I have lamented in several posts on this blog that natural coverage of the county of Essex is 3.5% — the worst in all of Ontario. I have since learned that this point of data from 2002 is no longer accurate. In 2012, the coverage moved 8.5%.
My new question is why hasn’t the measure of coverage not moved since 2012?
On Tuesday, October 20th we learned that the Ford government intends to remove the ability for a municipality to use ranked ballots. I’m a bit gutted about this.
There is still time to register for a 60 minute session on Monday October 26 at 7:30pm from Unlock Democracy about the success of Ranked Ballots in London, Ontario.
Where there is still time to save Ranked Ballots remains to be seen.
“During the past two weeks, 3,647 residents participated in five telephone-enabled town hall meetings hosted by Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens and all members of Windsor City Council.” The recordings of these town hall meetings are now on YouTube:
The results of all the polling from these Town Halls are also available. There are some interesting bits of information but there is no statistically valid basis to ground any conclusions.
The Windsor Star decided to give a “highly placed city hall official” the cover of anonymity so they could freely blame Federal MP Irek Kusmierczyk for two City of Windsor projects that did not receive federal funding.
When I moved to Windsor, I was shocked by which how many local officials openly expressed an *entitlement* to provincial and federal funding, including Conservatives. The City of Windsor didn’t win two bids for federal funding that it applied for. Rather than resolve to improve, our mysterious source tells us that the mayor and some city councilors are outraged at the lack of government interference?
(Knowing this, what does this tell us about the fairness of any competitive process that might originate from the City of Windsor?)
Judging by the whinging and petulance expressed by the direct quotations in this piece, I’m going to chose to believe that the source is the mayor himself. I DOUBLE-DOG-DARE all journalists from other media outlets in the city to ask the mayor if he was the source.
Or perhaps a journalist could confirm — as the Canadian Heritage ministry official alluded to — whether the application actually fit the program guidelines. Or we could consider that the proposal to spend millions of dollars to encase a streetcar in glass and place it beside a riverfront was never a good idea in the first place.
Here’s another idea. Maybe the City of Windsor should take responsibility for falling short, take the time to find out what were the characteristics of the winning federal bids, and take the steps to build its capacity so that its next applications will be stronger.
But that’s not going to happen. Because while Detroit might hustle harder,
On October 4th, Frazier Fathers made this observation:
Maybe this one is just me, but on my computer(s) Google maps has updated to have a green default colour on maps when zoomed out…
Here’s what a map of our green space should look like:
On a less depressing note, Essex County has a property called Green Dragon Woods.
Green Dragon Woods is a 32.8-ha site located along the Canard River, upstream of Canard River Scout Camp. The significance of this site is that it contains a number of rare species, including the rare Green Dragon, which grows on the floodplain. There is also hydrologic significance associated with this site. The site is composed of the channel and floodplain of the Canard River. The floodplain is approximately 200 m wide and contains oxbows and braided flood channels that provide flood storage capacity and reduce main channel velocity
Town of Amherstburg Water Master Plan Update & Environmental Assessment Final Phase 2 Report
Last week Toronto Life published an article with an Windsor angle: “I’m 25, live with my parents and own 20 rental properties. Here’s how I did it.“
I have a personal aversion to talking about real estate and taxes which puts me at odds with almost all other adults I know. Rather that properly address the potential serious problems that comes to mind from the Toronto Life profile, let me draw your attention to one real-estate reform that sounds most promising to me:
Housing policy should be based on three important principles. First, we should value housing for its use-value, not its exchange-value. Second, housing policy should be part of community and neighbourhood building. Third, housing policy should promote social mixing and sharing, rather than stratification.
Let’s unpack the guiding principles that should apply to both house ownership and rental?
The first is that we should regard housing for its use-value. Too often we value housing for its exchange-value. We need to decommodify housing. We must build houses to provide ourselves and others with shelter, comfort, a place where we can grow as individuals and a base from which we can develop as full members of society. We must avoid regarding houses as instruments of exchange as is so often the case today with taxation incentives for investment in housing for short-term capital gain. Housing policy should not be influenced by the quest for wealth accumulation. Older people like me have benefitted from increased property values through no particular virtue on our part. But in the process we have frozen new home buyers out of the market. A fall in property values would be socially very desirable. But the media keeps us focussed on how we must protect our unearned property gains.
