Better Pick Nick!

My Promise to Ward 6

For the first time in 23 years, Windsor’s Ward 6 is going to have a new city councillor. With three other councillors stepping down this year, the new City Council elected on Monday, October 26 will be very different from the one before. With your support, I want to bring a New Perspective to City Council. 

City Hall has tried to keep Windsor affordable for many years, avoiding raises to the property tax by cutting spending and reducing public services. In July, the city clerk said before council that we’ve run out of things to cut. The new council will be left with a tough decision of whether to raise taxes (and by how much), after we’ve already cut back on many of the public services and maintenance that make life easier and our city more liveable. 

But there’s a way that the city can raise more money with what it already owns. Raising taxes is not the only resort left. I am proposing that the city create a Public Wealth Fund. 

The Public Wealth Fund would be a city-owned holding company like Enwin that would manage the city’s commercial and vacant property. Vacant land, parking lots, or property in disrepair that the city owns. The Public Wealth Fund company would be given the mission statement of making money for the city over the long term, with these properties all managed from one place. This can be done by selling, leasing, partnering with developers, or direct management of properties by the Fund when and where it makes the most sense. According to the data available from Windsor’s Geographic Information System, the City of Windsor owns 978 vacant parcels of land. Council is currently in the process of expropriating 45 derelict homes which will become city property. This is property that should be managed from one place and with a clear mission statement. Social property like libraries, community centres, and other public facilities should not be managed under the Fund and should continue to be managed by the city. 

With a tough financial situation ahead, now is the time to talk about how we can do more with what we have.

Now is the time to talk about cleaning up our finances so we don't just shrug off failing grades on financial and administrative transparency for years in a row.

Now is the time to talk about investing in our community and how the city can work with other levels of government. We need a new weather station in Essex so we can better predict and prepare for extreme weather events, but this will need teamwork and investment with the federal government and our friends in the county.

Now is the time to talk about ways to keep our families safe. Safety can take many forms. It can be making sure there's proper after-hour lighting on our streets and in our parks. It can be maintaining our pest control program to prevent the spread of disease and protect our furry friends. It can also mean keeping on top of flood prevention policies and emergency response to extreme weather, and we sure have seen a lot of that this summer! Be it heat, smog, or storm.

Safety is also getting the homeless off the street and properly supported by working with trusted and proven community partners who have tried and true cost efficient methods. Safety can even include earmarking police funding to areas of improvement within the police budget, and continuing to support causes that matter for protecting residents like the new Windsor Police campaign to fight human trafficking.

You can find more details in my platform, which I call the ACE Plan, standing for Affordability, for the Community, and for Engagement with the people - that's you!

I'm asking for your support to bring New Perspective and new energy to City Council, to carry forward a bolder vision for the city and to not get weighed down by "The Way We've Always Done Things."

And so my promise to Ward 6 is to fight for the people of the ward and of the city, to fight for you and for these ideas every day if elected, and to work with the rest of Council in a constructive way to bring these ideas forward. Because it's only working together that we can see the Rose City bloom.

See you out there!

Nick