The Sandwich Towne Art Festival is looking for artists to exhibit this spring in the annual event.

With news of festivals in the air, and in light of the beautiful temperatures outside, it seemed appropriate to post about the Sandwich Towne Art Festival and their open call for artists.

The festival is in now into it’s second year, and besides a name change (it was previously known as the Sandwich Revival Art Show), there are more differences to look out for. To kick the weekend off, an Artists’ Parade will see participating painters, photographers, sculptors, illustrators, etc. march into the “petite forest” on opening day.

The festival will also include more attractions for the community in general. Street performers, cotton candy, live art painting classes, face painting, local music and more food vendors will hopefully draw a large crowd into the city’s oldest neighbourhood. The “petite forest” is located at Mill and Sandwich Streets, and offers the perfect location for this open-air art exhibit.

The festival is set for May 22nd and 23rd this year, a bit earlier than last year (it was held at the end of June in 2009). For any artists out there looking to show off their work, the vendor fee is $60 before April 1st, and $80 after that. Interested artists can email the organizer, Lindsay Hanaka of Hanakaeye Photography, at info@hanakaeye.com if they have any questions, and to receive an application.

No Experienced Required by ravenswift from the windsoriteDOTca Flickr pool.

Windsorites will enjoy a 0.6% tax decrease this year, but this will come with some compromise. The city will collect less of your money (about $26 less), but in turn, your utility bills will increase. This is the result of a $4 million annual dividend Enwin is required to pay the city. This, in addition to numerous service cuts, may make the tax decrease less desirable than council wants us to believe.

In a coordinated province-wide bust, OPP issued 122 child pornography charges against 35 men. Windsor Police arrested 30-year-old Daryl Skreptak post haste, nabbing him last month after receiving information about an IP address with images of child abuse connected to it. Skreptak was released on a $10,000 bail with surety supervision.

Three members of the Windsor Wildcats hockey team have been awarded $2.25 million in compensatory damages. The women’s hockey team bus collided with an illegally parked tractor trailer in NY state in 2005. Carly Labadie received $1 million, Tory Gault got $500,000 and their assistant coach Jason Mailloux was awarded $750,000.

The less-than-classy billboard at Walker Road and Wyandotte Street depicting 100.7 Rock FM’s Craig & Matt in the nude with only a pair of coconuts covering their cahonies is being taken down. The decision was made by Pattison Outdoor, the owners of the billboard in question, after they received numerous complaints from the community. The Rock plans on posting their second set of billboards around the city at the end of this month.

Congratulations to the Windsor Star on their 13 nominations for the 2009 Ontario Newspaper Awards. Tyler Brownbridge and Jason Kryk are both in the running for photojournalist of the year, while Sarah Sacheli, Sonja Puzic and Frances Willick are all commended for their feature writing. Various other Windsor Star writers, photographers and designers have also been nominated.

ChangeCamp is coming to Windsor-Essex on May 8th 2010

ChangeCamp is coming to Windsor-Essex this May, and you can be part of it!

What is ChangeCamp, you ask?  Cooquially known as an “un-conference“, ChangeCamp is a face-to-face gathering of citizens interested in exchanging ideas and plans for their urban political landscape.

CSC_0111 by xero4 from the windsoriteDOTca Flickr pool.

A loophole in the current taxation process for condominiums could cost Windsor “millions” in revenue if not addressed. Multi-dwelling buildings that are classified as condos (after being “converted”) are taxed as a single-family home, resulting in a rate that is 2.55x lower than regular multi-dwelling buildings.

More bad news for area hospitals. The provincial recruitment project known as the Underserviced Area Program, which provides incentives for health care workers to set up shop in regions in need of doctors, has been revised. This means $55,000 in tuition grants will be re-routed from southwestern Ontario to northern Ontario.

Again, in hospital news, the surgeon accused of unnecessarily removing a Leamington woman’s breast wants her hospital privileges back. Dr. Barbara Heartwell, who voluntarily stepped away but then changed her mind and was consequently suspended, will find out tonight if she’ll be reinstated. A meeting with seven hospital board members and the newly created Medical Advisory Committee is set for 5pm this evening.

A novel writing contest, with Windsor as the setting and a sleuth Paul Martin Jr. as the protagonist, has been launched by Fireside Publishing House. The novel will be part of the “Legends and Legacies” series focusing on the lives of our Prime Ministers. With the fictionalization of our leaders young lives, Fireside hopes to spark interest among youths in Canadian history. The contest is open to all students enrolled in Canadian schools.

Transit Windsor is reducing rates for students over the March Break. The annual Ride For A Buck program began in 2007 and has proven to increase ridership on public transit during a normally slow season. The special discounted fare program will run from March 14th to the 20th, 201, and all students with a valid student ID card can ride the bus for a buck.

The Bangladesh Peace Clock is somewhat obscured by a Median Ahead sign

Windsor City Councillors received a communication on Monday stating that a median-ahead sign was obscuring the sightline of Windsor’s newest downtown clock, the Bangladesh Peace Clock, located at Wyandotte and Ouellette.