CITY’S BUDGET PROGRESSIVE, INNOVATIVE, INTRIGUING
Covering Windsor’s budget might seem like a yawn. Not this year. From $1 million for Peche Island to $65,000 for needle disposal bins, the city’s $1.5-billion 2018 budget, including a six-year capital budget, packs diverse, progressive and innovative investment.
It’s the first time the city is paying for bins for used needles, strewn in streets and alleys, a symptom of the opioid epidemic. The money will pay to operate 10 bins. The city will buy five and the Downtown Windsor Business Improvement Association, Windsor Essex Community Housing Corp. and Coun. Rino Bortolin, using ward funds, will buy the rest. One bin installed downtown in September has collected 12,500 needles, an average of 1,000 a week.
The city will also pay $67,210 to hire someone to reach out to the growing number of homeless people drifting through the city and county, helping them get housing and whatever else they need. There’s only one government-funded outreach worker for the entire region now.
And the city will contribute $143,100 more to Pathway to Potential, the local network that addresses poverty. The city hasn’t increased funding since 2008. Meanwhile, the median income in Windsor has plunged, and almost 25 per cent of children live in low-income families — the highest rate in Canada.
None of these measures will solve these problems. But there’s a growing recognition that the city must do more.
And the city that didn’t seem to get the importance of little things is starting to understand.
It will spend $1.1 million in 2022 — more than 10 times the usual amount — to pave crumbling, overgrown, garbagestrewn alleys. An additional $250,000 will be spent on other improvements, like lights.
After introducing bulk garbage pick-up last year, the city will lower the price to $10 from $20 to encourage more people not to dump their old couches and mattresses on the street.
People ask Caroline Taylor of Ward 2 why she doesn’t move. She loves her neighbourhood, she told councillors, citing the river, parks and trails along the Herb Gray Parkway.
“But we’re dirty,” she said. “God, we’re dirty. Please, take some measures to clean us up.”
The city was criticized for not helping the Downtown Windsor Farmers’ Market more. Now, it will spend $75,000 on an electrical box on Maiden Lane to chill the meat, fish and other local products sold there. Small investment. Big impact.
Here’s another example: an additional $69,986 to cut grass in vacant lots and ditches and control invasive phragmites, the reed that kills native plants and destroys wildlife habitat. Council also approved $250,000 to buy new equipment to do it.
Finally, the city will spend more to enforce property standards in vacant buildings. It won’t cost anything. It will be paid for with fees from delinquent owners.
More than $400 million — more than half the capital budget — is being spent on roads and sewers. But there are other, very intriguing investments. The most exciting is $1 million to repair the dock, clear the trails, improve the bridges and replace the boardwalk on Peche Island, the 86-acre island in the Detroit River, and buy a boat to ferry people there. It’s making the most of one of the city’s unique assets.
“We’re a city that owns an island,” said Mayor Drew Dilkens, who proposed the idea. “It’s a gem of a place.”
The city will also give the Windsor International Film Festival $250,000. Council, roundly criticized for refusing WIFF’s requests for help in the past, congratulated it for becoming the second largest volunteer film festival in Canada. You could call this about-face politics in an election year. But it’s a sound investment in a defining cultural event that adds to life in Windsor.
In an innovative change proposed by Coun. Fred Francis, councillors can use their ward funds to contribute to neighbourhood projects initiated by community groups. Councillors will receive $100,000 each over the next six years that they can spend in their wards. Sharing the cost of projects with community groups leverages that money. And it encourages partnerships between council and the community. That’s all good.
One of the best things about the budget was the stream of ordinary people from often disenfranchised core neighbourhoods who stated their cases to council. They were knowledgeable, passionate and frank.
They spoke about the potential for alleys to become vibrant thoroughfares and vacant lots to become parks and how the farmers market brings people together, helps them eat nutritious food and boosts nearby businesses. With the university and college expanding downtown and a new high school approved, the city needs to clean up the core, they said. And they need to inspire kids to care about their neighbourhoods.
For the first time in several years, council didn’t consider closing libraries, community centres, arenas or pools. No more jobs were contracted out.
Still, there were a lot of missed opportunities. Many new or improved services were proposed. Many were cut. Some councillors saw them as costs. But as Coun. Bortolin argued, think of them as investments.
One is the library’s tech hub. It’s full of cool stuff like 3-D printers. It’s to encourage people to explore and embrace technology. But it’s open only seven hours a week. The budget included $63,251 to staff the hub. Council cut it. Dilkens says he wants an iconic new library. We just bid for Amazon’s second North American headquarters. We’ve been warned to focus on technology or risk losing much of our auto industry.
We can afford $63,000. Taxes will rise 0.9 per cent under this budget. Inflation is 2.1 per cent. Council approved $356,500 to maintain holiday lights. People are willing to pay for things they believe are worth it.
Here’s the most baffling decision. The city spends half a million dollars a year planting trees. Thirty per cent of them die. That’s $150,000 worth of trees. The proposed budget had included $54,541 to put mulch around them to help save them. Invest $55,000, save $150,000. Council cut the $55,000.