Rowswell, Caicco, Strapp missing in action

If the City's trade delegation to Ireland is working hard on your behalf, no one at City Hall nor the Economic Development Corporation seems to know anything about it.

The summer student answering Mayor Rowswell's phone (his usual assistant Renee Wysynski is on vacation) says she's only heard from the Mayor once this week and there are no updates on the trade initiative.

At the Economic Development Corporation, Bruce Strapp's staff say they've heard nothing from their junketing boss about how the mission is going.

Jamie Caicco, the Ward One Councillor who's travelling with the Mayor at taxpayers' expense, is similarly missing in action.

The only source of information we've found so far is Sault MPP Tony Martin, who's not officially part of the City trade delegation but is in Ireland and posting photos daily on his website.

The above photo, supplied by Martin, shows Steelworkers Local 2251 president Tom Bonell meeting with Irish Senator Joe O'Toole. You can access more of Martin's photo coverage by clicking here.

Here's the full text of an E-mail we sent this afternoon to City Clerk Donna Irving, who responded to one of our queries to Mayor Rowswell's office: ************************************************ Hi Donna:

By all means communicate with the Mayor indicating that there's considerable frustration here over the Mayor's lack of communication.

To be blunt, Doug Clute tore a strip off me recently about the lack of media support for these missions.

As a communications practitioner myself (I handled Election Canada's media relations for 35 ridings in the last election) I'm starting to see that the problem is an almost-complete lack of proactive communications on this initiative from anyone involved.

The only news releases I've received contained almost no new information, and were simply attempts to get me to remind people to sign up for the trip.

I approached numerous participants about arranging airport photos and no one got back to me.

I asked both the Mayor and his secretary to arrange for updates from Ireland. We're not asking for a 30-page report. Just a photo or brief Email or phone call.

Now, we're four days into the trip and we've not heard a word.

In the absence of corporate communications on this story, I've concluded that we in the media must now proceed on an investigative basis.

My initial efforts will be directed at reviewing this initiative from a corp comm perspective.

David Helwig, news director, SooToday.com, 705-941-0664