Houses are becoming commodities to buy and sell and not homes. By John Menadue, Pearls and Irritations, 25 September 2020
And from waaaay back
If we really wanted housing to be profitable and plentiful, we’d tax owners on the annual rise in value of their property – a Land Value Tax. This has two benefits: First, you’re taxing a non-productive source of wealth, whereas income and corporate taxes can stifle innovation and risk-taking.
Second, because buyers and sellers know the tax exists, property values stop rising quickly. This makes it easier for newcomers to enter the property market, and for homeowners to buy and sell based on the desirability of housing.
It also means that investors make their profits from land not by pocketing its increase, but by improving its income value – collecting rent, increasing the quantity or quality of housing on it, pressuring government to allow better or more intensive use of the land.
When people can live fairly well, in large numbers, close to their places of work, the economy functions far better. When a few of us are making useless paper profits from our homes and the rest are stuck outside the market, it hurts everyone.
“A housing crisis of global proportions”, by Doug Saunders, The Globe and Mail, April 28, 2012
Earlier this week, I plugged my nose and took a deep dive into the City of Windsor’s 20 Year Strategic Plan from 2016. In my post, I admitted that I could not find the 4-year strategic plan that we were supposed to be guided by, but a reader found it:
Our mayor has a B.Comm degree and an MBA. He knows that a strategic vision document doesn’t involve a group of city councilors making up a wish list of items that they then on vote with red stickers to receive funding every four years until 20 years have passed.
This article Policing Protests: A Double Standard from the Council of Canadians captures this feeling of disconnect that many of us are feeling while we witness RCMP inaction in Nova Scotia. I have found that following public policy agencies has been even more useful than following local journalism for in-depth and meaningful coverage of complex issues.
Last week I had forgotten to duly note this important work of journalism from The Toronto Star
The CBC did a similar bit of reporting using similar methods in August of this year.
Sarah Mushtaq’s guest column in The Windsor Star asks some good questions
Which neighbourhoods have amenities (such as swimming pools — public and private — golf courses, tennis courts, libraries, science centres, art galleries, playgrounds, parks, green spaces, sidewalks, streetscaping, street lighting, bus stops, bus shelters, etc.) and which do not?
Amenity mapping, as Pitter calls it, looks at the type and number of amenities that exist in a certain area. In talks, she encourages residents to explore their own neighbourhood as well as two other neighbourhoods they may be unfamiliar with to compare and contrast the differences.
Amenities should be studied to eliminate inequities among local neighbourhoods, Sarah Mushtaq, The Windsor Star, Oct 17, 2020
Just before the 50 minute mark of last week’s episode of Rose City Politics is a short discussion of the recent telephone town halls for resident of the wards of Windsor to raise matters of concern with their councillor and their mayor. I bring it to your attention because I share the concerns of the hosts who point out that the software used is usually employed by political parties. Evidently, the polling questions asked in some of the other Ward meetings were much more political in nature than the Ward 4/5 event that I listened in on.
I have some other recommended reads:
It’s a cliché but a goal without a plan is a wish.
If that’s the case, the City of Windsor is a city of wishful thinking.
Tonight I spent a little time re-reading The City of Windsor’s 20 Year Strategic Vision just to remind myself if it still holds up as the weakest and the weirdest document I have seen the City produce in my own 20 years in Windsor. Short answer: yes!
You should read it. It won’t take long. The vision document is literally only 850 words.
I’m also incredibly confused why spending commitments over the 20 years was built from resident suggestions made at some ward meetings, an online survey, and a wish list from the city councilors sitting in 2015. You would think that a city’s 20 year plan into the future would be based on, say, evidence-based projections of the future. But not Windsor’s. In our 20 Year Strategic Vision, there’s only one expert projection of the future — and that is a projection that the city seeks to defy.
Evidently the City of Windsor is supposed to produce a series of 4-year Strategic Plans that fit into our larger 2016-2036 Strategic Vision. We’re at 2020 and I haven’t seen any evidence of a 2016-2020 plan nor any indication of a 2020-2024 plan.
So I reviewed The City of London’s current 4 Year strategic plan. Compared to ours, it is magnificent. It doesn’t winge that people are so negative. It just sets to work to make things better.
