Quick Review of the Review
I was expecting more.
I had some personal deadlines, so I arrived at Windsor Water World precisely at 4:00 PM for the downtown episode of the Ward Boundary Review process. I knew it was to be an “Open House”, so I could come in, ask some questions, fill out the feedback form and get out of there. It turned out to be more of a Q&A/presentation, so my plans were derailed a bit. I was unable to attend a few other meetings that night, including the inaugural “Citizens for Jobs, NOW” at the Caboto club which I hear was well attended.
The consultant, Dr. Robert Williams, was on hand as was a host of other staffers from the city (Chuck Scarpelli and Chris Aspila from the planning dept). Fulvio Valentinis made a quick appearance and Alan Halberstadt came shortly after and stayed the whole time. Postma and Jones from Ward 2 were nowhere to be seen.
I was expecting more citizens in attendance, but the glaring lack of mainstream media attention probably didn’t help. I thought that people would realize just how important this exercise was in the electoral future of this city. I am proud of Windsor’s blogging community, though, as they proved once again to be deeply engaged and educated in the process and they dominated this open house, which was the most-attended one yet (the Forest Glade open house had a total of 9 citizens walk through the door!). (Was anyone at the South Windsor session last night? Can you share your observations from that session with us?) Knowing our pitiful municipal voter turn-out, however, I should have known that the attendance of these sessions would be poor. I can predict the future based upon our history, however. Few people want to become engaged in the process of developing the plans, but the vast majority will wait until the plans are finished and bitch about them. Kind of hard to take those people seriously.
So, onto the options before us. Dr. Williams stated that his plans were very preliminary. (check out Windsor Visuals for images of the session last night - including the image used in this post, and the city’s website for the report) He wanted to have something together prior to the sessions so people would have a benchmark from which to move forward. So take a look at the preliminary designs that Dr. Williams is proposing, and get your thoughts to him quickly as he is assembling his recommendations for city council, which will be presented to them sometime in May.
I have my personal favourites, and after much discussion last night I am secure in my ideas that they would serve ScaleDown’s Mission and Vision statements the best. I am opting for the Ten Ward option, with one councillor per ward. I would, however, like to see more wards incorporate a greater diversity of land-uses and socio-economic cross-sections, and my comments will reflect that. The one thing I would love to be able to avoid is “Ghetto-izing” the lower-income residents into one ward while the wealthy suburbanites are contained in another. I see this as pitting one “class” against the other, and we always know which group of people end up in control when that happens. Also, I feel that the BIA’s need to be spread out into more wards, again so that the suburban wards, with the vast majority of the big-box power centres have some local independant business people whose needs the ward councillor has to consider.
So get those thoughts to the consultant ASAP (windsorwardreview@hotmail.com), and share them with us here in this forum. One thing that we tried to address at the session last night was ways to ensure that this process wasn’t politicized and the best democratic option was chosen. There are probably some sitting ward councillors who will look at the options presented to them and will chose the one that will best protect their job, as opposed to best serving the citizens of Windsor. Dr. Williams stated that this was inevitable, and it was up to us to do our utmost to ensure that the process is tainted by oppourtunism as little as possible. This is the first step of many in this process, and I trust that the people reading this will be the ones who are integral in the decision making process. You are proving yourselfs to be the true leaders of this community.
Tags: bloggers, City Council, Open House, planning department, Ward Boundary Review
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I am for the 5 ward option myself to which we debated.
But one thing I know is that due to such horrible politics in the last 15 years I believe Windsorites have become so apathetic to the process they just ignore it.
However, I think they are voting in some way. By leaving Windsor altogether. In a sense they are voting with their wallets.
“By leaving Windsor altogether. In a sense they are voting with their wallets.” - Truer words have never been spoken!
It was great to see so many people from ScaleDown getting actively involved and to finally meet a few of you face-to-face. I only wish I would of spoken more but everyone else addressed my concerns pretty clearly. I am still on the fence between the 5 ward option and the 10 ward option - the first is fairly similar to our current system but with a few tweaks, while the latter has the advantage of throwing the majority of suburbia into just 2 or 3 wards with the remaining wards are more BIA centric, more core-dependent areas. I still like my upside-down pie idea (a flipped over version of the pie-shaped ward plan discussed on SD before) but it would never be accepted by suburbinites
I wish I hadn’t missed the beginning of Dr. William’s presentation, but I put in my two cents on that yellow paper. I opted for the 10 ward option as well. Councilors need to be more accountable to the entirety of their wards, and if it means that there has to be smaller wards, then so be it.
Glad to hear this one had the best turn out though!
Here’s the view of the ever-present Mayor of Monmouth to add to the discussion. The more discussion surrounds this topic, the better the result that will come out of the dialogue. I don’t care what your view is - share it! We’ll mold the best option for Windsor together. I can virtually guarantee that the consultant will be reading what we have to say on the blogs.
I sure am glad that the blogosphere is taking interest in this process. The mainstream media has been nowhere to be seen on this topic. They didn’t cover any open house at all! The layperson wouldn’t even know that this process is going on.
Good to see you all there. Was glad to see many youth in the audience… shows how strong we care about our community.
I’m still debating and weighing the options however I’m leaning towards the 5 or 10 ward system.
I couldn’t make the meeting, but how would the boundaries of a 4-Ward (2 councilors each) look? Or, even an 8-ward system? I think in these times, we need less people, and more action. (but only if its done right)
I’m leaning toward the 10 ward system as it would be the one most likely to shake up our current status quo. In the long run I also think someone has a better chance of unseating an incumbent if they’re running against one person instead of two. Incumbents already have a big enough advantage going into an election. I do like M.O.M.’s idea of 5 Councillors with a full-time assistant for each ward.
Accountability is one of the main reasons I like the single-councillor ward idea. Geographically, I like the 10 ward option as the urban/suburban balance would stay the same (60/40) so at least we wouldn’t be overly represented in the suburban wards.
Has everyone written into the consultant with their views yet?
After reading through the handout several times and listening and reading the discussions at the extra open meeting and above, I am coming out on the side of 10 wards with one councilor each.
As one gentleman pointed out that with him living on Josephine, he had no real connection to Sandwich, their problems weren’t his in Ward 2. I live in the core of Ward 2 and I agree with the gentleman. As it is now, we have only one councilor willing to look at the core of her ward, while the other has just abandon the core and most of his ward for Sandwich exclusively. So where’s my representation.
Suburbs don’t have BIAs, they have Costco lands directed by corporate headquarters, they have track homes not neighbourhoods as you would get with 10 wards.