Mayor says COVID brings out best in city
Dilkens reflects on a difficult year, anticipates growth times ahead
These have been the most trying of times.
But in the midst of the sickness, deaths, widespread fear and drastic measures taken to slow the transmission of COVID-19 by closing the border, businesses, schools and indoor activities, Mayor Drew Dilkens says he has seen Windsor at its best.
The past year will go down in the record books as troubling and tragic. “But these have also been uplifting, spirit-raising times,” Dilkens said during an end-of-year interview in which he reflected on 10 months of waking each morning to new challenges requiring crucial responses and decisions.
What so impressed him, he said, were the community reactions, such as when he made the criticized decision to shut down Transit Windsor for the first month after the pandemic's arrival, and 1,500 people signed up on a Facebook page to offer rides to stranded bus riders. Then there was the massive June 27 Miracle food drive in which two million pounds of food were donated in a single day for area food banks, enough to feed 30,000 families for a year.
These are just a small subset of the outpouring of help from people, he said, many of them anonymously offering money and other resources with no desire for recognition. He'd call to ask for help and they would offer it before he finished his first sentence.
Every mayor says they love their city, Dilkens said.
“Of course I do, I've lived here my whole life. But this last year has certainly reaffirmed it, underscored it in bold, punctuated, highlighted — all those words to underscore the appreciation and respect I have for the people here.”
When he decided in 2018 to run for re-election, he could never have imagined the calamities that he would deal with in 2020, said Dilkens, who has been front-andcentre in the community response.
Not only was he ordering the shutdown of city facilities, toughening closure rules for businesses, advocating for the city at the federal and provincial level, distributing free hand sanitizer to businesses and individuals, and promoting city initiatives like waiving fees and loosening regulations for outdoor patios for struggling restaurants. He also waded into the outbreaks among migrant workers at greenhouse operations in Leamington and Kingsville, pushing the government for solutions that would permit the entire region to graduate into less-restrictive rules that allowed many suffering businesses to reopen.
“It has been my absolute pleasure — I know this sounds ridiculous but I mean it — to be here at this time,” Dilkens said.
The year started out normally, with council passing a “prudent” budget with a 2.1 per cent tax increase and the mayor leaving with his family for a vacation in Jordan just as the pandemic descended. He barely managed to get everyone home before the air space closed up, then led the city from home during a 14-day self-isolation.
During his first term as mayor, 2014 to 2018, Dilkens helped deal with a tornado and the worst flood in the city's history. This term, it was a global pandemic, which affected everybody.
“We went from, how do you build the city, to how do you save lives and reduce the rate of transmission?” he said. “We're smarter today with the answer to that question than perhaps we were at the beginning, but we were working at it from a good place, trying to provide what we thought was the right response at the right time.”
The biggest example of that was the one-month transit shutdown, something no other city in the province did. Dilkens was criticized that the closure was hurting the most vulnerable and stranding the low-income earners who were risking their lives working in essential places like grocery stores.
“The response was not a popularity contest of trying to get votes. I knew the decision would be contentious,” Dilkens said. If presented with the same set of facts he had last March, the mayor said he would have made the same decision to shut transit down.
“Today, now I have more knowledge, I probably wouldn't,” he said.
Transit Windsor has since come back on a reduced service with stringent social distancing and mask-wearing rules.
While the region has been walloped by the pandemic, dozens of development projects went through the approval process at city hall in 2020.
“We're really in a fantastic trajectory for new growth, despite the pandemic, it's been incredible,” the mayor said, pointing to a record dollar value this year for residential construction of $234 million as of the end of November, up almost $30 million from the previous record for the same timer period set in 2019.
According to construction activity reports, the city issued building permits for 752 housing units between January and the end of November this year, easily beating the 681 issued for the same period in 2019 and eclipsing the 349 units approved in 2018 and the 364 in 2017.
Much of the demand, as well as rising real estate prices, can be attributed to population growth of 2.1 per cent in one year. Windsor's population has increased to 234,048, according to the most recent figures available.
Big projects under construction include the three 60-unit towers on Banwell Road and the city's own
145-unit Meadowbrook affordable housing tower in Forest Glade. But these could pale in comparison to some projects coming on stream, such as Fairmount Properties' 400- to 500-unit “mixed-use international village” planned for the former Grace hospital property just west of downtown.
The city spurred that forward with a request-for-proposals for the site, and selected Fairmount in July. Now, the city is mulling the proposals submitted to an RFP issued this year seeking developers who would build a new central library branch as part of a larger development — likely with hundreds of residential units — downtown.
“I'm excited at some of the things I know have come in and I think it's going to make for a great conversation around the council table,” Dilkens said of the library RFP. “It certainly speaks to the interest that is out there. It's amazing.”
Looking at all the projects coming forward — including completion of the Gordie Howe International Bridge in 2024-25 and hopes that the Doug Ford government will green light the new acute-care hospital project moving to the next stage of planning — the mayor says: “This is lining up to be one of the best decades in the history of the city of Windsor.”
“Overall, I'm really, really excited about what I see happening here, all of the pieces that are coming together,” he said. “All of the activity in the middle of a pandemic are very, very positive signs that there is not a reluctance to stop by those who have the money to make the investments.”
But he said the city has to keep fighting on important issues, like Nav Canada's recently announced intention to study whether air-traffic control should be removed from Windsor International Airport, hobbling plans to create a multimodal freight transportation system locally and threatening safety. The city must also continue on with its many projects, such as the $5-billion Sewer Master Plan that will be enacted over decades to combat the flood threats caused by global warming.
Other projects underway include the widening and improvement of Cabana Road, improving the Provincial/division roads corridor, sewer upgrades and eventual reconstruction of Sandwich Street, and reconstruction of Banwell Road. The city is also moving forward on its $7-million Celestial Beacon on the waterfront to house the restored 1918 trolley as well as work to protect the shoreline on Peche Island.
Windsor recently received news it was approved for $19 million in Safe Restart funding to help offset the financial damage done by the pandemic.
Dilkens said for the 2021 budget, he remains committed to his election promise of keeping tax increases at or below the rate of inflation (usually around two per cent).
“This will not be a lavish budget year,” he said, pointing to “financial headwinds” that still threaten the city. There are still hundreds of residents — such as employees at Caesars Windsor and Chrysler workers from the eliminated third shift at Windsor Assembly Plant — who are struggling financially, he said.
“I think we can bring it in at a very low rate for the benefit of the taxpayers in Windsor, but it will require the discipline of not being everything to everyone because you won't have the money to do it.”
The response was not a popularity contest of trying to get votes. I knew the decision would be contentious.
A new name, menu and owners are on tap for the former Lilly Kazilly's restaurant on Riverside Drive East. Co-owners, Kash Hasan, left, Patrick Kim, Kyle Renaud and Dan Janik prepare the new Harbour House sign on the building. The family style restaurant will feature about 30 per cent seafood dishes.