Also, this document actually resembles a proper Strategic Plan. Instead of wasting space with a word cloud, it has a clearly articulated Vision, Mission, and Values as well as 5 specific strategic areas of focus:
Did you see that? CREATING a Safe London for Women and Girls? London Ontario is a city that is committing focus and resources to improving the lives of its residents. Did you know that other cities in Canada actually apply time, money, and effort to better understanding that they can do to improve the lives of women? It’s true! Here’s a 2019 Report from Edmonton.
Anyway, back to strategic visions and plans.
One thing I noticed about the City of Windsor Strategic Vision was that it was developed with the assistance of a consulting group called StrategyCorp.
From what I can tell, the 2019-2023 Strategic Plan from London, Ontario was developed in-house but they do use a Strategic Plan Dashboard and reporting infrastructure that’s provided by Clearpoint Strategy. Anyone can look at the site to see progress so far.
I think it’s telling that Leading in Public Service is one of the Strategic areas of focus for the city.
It makes me wonder if the City of Windsor even has the capacity to make its own plans.
I wish it did.
Jeewen Gill is Windsor’s new Ward 7 councillor with a share of 19.7% share of the vote.
Despite my misgivings, I did listen into the virtual Ward 4 & 5 Town Hall meeting last week. It was better than I expected and I did appreciate the ability to be polled about future budget priorities and traffic calming (although I thought the question around the hospital was a classic example of push-polling and shouldn’t count as serious evidence of support).
I don’t know whether it because of the undue influence of Rob Ford or because residents have a consumer-mindset when it comes to representative government, but throughout all the Town Hall, I had the impression that many residents see their councilor as a personal concierge to complaining to about city property or services. One woman from Ward 5 called to complain about cobblestone paving that she felt is difficult to navigate that Ed Sleiman had already personally inspected with her and had already helped arrange some degree of remedy. Ed’s response was, ‘if you see a problem, please call me.’
During the Ward 7 race, I heard a number of candidates who pledged 24 hour, full-time access for residents to call with their issues. Now, I completely understand why someone would rather call their councilor than to submit their issue to the 311 system. And yet, this state of affairs depresses me. I want my city councilor to be able to deal with long-term systematic issues and to hold the city to account when these issues aren’t being properly dealt with. I don’t want to reduce to the job of councillor to customer service rep. I want my councillor to help align the community towards a more participatory government.
When the sidewalk heaves because the city doesn’t require sewer pipes for leaks before they are installed in the ground, I want a systematic response to the problem.
Other news:
On October 4th, Frazier Fathers made this observation:
Maybe this one is just me, but on my computer(s) Google maps has updated to have a green default colour on maps when zoomed out…
To a degree this is almost greenwashing the map face. When you zoom in it does remove the “greenery” to more accurate satellite determine greenspaces at a glance it make things greener than they are.
The next day, the article Springtime Everywhere: In prioritizing clarity and smoothness in its representation, Google Earth supports how we are consuming the planet was published in Real Life and addresses similar issues.
This is your periodic reminder that “Essex County has less than 3% of its land area in forest cover and scrubland. This is the lowest percentage of any county or regional municipality in Ontario. In addition, less than 2.5% of Essex County’s original wetland area still exists (1986).”
When are the municipalities of Essex going to start addressing and redress the lack of natural cover in the county? When are we going to try to move the dial on this matter? We have experts in Freshwater Restoration Ecology at the University of Windsor.
Next Monday (October 19th, 2020) is the next City Council Meeting.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Today we should find out who is the new councillor for Ward 7 once polls close after 8pm.
On Friday, the Mayor suggested that Ward 7 residents should exclude candidates who don’t live in the Ward and suggested that it was somehow related to their position on the matter of the location of the proposed hospital. This is a good time to remind people that previous Ward 7 Councillor Irek Kusmierczyk did not live in Ward 7 until he won its council seat. I wonder which candidate(s) the mayor is trying to throw under the bus?
And I don’t want to put too much weight to it, but doesn’t this statement from the Mayor sound like a dig to the younger candidates running in the race?
“Don’t forget, you’re electing someone to sit around the table and spend your tax dollars,” he says. “This is an $850-million corporation, this is not a student council at a high school.”
