Gignac knows you can’t please everybody

Jo-Anne Gignac is Windsor’s grittiest, no-guff politician and in an ideal world she would be just over three weeks away from replacing Eddie Francis in the mayor’s chair.

Unfortunately, the election of only Windsor’s second woman mayor was never in the cards because Gignac, who is just as shrewd and observant as she is feisty, knows all too well the thankless slogging the city’s top job entails.

“That’s absolutely not something I wanted to be. I was chair of the (Catholic) school board and being head of something like that, I know what that involves,” said the 11-year Ward 6 representative with a frown.

The consolation prize is that Gignac, who was ready to bolt this fall, was talked into seeking a fourth term by family and friends who recognized her departure would create a gaping hole in the next council and could leave her with profound regrets.

You can understand why she considered leaving. The last year has been hell.

Her younger brother, Ron St. Louis, her best friend and campaign manager, died in late December, age 61, of the H1N1 virus.

Her son, Pat, had his life on the line in Afghanistan where he was one of the last Canadians out when our military mission ended in March.

There were other personal tribulations.

Yet Gignac, direct descendant of one of the Windsor area’s original settler families, rugged, self-reliant folks who came over from France in the early 1700s to carve farms out of the primeval wilderness, soldiered on, grim-faced but never missing a council beat.

Having joined council in 2003 when Francis became mayor, Gignac had long considered it fitting to leave when he did. Go out on a high note. Mission accomplished. But friends and supporters, and especially son Pat and daughter Kate, a teacher in Britain, insisted this was the wrong time to pack it in.

Wrong for her. For Windsor, for the Riverside community where she has lived all her life and which developed, in part, on land plowed by her ancestors.

“YOU CAN’T SPEND MONEY YOU DON’T HAVE.”

JO- ANNE GIGNAC

Gignac sees this as a hugely important election, one that will determine whether Windsor continues on its fiscally responsible path or switches back to the free-spending, tax-happy habits that got this city in so much trouble.

“There’s not a question in my mind that we could go backwards. We all want to be loved. We all have credit cards in our wallets and we know how easy that is,” said Gignac.

She’s running, in no small part, because of fear that the legacy could be undone by those who put making everyone happy (especially the special interests) ahead of balancing the books.

“I’m definitely a fiscal conservative. That’s how I was brought up,” said Gignac. “My grandfather told me, ‘You can’t be charitable if you don’t have change in your pocket.’ You can’t spend money you don’t have.”

She shuddered recalling the mess inherited in 2003.

Soaring debt. Drained reserves. The MFP scandal. The Canderel fiasco. Senior governments trying to ram an at-grade international expressway through the city.

There were trying times, especially the 101-day CUPE strike in 2009 and the painful decision to close city daycares for the pragmatic reason that more children could be accommodated by the private sector.

“Daycare? That was hard. But if you’re not prepared to make hard decisions in terms of how you operate a government, things can get out of control quickly.”

Gignac is now facing campaign allegations that her Riverside ward is being gutted because she failed to get council to rescue the decrepit Riverside high school pool — surely the jurisdiction of trustees and the province — and instead supported a new pool at the WFCU Centre.

“I didn’t see the city taking over a pool built in the 1960s and deemed unsafe by the school board,” said Gignac.

She could have pandered. Played cheap ward politics.

She chose to look at facts and see the bigger picture, that it was beneficial for the entire east side to have a new pool.

She’s also being harassed by what she describes as utterly false claims that the city is trying to force Riverside minor baseball to move.

Gignac is enthusiastically backing Drew Dilkens in his mayoral bid. “I’ve watched how Drew operates and we have very similar voting patterns. He’s solid and if he’s the next mayor, I’m going to be there for him.”

With a minimum of four newbies joining the next council, creating a potential dimwit circus, Gignac’s razor mind and go-for-the-jugular decisiveness would be invaluable.

She could be out kayaking or travelling to remote corners of the world, two of her favourite pursuits.

Instead she’s offering her common sense to Windsor for four more years.

Lucky us.