five minutes and this is what you
[53:35] came up side, I'm really curious if you spent more time looking what you
[53:38] would come up with. Whoever, I'm very curious. Yeah, I haven't
[53:42] seen anyone notable. Um well, I don't want to say that that's a
[53:45] knock to the one person that I have seen. You're good, nobody notable,
[53:51] But it's just it's the organized because I've got a can we we?
[53:57] Okay, so you have one former politician is using Twitter blue and it's Chris
[54:00] Vanderdolan, which is fucking hilarious. He's such an Elon musk stand yeah,
[54:07] which makes perfect sense, paying that he hates. He hates paying taxes for
[54:12] his roads and you know, for schools, but he'll pay the Elon tax
[54:15] for whatever reason to piss off the limbs. I guess, um, yeah,
[54:20] I just I don't. I don't see the purpose whatsoever. These organizations
[54:24] are able to put out a tweet without being Twitter blue to access their audience.
[54:29] But more than that, they can put out a freaking press release and
[54:32] it'll get into the like news coverage, and that's what it's for. Again,
[54:37] I look to like the Taco bell or whatever. I mean, Doug,
[54:39] how many brands have you seen that engage in just such cringe content.
[54:44] But the reason for it is that they have a profit motive and they're trying
[54:46] to turn people that wouldn't maybe alternatively purchase their stuff onto them because they're liking
[54:52] what they're seeing on the social sphere. No one's choosing to go with a
[54:54] different hydro operator in Windsor I'm not switching from the pub look forward to the
[55:00] Catholic board because of your damn good tweets. That is such a good point,
[55:04] because the purpose of this platform for these institutions is to get specific information
[55:12] to specific people the residence of Windsor, and in the case of the school
[55:15] board, winds Or Essex, that is that is it. That is all
[55:20] there is. There is no reason except for verification. But but what we've
[55:25] seen is that Twitter is so erratic in terms of policy and in terms of
[55:32] its um it's verification regime itself, that it's not a reliable platform. The
[55:39] meaning of a blue check is completely different than it was six months ago.
[55:45] And perhaps these organizations are are well meaning and simply out of touch, you
[55:51] know, and and don't understand social media well enough to understand sort of the
[55:55] evolution of this thing. But this is like, this is like choosing to
[56:00] put dogsheit on your shoe. I don't get I mean, look, let's
[56:06] look at the most recent thing that Elon's doing right now. There's that murder
[56:09] of the homeless person in New York right now on the subway. Elon is
[56:15] engaging and direct like race baiting, engaging with some really awful Twitter accounts that
[56:20] are saying, oh, why are we focusing on a white guy killing a
[56:22] black guy when it's actually Hispanic people killing Hispanics that are the most in the
[56:28] happens the most in the country. Then Elon responds going, oh, you
[56:30] do have to wonder is there a profit motive from some of these media corps
[56:34] its responding to like Gobal sixty nine on Twitter. But the point being is
[56:37] why is the school board an Enwin deciding this is where we want to put
[56:43] our money right now in the midst of the shit show of Twitter Blue that's
[56:47] now been ongoing for five to six months, they're still shelling over the money.
[56:53] Meanwhile, we're watching all of the most like notable people and celebrities and
[56:59] institutions that exist having to go change their profile names on a daily basis because
[57:04] Elon keeps giving them back a checkmark against their will and they're running from it
[57:08] and trying to find ways to get rid of it. Meanwhile, we have
[57:12] two institutions here that are showing out twenty four thousand dollars over of course of
[57:15] a year. My recommendation give it to us at Row City Politics. We
[57:20] will gladly take your money and buy the podcasts to do and we're gonna go
[57:22] get a hire a producer in a sound engineer. I can understand. And
[57:30] when in the school board because people look for in the moment updates you and
[57:35] your hydros out or if the school bus has been canceled. But if you
[57:38] are in like I understand. But to your point, John, like just
[57:43] understanding that that's not how people are coming to this platform now for information,
[57:46] like you need to catch up with the time. So it's just you know,
[57:50] not to be uncharitable, but like who's in charge of your social media
[57:53] at those organizations and are you sort of with it and you know, understanding
[57:58] the trends and understanding what's going on well, because you can still they can
[58:01] still tweet out without Twitter blue and reach their audience that they've built up organically
[58:06] and get their message across. And we all know that if the Hydro goes
[58:09] out, I'm gonna go look at Twitter first on endwin and then probably link
[58:14] through to their website. It doesn't require them to spend this money unless they're
[58:19] deciding to go post on like I don't know Elon Musk or Alex Jones's tweet
[58:24] to let windsor know that the Hydro's out on frigging giants. Well, and
[58:30] to be fair, I never even cared about the blue check marks before,
[58:32] Like they didn't occur to me to worry about whether the end wind had a
[58:36] blue check marks pointed out I was looking for the end win then had ten
[58:39] thousand followers, or that was followed by dogs Cartory, or that was whatever
[58:44] I was. The blue check was irrelevant. Even when it meant something,
[58:46] it didn't mean it. But now you know, now it means if the
[58:51] blue check is there, potentially it's not the real end win. Yeah,
[58:54] so end when in Greater District County school Board, explain yourselves us know,
[59:00] send us a press release or a letter, or call us or a carrier
[59:04] pigeon or tweet at no, no, why just comment on one of our
[59:07] tweets and you'll make sure to show up right at the top of you at
[59:09] the top. Very good, we'll look for that, folks. Thro City
[59:14] Politics. It is May the sixth. The regular panel today included Doug Sartory,
[59:17] Melinda Monroe, and myself John Lidkey glad to have joining us as a
[59:22] guest, Anastasia Adams as well head every Patreon dot com forward slash Rose City
[59:25] politics and give us your cash. We are in Bize's magazine, We're on
[59:29] Twitter and Rosity Politics able to broadcast live on tape thanks to the kind support
[59:32] of Luna six two five building better communities and enwhen or you know public school
[59:38] board that could be you at the end of the program as well. Just
[59:43] give us all your Twitter Blue money and we will go bump our regular advertisers
[59:46] and friends and we'll put your names in on our Patreon. Subscriptions are cheaper
[59:51] than Twitter Blue for both humans and institutions. We should start giving out blue
[59:55] checks through our Patreon. We'll mail one d folks. Such a good idea
[59:59] been Rosity follows. Thanks for listening. Mmmmmmmmmm

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