There’s no city council meeting today on account of being the last day of the Ward 7 by-election. I’d love to report to you about what happened about last council meeting (for example, what happened to the request from the City Diversity Committee??) but there are no timestamps on the video of last council session and the whole thing is too time-consuming and painful to navigate otherwise.
There’s a larger problem here. Local media might write of potential conflict before a council meeting but unless there is something novel or newsworthy in the outcome, very rarely is there a media record afterwards of what happened at council. (If you have ever tried to research local issues, you might recognize this pain of always uncovering half-a-story). Occasionally a journalist will livetweet council but no one here does it consistently and rarely for the whole council meeting. Minutes from Council Meetings come out the next meeting so there’s frequently at least a two week delay in any written record of how a vote went down at council. I find that the whole thing makes it hard to follow local issues.
On September 30th, it was said that the Windsor Police Services nor its Board still have not given a substantive response to the Canadian Civil Liberties Association over its use of a database of COVID-19 health records.
Also on September 30th the City announced that it would be holding Virtual Community Consultations via a telephone town hall format, mere days later
To accommodate pandemic guidelines and maximize resident outreach, a series of five telephone town halls will occur in early and mid-October. Residents in each ward will have an opportunity to hear a presentation from the Mayor and Ward Councillors and participate in a question period regarding constituent and city-wide issues.
These unique telephone town hall sessions are technologically enabled and will automatically allow ward residents with a home telephone/landline to participate without requiring any action on their part: At 6:30 p.m. on the date of each teleconference, landlines will receive a call and residents can automatically join the meeting just by answering. Those residents who do not maintain a home telephone but have a mobile phone are asked to pre-register their mobile no later than two days prior to their ward town hall date via on-line registration:
| Date | Wards (two per call) |
|---|---|
| Tuesday 6 October – 6.30 p.m. | Ward 4 & 5 |
| Wednesday 7 October – 6.30 p.m. | Ward 8 & 9 |
| Thursday 8 October – 6.30 p.m. | Ward 2 & 3 |
| Tuesday 13 October – 6.30 p.m. | Ward 1 & 10 |
| Thursday 15 October – 6.30 p.m. | Ward 6 & 7 |
While I appreciate that this is safe approach to engage with the public in these times and that the phone could be argued as more accessible technology than a computer, the ability to listen to a presentation and then have only the possibility for a question to be selected for a response does not feel like consultation to me. A city is involved in so many aspects of daily life – from parking to climate change to electrical rates to noise bylaws to bus routes to social housing to social media… I feel that the format of the town hall is inherently going to be a conversation that’s all over the place with the brashest voices being the only ones brave enough to be heard.
If the city was really interested in consultation with its residents, it could use the same platform that it uses for feedback on its Sewer Master Plan – called Bang the Table – and survey residents to ask them what they need from their city and what they already appreciate.
On Tuesday, September 29th, I joined a zoom call update of the #TimeToTopple Report from Unlock Democracy. While I waited for the call to start, I grabbed these slides from Toronto’s RaBIT’s Introduction to Ranked Ballots:
What I heard on that Zoom call was inspiring.
The next meeting from Unlock Democracy is going to feature representatives from London Ontario who are going to be there to share their experiences with running Ontario’s first ranked ballots election. I will keep you posted.
I have been trying to re-balance my media diet as of late and have been finding that subscribing to news programs from the CBC, NPR, and the BBC as podcasts has helped tremendously in broadening what I learn about beyond my immediate interests.
I also have been subscribing to the RSS feeds of a variety of journalists. I’ve been finding Dale Smith’s Roundups of Canada’s Federal Political scene as particularly good.
Thanksgiving is next weekend and the Ontario government is leading us into disaster. The communication strategy of the Ford government is going to kill people.
That seemed to be the case at Friday’s provincial COVID-19 news conference, when reporters repeatedly asked if families should gather for Thanksgiving next weekend.
The press conference came just as the province issued a news release saying that it is “pausing social circles” and advising Ontarians to “allow close contact only with people living in their own household.”
Instead of echoing that advice, Premier Doug Ford, Health Minister Christine Elliott and other health officials all gave responses that seemed to contradict it.
Ontario’s ‘dog’s breakfast of guidance’ around COVID-19 sowing confusion, distrust, some experts say: Friday’s news conference contradicted earlier directive to restrict contact to own household, Adam Carter – CBC News, October 02, 2020
Clear communication is an essential part of a pandemic response and health communication experts agree: Ontario is doing a terrible job.
