As many of you know, Izzy likes to walk. This means that I spend a fair bit of time just wandering the neighbourhoods of Ward 2.

Walking the neighbourhood you see things change: buildings get built/repaired, road and sewer projects start and eventually end, houses go up for rent or sale, grass grows and gets cut (or not), things get dumped in alleyways, it goes on and on. After getting elected I started making note of specific issues as I walked Izzy and eventually reporting them through the 311 app. Now this doesn’t mean the first time I saw something I reported it to the 311, in fact I would often walk by several times over the the course of a couple of weeks before reporting it. Since last November when I was sworn in to June 1 of this year, when I stopped tracking for purposes of this exercise, on walks with Izzy I have reported over 80 issues via the 311 app. They are mapped below.

A few caveats on the map:

• There is obviously an overrepresentation of issues in the part of West Windsor that is closest to my house. This doesn’t mean it is worse than other part of the ward, it just means I walk down those streets and alleyways with Izzy a lot more often. To get to Rankin or some other area, I have to walk up Felix or Lena every day.
• The dots are not on specific houses but are rather mapped to the general proximity of an issues. For example park issues are located to various street addresses in proximity to the park they aren’t actually where a garbage can was overflowing or a tree was down.
• The maps doesn’t show if a house had multiple instances of by-law complaints against it or if I reported multiple items. Many did have multiple incidence reported.
• This map does not include issues that I directly dealt with residents on after getting a call or email. Over 100+ direct issues outreached to me.

If I am seeing 80+ issue, walking my dog, what are neighbours, putting up with? There is a couple of problematic houses on my street, they are all over the ward and the City. The fundamental challenge is that the City can’t be everywhere all at once. From my understanding there are thousands of calls worth of backlogs in the system as peak season is July-October for call as alleyways and lawns get overgrown, then in many cases keep growing. What is clear is that additional enforcement is needed and it needs to be proactive.

From the City’s own data, during a pilot “walks of neighbourhoods” by-law officers found only 10-20% of visible property, by-law and other issues are reported to 311. What they also found, was in about 70% of cases, sharing a basic information with the tenant or property owner resulted in the problem being fixed with 48-72 hours. Just because you own a property doesn’t mean you aren’t responsible for it’s maintenance or the general per

Building Stable Neighbourhoods in West Windsor

This is a start of a conversations and in my updated by-election you can see some hints of what I am thinking and how processes may work moving forward. The following based on my conversations at the door today are front of mind:

1. Further Proactive Enforcement for Building, By-law and other issues for education and mitigation and if necessary, enforcement. Proactive enforcement in the downtown core has been proven successful, it is time to scale it to other high issue areas.
2. Update our by-laws to speed up compliance times.
3. Neighbourhood Level Rodent Abatement Program pilot project. The current abatement program only baits the callers property, but rodents move between properties. There is a need to get to scale around rodent abatement by having a process where a block of houses get baited, will likely have more impact.
4. Additional proactive tree trimming and if necessary, removal while continuing to plant trees in our parks and right of ways. Continue free tree giveway programs for residents.
5. Additional traffic calming; piloting road diets, traffic tables, crosswalks and other methods to slow County commuters speeding through our neighbourhoods and make our streets safer. Reduce speeds to 40km/h on all residential streets.
6. Re-establish Neighbourhood Watch in neighbourhoods across Ward 2 to deter crime, creates bases of evidence to support police and bring a sense of community to neighbourhoods through collaboration and gathering.

Investing in these issues will not only improve quality of life in neighbourhoods, but help shift perception. Just like the removal of boarded up homes has transformed the look of College and Felix or on Edison, these small changes added up create big impacts.

I would love your thoughts and feedback on the ideas above, I plan on releasing a full platform prior to advance polls in early October. When I knock at the door if you have a concern please share it!

Let’s keep the momentum going!