Gobble, Gobble!

• I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!
• Some thoughts on the Ward 7 By-Election.
  • Congratulations to (now) Councillor Jeewen Gill on his victory and being sworn in as Ward 7 Councilor.
    • An additional congratulations to all candidates who put their names forward, I am sure we will see some of them run again!
  • I think one of the most interesting event of the campaign were these photos. The fact that the Mayor, his chief of staff and MARCOM team allowed those photos to be taken and posted was at least a tacit endorsement. To be fair the tweets didn’t receive much traction, and whether other candidates didn’t ask or receive similar support is unknown.
  • Unfortunately for Councillor Gill’s as he is the only new Councilor elected, there is a bit of time to examine his priorities for the Ward. I didn’t do this during the campaign as there were too many candidates but I compared his literature (see below) with the Approved 2020 Capital budget. You can download my findings and look up specific items in the budget from this spreadsheet.

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• Councillor Gill is well positioned to achieve many of his and Ward 7’s priorities as they are already in process. He may wish to bump a few items up in priority or flag some specific action out of City wide initiatives but a number of major items will be completed before the election in 2022.
  • The biggest challenge may be the new park that he championed in East Riverside as there are no plans on the books and the only area of the City that looks to be getting a new (from scratch park) in the existing capital budget is Sandwich South post 2026.

I've spoken to around 1,000 companies over the last 6 months about their plans for remote work going forward

Here are a few things I've learned

[ a thread ] 💻🏠🌍

— Chris Herd (@chris_herd) October 5, 2020

• The above thread is super interesting…. 20-30% of all companies going remote post-pandemic. 40-60% of companies looking to get out of commercial office space.
  • Think about what this might mean for Rhodes drive or efforts to move office spaces downtown.
  • Some bright spots is that co-working spaces seem to be growing in demand.
• Meanwhile in London – 12 Days of hearings on the City of London official plan are underway at the LPAT. The appeal pits developers vs the City of London
  • For those wishing to curb sprawl in Windsor should take note of this cases and it’s outcomes.
  • This plan has been under appeal since 2016.
• If you haven’t had a chance, you should listen to the Mean, Median and Moose Podcast that airs each month.

• Friday spike in COVID cases were driven by a single farm but is clear outlier on the trendline.
  • An important point to think about. It was January 23rd when the first case of COVID emerged in Ontario. It was about a month after that when community spread started in a significant way and it was March 20th when Windsor had it’s first case.
  • Despite the GTA and Ottawa going back into “Stage 2 lite”, it takes time for waves to ripple out. Although there are cases in our community, to get a true flare up there needs to be some undetected spread which will likely be driven by importing cases.
• Izzy caught a rat today, I didn’t realize that rats scream when caught by a predator.
• A photo of a pup exuding pure spite for being awoken.