But even more damning is this headline: Many experts advised Ontario for months to boost COVID testing capacity. Sources say they just didn’t want to spend the money. The lack of testing capacity has rendered contact tracing so ineffective that in Toronto its Health Unit has opted to restrict contacting only those who have received a positive test. This means that we don’t have a clear understanding of what the real COVID numbers are in the province.
We had months to be ready for this second wave and the Ford government is trying to address the lack of staff in LTC facilities only now.
When Toronto has to go into lock down three weeks from now, I don’t want to hear that it was the fault of young people who chose to go to (or work at) bars that remain open. I want the blame to be squarely placed on a government that clearly doesn’t want to be responsible for the health of its people if it requires spending money.
There’s a City Council Meeting today at noon. The agenda is pretty light. It includes the question of whether used clothing bins be regulated by the city and potential relief from 2019 property taxation due to extreme poverty and/or sickness.
While the agenda is light, there are nine delegates lined to up to speak to By-law142-2020A BY-LAW TO AMEND BY-LAW 123-2020 RESPECTING TEMPORARY REGULATIONS REQUIRING THE WEARING OF MASKS OR OTHER FACE COVERINGS WITHIN ENCLOSED PUBLIC SPACES, including the organizer of a recent anti-mask rally among other characters. From what I can tell, there might be one pro-mask delegate among the nine and if so, I just want to thank this person for being a good neighbour.
I’ve also noted with interest that
That the Diversity Committee as part of the Diversity & Inclusion Plan, REQUESTS to review the hiring practices of the City of Windsor to ensure there are no barriers to employment.
There are still several committees that this request has to get through before it can become actionable.
Only days ago, being a player any time soon in making electric vehicles seemed preposterous. Ontario’s manufacturing heartland, despite its proud automaking history, had been passed over for new investments in the cars expected to take over global fleets. There wasn’t much confidence among industry-watchers that the junior partner in a continental market, next to an increasingly protectionist United States, could easily change that.
Then came this week’s announcement that Ford Motor Co. will make a roughly $2-billion investment in converting its Ontario facilities to make EVs, mostly by retooling its Oakville, Ont., plant for five new lines of them.
Courtesy of Ford, Canada’s EV moment has suddenly arrived. Are governments ready for it?, The Globe and Mail, September 26 2020
My family is the process of moving from being a two-car family to a one-car family (anyone want to buy my 2000 Ford Focus station wagon?). When our remaining car needs to be replaced, we are going to buy an electric vehicle.
The City of Windsor should consider amending our building code to recommend at least one 40A 240V circuit for new garages. That’s not my idea. I got it from this video:
Windsor could and should be more receptive to EVs.
From Windsor’s Community Energy Plan (July 2017):
Electric vehicle (EV) adoption is starting slowly in Ontario. Approximately 5,650 EVs are currently registered in the province, and as of 2014 only account for 0.05 per cent of Ontario’s overall passenger vehicle population. In Windsor, the number of electric vehicles is even lower at 0.01 per cent of all passenger vehicles. The Ontario Climate Action Plan sets a target of having 5 per cent of all passenger vehicles on the road in 2020 be electric.
Recently, when 12 fleet vehicles were set to be replaced the matter was focused on whether council could opt to buy local. I wonder if it’s too late for the City of Windsor to pivot from SUVs to EVs.
It’s almost as if The City of Windsor forgets that we are in a climate emergency.
On Monday, September 15th, City Council held a meeting. Unfortunately, the archived video is not time-stamped, which means it is very difficult to find out, for example, Did measure 8.17 about city support of community gardens pass?
[Answer: yes and you can hear so at the 1:49 mark]
My colleague, Carina Luo is Geospatial Data Analyst at the Academic Data Centre of the Leddy Library. She recently made this map of the walkability of the city of Windsor.
Recently, I have been taking to spending small amounts of time researching more about how the City of Windsor is investing in infrastructure to reduce flooding in the city. To do so, I have been spending some time reading the City of Windsor’s Weathering the Storm site where one can find the Windsor Sewer and Coastal Flood Protection Master Plan.
