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• OK, I know this may come under fire, but there may be another explanation. I have seen some, though not all, road painting done. In some cases, it is done by a truck driving down the road. Now, imagine you are the driver and you notice, at the last minute, that someone has neglected to remove that ring from the road. The machine is painting along as you travel at constant speed and you have to decide if you are going to stop the thing and "fix" this problem, or leave it to be taken care of later. If you stop, and the painting machine keeps spraying paint, you are going to have a large mess of it in one spot. Even if you can easily stop the machine, you will have to move the ring and then back up to just the right spot to resume the painting. Chances are, especially if there is a procedure regarding this, you are going to keep painting and let the touch-up crew take care of it later.

  And the "it's not my job" thing -- some work relies on a production line sort of mentality. If you are building something on a production line and discover that the previous step was not done, do you stop the line and do the other person's job first? No. You expect and rely on all the previous steps being done before the item reaches your section of the line. You don't do other jobs just because. Instead, the item might get pushed off the line as defective and the line keeps moving.

  Anyway, that's my dissenting opinion. It's easy to see something -- like a $5000 military toilet -- and scream waste, or lazy, or whatever. But, when you learn that the toilet has to meet a variety of special standards, including (perhaps) making sure it shatters just the right way (so it does not hurt people) if hit by a rocket -- well, then you realize there won't be that many toilets made to that standard and the cost might be warranted. By the way, the toilet analogy -- completely made up. I don't know the exact standards military toilets have to meet, but I do know they exist.

• Recently, I saw a similar story on television - except it was a dead animal that they painted over.

  Sadly, it's just a sign of how little care and pride workers have for their labour. This is why we can't have buildings with ornate detail or serious use of real materials like brick and stone. No pride, no craftsmanship.

• Right James - a pickup with another worker should cover the route to be painted and remove any debris that is in the way. Better yet, get some of those guys at the jail out there in striped jumpsuits and have them clean the roadway before lines are painted. Make them earn their keep.

  I find it ironic that all this roadwork is going on as the population of Windsor and the county keeps dropping as people leave for jobs elsewhere. Who will use these roads? Why wasn't this done during the boom times decades ago?

  Any news on the extension of EC Row east - the Lesperance Road overpass? I think and underpass would be better, less disruptive of the area, especially with the cemetery right there - at least being on Lesperance you could almost pretend the highway wasn't there.

• David II, I talked with someone who does this for a living and he said the road ahead is scouted and any debris is removed. Obviously this didn't happen in this case. Also, if the paint vehicle stops they can shut off the sprayer so that it doesn't cause a large spill.
  The same thing when they slow down. The operator can slow down the sprayer so it doesn't cause a mess.

  I agree with Andrew, the amount of time it has taken to do a 60 foot overpass is horrible. As well as the slow and long road it has taken to do small parts of the expressway.
  But in this city when it takes 2 years to get a tree planted (though they cut them down quickly enough) I can see why it takes so long.
  By the way forestry is not the culprit for the long delay in tree planting. Talking to various departments it is because of budgeting and the availability of workers. According to many people's schedules do not make sense at city hall. Though I don't know what that means I do know that spending $1.2 million on lawyers to buy the tunnel and sell Greenlink to Windsorites it too much money given these economic times.

• The line painting is done by truck and therefore probably didn't see it until it was too late (if at all) I think there is usually a truck either in front of the actual painting truck or behind it but maybe not in this case!

• ME, thanks for the clarification on the painting procedure.

  I've never looked into or wondered about work scheduling or if Windsor is any different in terms of delays/overruns. However, I believe that most of these projects are planned well in advance and then other branches of government are lobbied for funding assistance. That would explain why particular projects are going on now versus other projects or times. If the feds come up with a million dollars to help fund this project at this time, you take the money and run with it. If you turn it down you may not get it again. Also, since the city probably specifically asked for help with this one project, the money can't be re-directed to something else.

  Anyone have more information on government funding requirements?

• I remember reading somewhere that Amico got a $5.6 million contract from the city to do roads in the city. Was this part of that contract? Wasn't Amico the same company doing those last minute weekend demolitions?

  Speaking of construction projects and demolitions, I saw on the second page of today's Star that Christ the King Church at 2930 Dominion got approval for demoltion to make way for another plaza, which we already know about. But, what caught my attention was Councilor Valentinis saying, "Not a single representitive from the neighbourhood has come forward with an objection saying this is not good for the area, It's gone throgh the planning process, conforms to zoning bylaws so I'm supportive."

  Wait a sec! Not a single person opposed the demolition of that church? So, is he saying if anyone opposed it, it could have been prevented? Wow, I guess it's the apathy that's destroying this city.

• while at taloola today i saw a city truck hauling two couches while they seemed to try to cover them with some landscaping fabric. not sure if they were doing a personal job using a city vehicle though. seemed odd to me.

• I suspect that it has to do with illegal dumping. If you complain enough to the city that people are dumping couches in the alleyway, depending on who you deal with, they'll actually come and pick it up and haul it to the dump for free. They did that for my neighbour, yet gave me a work order to remove a different illegally dumped couch on my side that I suspect he threw on my side a different time.

• :) i can't tell you how much this brightened my day andrew!

  i would've thought a street sweeper ahead of the paint truck would be better then a couple guys in a don'tpick-up truck ;) ....get it? yeah, that was lame....i know lol
  of course....we'll probly find this thing later on, after the windsor star reads this and publishes it as it's own find of course, down at the river in the sculpture garden as a peice of art. as it's equally as creative as almost everything down there.

  on christ the king - i had heard that they want to save all those nice big trees and move them somewhere along their whole beautifying the entrances to the city thing! so, that's cool even though the church comes down.