Just another week…..

• I am really not going to talk about US politics because IMO nothing has changed. I will agree the tone of everything has shifted, but it has been less than a week. Executive Orders can all be reversed by President Ivanka or Cruz or Hawley in 1,456 days (inauguration day 2025). The wheel turns.
• On Thursday, an announcement was made of a partnership between Ford and the City of Windsor to much fanfare.
  • Although media reports stated that “… there are tens of thousands of Ford products on Windsor roads from which the data will be collected. All personal data will be stripped out, he added, and only transportation-related data will be inputted”.
    • If the transportation data includes – start and end point of trips for individual travelers, you can certainly find out where people live. I am curious how this is handled by Ford Mobility as to determine traffic flows knowing where people are going at certain time (shift change at Ford Engine plant for example) to notice chokepoints for modelling and analytics would be important.
    • Given that the platform is really just an online dashboard it certainly seems like the WEEDC is paying a lot for insights that they could be or already are being generated. I am curious how many man hours will be saved by this investment of $30,000 for 1 year.
      • In 2018 the City released a report on the most accident prone intersections. This 2020 report on potential red light camera locations at the most dangerous intersections in the City.
      • The City of Windsor already has traffic timing plans. I am sure they can be improved but will anyone really notice?
  • Although they stated that there is a significant sample of connected Fords in the community, due to Chrysler being a much larger employer, and the incentives that come with that employment could this Ford data be skewed in some way? Odds are fewer Fords are driving to the FCA plant, as an example, so I am curious how that element of the modelling will be handled. If the Ford vehicles end up at the Ford Engine plant each day, we will have a great idea of what is going on there but gaps in the rest of the City.
  • Finally, given over 30,000 commute into the City of Windsor (need to search for Windsor) each day to work from the rest of the region and beyond, is that data being captured or is it only when they enter the municipal boundaries that it is being tagged?
• Looking at the 2020 Approved Municipal Budget the Infrastructure and Geomatics team in the Engineering department at the City did shrink in the 2020 from 29 FTE to 26 FTE while the Public Works Traffic Operations team grew marginally from 35.17 FTE to 35.37 FTE . It will be interesting (and I will be looking) at the 2021 City Budget to see if the staffing levels of the Traffic Engineering/Public Works team have changed or if long term funding is being allocated to this partnership.
  • It could be argued that WEEDC through this partnership is actually reducing jobs in Windsor and creating them in Dearborn where Ford Mobility is HQed by outsourcing municipal capacity and services to a US based private sector firm.
  • To be fair, it could also improve the City’s capacity assuming staff can be re-deployed to other areas or create other efficiencies. Whether a viable economic development strategy remains to be seen, simply being the first isn’t necessarily the best (see Child Poverty in 2016 Census).

• I find this chart incredibly interesting and what can be inferred is really important, note the above does not include temporary migrants (students, foreign workers etc.) but it will shape our country, province and community.
  • This data paired with some interesting housing research on preference of newcomers for housing types is also something to think about. This from Stat. Can as well.
• Ice coverage on the Great Lakes is at record lows. This could mean more erosion and shoreline flooding this winter as Ice won’t blunt wave action.
• News from Mongolia! Not a phrase I thought I would use this year, where the Prime Minister has resigned due to bathrobe protests. The protests were triggered against COVID restrictions after a new mother was discharged from a hospital after testing positive for COVID in a bathrobe in -40C temperatures.
• Major anti-Putin protests occurred in Russia in support of the jailed opposition leader(s). This tweet is something, man offers to be arrested instead of a women, so the officer can meet his “quota”. Meanwhile Putin has built a “Bond villan Layer”
  • It is interesting to contrast this with what has happened in US although they certainly are not apples to apples comparisons.
• Anne Jarvis’s call to action on the social challenges in our community is interesting in timing and substance. I completely agree our community has the capacity to do amazing things, the challenge is leadership (as I wrote last week) owning an issue and action it. It was followed by an interesting thread by Councillor Bortolin.
  • This week we celebrated a massive investment in social housing, which won’t actually build any new units, just repair and rehab. I recognize this will create some additional unit capacity as there are units currently not usable and will become more accessible or usable to a wider at-risk population thus reducing waitlist. This was only needed because the City of Windsor starved the housing corporation for funds for decades.
  • Sunday is International Day of Education. The City of Windsor Early Developmental Index Scores (a measure of Kindergarten readiness of young children) given that more than a quarter of kids locally are not meeting standard in 1 domain, we can certainly do better.
• A state wide bill that would make it really easy to convert commercial zoning into residential in California as a potential fast track to building affordable housing is interesting.

• There is certainly a downward trend in cases which is good! If a recall though 100+ cases per day in the 7 day average was still enough to ensure a Grey rating. We will see where things go and what happens after restrictions start to lift.
  • The pending arrival of 600 migrant workers could obviously trigger statistical spikes even if concentrated in sequestered populations
• Region of Peel is doing a mass hiring to support vaccine role out to the broader public. I haven’t seen anything similar locally.