Starting today (September 21st) and ending on October 19th, the City and Dillon Consulting will be engaging the residents as part of a Stormwater Financing Study. I’m not entirely sure what is going to be asked for public comment, but what I very much hope to see is some sort of incentive program to encourage property owners to naturalize more of their land and to invest in more green infrastructure as a means to encourage more water absorption into the soil.
Both Kitchener and Mississauga have Stormwater credit programs to encourage rain gardens and permeable paving for residents, and a variety of mitigation strategies for commercial and industrial partners.
Compared to these strategies, the City of Windsor’s efforts to reduce storm water in our sanitary systems seem paltry.
Addendum: Melissa Munro pointed out on twitter that Edmonton has had stormwater levies since 2003.
Last week I suggested that community leaders who are seeking a more diverse set of city council members should endorse the adoption of Ranked Ballots in the City of Windsor.
This week, The National Observer has run several articles about ranked ballots including this explainer, What is a ranked ballot anyway?
The use of ranked ballots in the U.S. jurisdictions was largely repealed after it led to the election of women and people of colour, acccording to FairVote. By 1962, only Cambridge in Massachusetts still used multi-winner ranked choice voting. But it has made a resurgence in the States (where it is known as ranked choice voting, or RCV) in local and regional votes in the last 20 years.
National Observer, What is a ranked ballot anyway? Alastair Sharp, September 17th 2020
I also found their article, What happened when voters in London used ranked ballots? particularly encouraging.
In ranked ballots, candidates seek to win the second- and third-choice votes of their competitor’s supporters, which advocates in general — and some participants in London’s 2018 election in particular — say encourages candidates to appeal to a broader set of constituents.
Shawn Lewis, London’s first openly gay city councillor, said ranked ballots “created an interesting dynamic where I feel like candidates across the city were actually talking to each other more about city-wide issues rather than just being bubbled in wards and focused on getting to that 33 per cent of the vote to win the race.
“It took away people’s ability, I feel, to be one-issue candidates, and if they were one issue, they very quickly fell to the bottom of people’s rankings,” he said.
National Observer, What happened when voters in London used ranked ballots?? Alastair Sharp, September 18th 2020
It is important to talk about the future we want. I want a future that includes ranked ballots for Windsor.
Items of note from last week’s news:
Speaking of media, Doug Schmidt calls the final Windsor Star column of Gord Henderson as lovely but I found it a tiresome and vitriolic rant against millennials — who I may remind you all, are real people who are now in their thirties. OK Boomer, it’s time for you to spend a moment to wonder why the kids don’t care about newspapers. Or yell at clouds. Whatever.
And while I am sighing heavily with disapproval at the media, let me throw a stink-eye to the Dan McDonald show for giving their audience to a Ward 7 candidate to apologize for acting like garbage towards women. Adding fuel to a garbage fire because it’s a spectacle is to be expected from media outlets that prize eyeballs over equity. Thanks for rewarding terrible behaviour, Dan.
I’ve been following the coverage of the Ward 7 candidates and frankly, I’m disappointed that rather than increase coverage to deal with the large number of candidates for the competitive race, many of the columnists I’ve read and the podcasters I’ve listened to opted instead to concentrate on those people they think have the greatest likelihood of winning. While I understand that this line of thinking is pragmatic, this approach lends itself to great harm. It suggests that events like debates are entirely unnecessary since the only decision point that matters is if you are seen to bring a known constituency with you.
But who are the constituencies that count? Owning a small business counts. Being part of a labour union counts. An affiliation with a politic party definitely counts; ethnic affiliation sometimes counts. What doesn’t count? Being a millennial doesn’t count. Working in retail or the service industry doesn’t count. Having a strong educational background doesn’t count (I have never heard the previous Ward 7 councillor being called Dr.). And curiously, being part of non-profit work and having experience doing constituency work doesn’t seem to count, despite it aligning closely with the actual work that is required of a city councillor.
People who resemble people who have won in the past, count.
When journalists cover only those candidates with good upside, we all lose.
There are alternatives to this entrenchment of the status quo. One path is to provide more equal coverage to everyone running. Kudos to the podcast Windsor Inside Pulse who did this important work and conducted 20 minute interviews with all the candidates who accepted their offer. I found these profiles as very useful to learn more about the candidates. Why other media outlets have not provided a similar civic service to city residents is beyond me — especially those outlets that are using city council to campaign for government subsidy while cranking out stories about cars.
