The Capital budget is a complicated beast as it has grown from 7 to 8 years this year and will grow to 9 years in 2021. What I have done is highlight a few projects that caught my eye, as well as compared the 2019 budget to the 2020 and see if new money appeared … Continue reading Windsor Budget 2020- Part 3: Capital Budget

All in a proposed 4.2% increase to operation budgets of the Agencies, Boards and Committees equates to approximately $5.1 million. The bulk of the increase, $3.8 million goes to the Windsor Police Services. Some of the agencies aren't asking the City for budgetary increases at all, with the Arts Council, Safety Village, and the Windsor … Continue reading Windsor Budget 2020: Part 2 – Fees and ABCs

This post is my initial review of the 2020 City of Windsor Budget. A subsequent post will review the capital budget and a thirds post will skim the ABCs, User fees and Departments. This review isn't comprehensive rather it just highlight some items that I find interesting. In a few cases I will compare budget … Continue reading Windsor Budget 2020 – Part 1: Operations Recommended and Not…

As 2019 comes to a close we can look ahead to next year, there are a number of issues sitting on the front and back burner that will shape our region. Here are 10 things I am watching for in 2020. City Budget The end of January will see City Council debate their first true … Continue reading Ten Things to Watch in 2020

I have been pondering something for a while. In my watching of City Council and the media reporting, I had a perception this year that the number of items referred to the 2020 budget was greater than in past years. Maybe I haven't been paying as close attention as previous years but I have come … Continue reading Referred to Budget

Tonight (Sept 23rd) at City Council is discussing the addition of numerous additional police/traffic cameras in our community. Mita Williams has a very insightful take that can be found on her blog here. Although an important debate that I am going to watch, the story I am more interested in is this one with Mayor … Continue reading “Ring”ing in Windsor

On July 8th, City Council was presented a report on the state of residential "rural" roads in our City (Council discussion is here starting at 20:54 in the agenda tab) and local improvement initiatives that could bring these roads up to standard. With approximately 77km of roadways that are "sub-standard" and estimate of $400 million … Continue reading Windsor Research Project: Local Improvement

Anyone who says they know what the future holds is trying to tell you a bill of good but one thing that we don't spend a lot of time thinking about where we have come from. Of course plenty of ink has been spilled on the downfall (and revival) of the manufacturing sector the state … Continue reading Windsor Research Project: Economic Transformation

The last week was a pretty good one for me. ProsperUs released it's baseline neighbourhood report, a report that I played a major role in drafting. I got to sit and talk to Paul Schmitz for a couple of hours. He has some great stories about the Obama's that are pretty cool to hear. It … Continue reading A Sidebar: Mental Health

This past week an initial update service delivery plan was published by Transit Windsor along with a really good tool to explore the proposed routes and provide feedback. Despite some strange media coverage that saw push back on social media this is a huge step forward for our community and there are a number items … Continue reading Windsor Research Project – Wheels on the Bus