Look Maw...No Chain Saw

Tree Removal Monmouth Road Style

Why destroy a perfectly good tree when you can simply give it a new home. Monmouth Road residents did their due diligence for Earth Day 2009. First they contacted the local utilities for service locates, then they contacted Tecumseh Tree Removal and a perfectly good tree was saved.

Monmouth Road front yards are compact. From time to time overzealous gardeners will plant a tree on their lawn only to realize a few short years later that it gets blended into street trees turning their once lush lawn into bare mud. Usually the tree suffers the correction at the business end of a chain saw. Not this time. This eight inch caliber, 25 foot ornamental was skillfully removed, roots in tact, and taken to a new home. Well done.

Spade is skillfully positioned around the tree base.

Spade is lowered into the earth cradling the root mass.

Tree is lifted from the lawn

Tree is removed and an equally sized earth plug replaces the earth taken with the tree.

Windsor Ward Structure Proposal

If it aint broke tune it up

There are many benefits to having a Ward System. Especially in a socially homogeneous town like Windsor. First of all we want to have an electoral system which is fairly representative of the entire city. The system has to allow for a diversity of opinion right down to each citizen. Those opinions, in turn, should be brought forward by elected Ward Councillors. When there is trouble or problems in our Wards, those same Councillors must be available to help resolve the issues. Wards have to be as equal as possible in terms of voting population and contiguous in their size and scope. This helps guarantee that no single Ward has more or less sway than any other. When we elect our Councillors we are in effect challenging them to become fully knowlegable of their respective turf. As local democracy goes, they have to prove their worth to eligible electors every four years. Windsor's report card is due in 2010.

Best practice is to look at our Ward structure every four years, right before election time, so that changing populations can be taken into account. The Ward map may or may not be altered depending on shifts in electoral populations. From there the political character of each area can take form for the ensuing municipal elections.

Windsor's Ward System Works

Windsor has five Wards with ten elected Councillors. The system works pretty much as it is supposed to with the current exception being that wards 1 and 5 have grown disproportionately compared to the others (by approximately two to one). In 2006 the figures looked as follows:

Ward 1: 42,225 eligible voters and a total population of 55,171

Ward 2: 22,837 eligible voters and a total population of 32,984

Ward 3: 25,875 elibible voters and a total population of 35,850

Ward 4: 26,695 eligible voters and a total population of 34,608

Ward 5: 35,136 eligible voters and a total population of 46,730

What might have changed since 2006? Lots. Housing developement, population exodus to other cities or other urban areas to name a couple. Most noticeable from this data is the electorate imbalance in wards 1 and 5. This alone indicates that the map should change.

In 2008, the City administration hired a consultant to review and make suggestions to update our current ward structure. His name is Dr. Robert Williams and here are the options which he is putting forward:

- change the boundaries of the five wards to create equal electorate numbers;
- cut back to four wards with two councillors each;
- create 10 wards with one councillor each;
- create eight wards with one councillor each.

See this Windsor star article:
http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Ward+review+urges+change/1486850/story.html

Since our current ward arrangement seems to be adequate in most regards and since the ward map offers room for easy tweaks, the first option is the most logical. All of the others will end up costing a lot of time, money and effort to implement. They will also bring redundancy and extra cost to the election process.

Another Option

Another idea would be to keep the five wards which we currently have and reduce the number of councillors to one per ward. This will keep opinions and ideas from cancelling each other out and it will add a little more creative spark to governance. In place of a second councillor we could add a "full time" Ward Administrator who works in conjunction with the Councillor to see to it that all issues get handled in an appropriate, timely and fair manner. Accessible all day, every day. Together they would operate as a sort of "ward team". This position would be a term position and applicants would be selected by each Councillor. Remuneration for such a position would be the same as that of the Councillor.

A Suggestion for the Ward Map

Here are two City of Windsor Ward Maps. One is the current, official map and the other is a proposal to help balance the current ward discrepancies:

Current Ward Map

Ward map Proposal. Areas of change circled in Red. An approach to better Balance

Have Your Say

Take your shot at this thing. There will be two meetings for public input today as follows:

Between 4 and 6 p.m. at Windsor Water World, 400 Wyandotte St. E.

and

From 7 to 9 p.m. at South Windsor Arena, 2555 Pulford Ave.

Monmouth Road Can Drive Over the Top

Monmouth Road residents are just too cool. In just two nights residents of Monmouth Road managed to come up with three cubed skids of food and clothing for the Old Walkerville BIA can drive. Everyone was just too helpful. Donations were over the top of all expectations.

It was amazing. People contributed full boxes and bags of food, clothing and small housewares. If they weren't home they left their parcels on the front stoop. Several folks who work out of town left packages with their neighbours for the cause. You gotta love this place.

Thanks everyone!

You are all way too cool.