The other alternative is for the City of Windsor to adopt Ranked Ballots — like London, Ontario has done, like Cambridge and Kingston will do, and what Burlington is currently considering to respond to alarming voter disengagement. As the lead of Ranked Ballots Windsor, I believe that preferential ballots are a smart, simple change that would make Windsor’s elections more fair, diverse and friendly. In my role of lead of Ranked Ballots Windsor, I have emailed all of the Ward 7 candidates to ask them about their position about adopting the measure and I have been pleased to hear back from many of them with a message of their support. I am also happy to note that of those who did not respond with support, most were open to further discussion and conversation about the matter.
In short, Ranked Ballots makes more votes count and in doing so, makes every candidate more valuable and more worthy of attention.
Before I close out this matter, I wanted to duly note that we have not heard from the Diversity and Inclusion Taskforce in regards to the Ward 7 race, which is too bad because there are excellent candidates who are women and people who identify as BIPOC running in a very competitive by-election.
“Every election, after the election, we talk about our disappointment or hope for greater representation of women greater representation of diversity on council,” said Hachem-Fawaz. “Yet four years passes by and no targeted initiative is trying to engage those demographics.”
This grassroots group wants to help Windsor-Essex be more inclusive, CBC News, August 21st
I don’t mean to be sound facetious but I don’t know what that last sentence means. I don’t believe that a group that takes on government funding can endorse a particular candidate, so what action is the Taskforce planning to take on this matter? Is the Taskforce going to help bring out the vote from women and other demographics? Is it going to create a candidate scorecard to pressure candidates to publicly commit to particular issues? Is it going to encourage more women or people who identify as BIPOC to run in municipal elections?
I really hope it is not the last item from the list above because what the Ward 7 By-election so clearly demonstrates to me is that simply adding more diverse candidates to the race will only split votes and do little to change outcomes.
What I am trying to say, is that I would love the community leaders of the Diversity and Inclusion Taskforce endorse the adoption Ranked Ballots in the City of Windsor.
There is still no Greyhound bus service to or from the City of Windsor. For your consideration: Forget Greyhound, Canada Needs A Public National Bus Service.
I liked this excerpt of the WECHU September 2, 2020 Public Health Updates Related to Corona Virus that illustrates how the decisions of a couple families led to over 30 infections across a variety of workplaces.
Another week, another opportunity to demand better bike lanes. There are plans for bike lanes in the plans for the upcoming Sandwich Street Reconstruction. Please send your support for bike lanes (and if you want to follow the recommendations of Bike Windsor Essex, ask for “a speed limit reduction within the BIA, doubled bike lane striping, bicycle parking, shade protection and on-road directional paint to provide better clarity of movement for drivers and cyclists at key intersections”) either through official channels or if you think it is absurd for the city to put up a non-fillable PDF form that you are expected to print and mail, you might want to email the Project Administrator, Joseph Dattilo directly via jdattilo@citywindsor.ca.
On Friday, September 4th the agenda for the upcoming September 10th City Council Agenda was published. It is 513 pages long. I skimmed it. Here’s my annotated copy. Topics include: red light cameras and photo radar (which I strongly support), lots of zoning and rezoning amendments, the University Avenue West and Wyandotte Street West Community Improvement Plan – Background Report, potential timelines for Windsor’s Blue Box program to be transferred over to be handled by producers, the future of community gardens on city property since the United Way pulled funding from six such gardens (I hope the city picks this service up), and a report on an isolation and recovery centre for agricultural sector workers and/or vulnerable population groups that the city is involved in.
On that latter issue, I pulled out these paragraphs:
I support the work of Open Media – “a registered non-profit that works to keep the Internet open, affordable, and surveillance-free”. From them I found out that on August 15th, the Liberal federal cabinet “announced that it thinks the CRTC’s lower Internet rates set last year are too low” and suggests that we write to Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains in protest.
The OPP has pressed charges towards an indigenous journalist with no basis at 1492 Land Back Lane. This is a story worth following and when the OPP arrests journalists on the ground, it makes it difficult for the story to be told. This week marks the 25th anniversary of the OPP killing Dudley George at Camp Ipperwash.
