After hours bars study correction

Just to correct the assertion that the closing of after hours bars was never studied. It was studied in council report 13049 and the DWBIA was denied the ability to put the issues, information and experts forward that would have prevented the current circus we see. As evidence THis letter was sent last year, I guess some councillors didnt' read this letter either.

Good Morning Councillors:
I have reviewed the Council Report 13049 regarding After Hours Clubs. As this is a “Note and File” recommendation, we were informed by the City Clerk’s Office that delegations will not be heard on the issue.

As such, the DWBIA requests that Council direct Administration to work closely with the DWBIA in researching this issue and that the DWBIA be included in the discussion from the beginning through to the end of the study.

As an FYI – the Licensing Commission met on October 9th, 2007. I was informed by a person in the Licensing Department that this meeting was open to the public, however when two of my Board Members tried to enter the meeting, they were told to leave. I was assured by Licensing that we would be involved in this process, yet this Council Report has come forward without consultation with the DWBIA.

Judith C. Veresuk
Executive Director
Downtown Windsor Business Improvement

Bringing Mom and Dad back into the city

For the core of a city to be revitalized, the base assumption is that the residential component must be one of the first aspects of the areas land use that must be strengthened.

This is a great place to start, because without people you have no business nor culture. People are at the centre of everything the notion of "city" stands for. it is the obvious place to begin. However, is the city the place for children?

People move to the suburbs (or so they say) because they feel it is in the best interest of the children. More green space to play ball as opposed to asphalt, hopscotch without worrying about cars, and clean, fresh, country-esque air. Since the rise of Levittown, NY, the first modern "subdivision", this was a major draw for young families. With the ever-increasing flow of families from the core to the suburbs, the school system has reactively moved their operations to reflect this trend.

Schools make 'burbs' place to be
The Ottawa Citizen
Monday, February 04, 2008

Communities need basic amenities to survive. A successful neighbourhood must have such things as grocery stores,churches, restaurants, hardware stores, medical facilities and schools to prosper.

More and more, our downtown neighbourhoods are being hollowed out of the basic necessities. And increasingly to live downtown, one must drive to the suburbs to get a plant, a stick of wood or a bolt. Living downtown is supposed to be a more pedestrian-oriented, environmental way of living. However, core dwellers appearto need cars to survive as vital businesses depart to the suburbs. The necessities of downtown are becoming caffeine and sushi rather than hammers and nails.

So too are demographics changing our urban landscape. The dominant post-war baby-boom generation has had its children so, in older neighbourhoods, schools are emptying. It is beginning at the elementary level now and will follow a relentless path through high school and university.

In fact, suburban schools are weathering the demographic onslaught best. That's because families, looking for inexpensive housing and a bit of green in which children can play, opted for the suburbs. That said, the decision to live in suburbs in not the most environmentally sensitive one. Suburbs create long commutes and promote sprawl -- the ultimate desecration of the land by paving it.

Ottawa's official plan is trying to contain growth within an urban boundary beyond which development cannot pass. The city is actively encouraging intensive development in the core areas to piggyback on existing services inexpensively and to cut environmentally unfriendly long commutes. But for intensification to succeed, to encourage families to live and work in the core, there must be the basic amenities of life -- including schools.

Our school boards are not in the urban-planning business. No, they need to educate young people well and efficiently. There is no money to maintain mostly empty schools downtown. Schools must remain open where they are needed and those institutions appear to be in the suburbs. It would be nice to keep a school or two open downtown for community purposes if that is possible. However, neither school boards nor cities are exactly flush with cash so this might be impossible.

The upside to this is that closing schools and decreasing enrolment is likely to make education less expensive. That will free funds for more pressing requirements in society. All this sad news about downtown schools comes as Statistics Canada released a report showing that car ridership continues to increase in Canada.

So at a time when the city would like people to move downtown, the future of our society, children, are being raised inthe suburbs. And with few schools to attend downtown, they are likely to stay there.

Is it fair to say that we will not be attracting families to our core in the foreseeable future? With childhood obesity rates attributed to a sedentary lifestyle that has been linked to suburban sprawl and over reliance on the automobile, could it not be considered "child abuse" for Windsor to not plan for attracting families to our core.

Just as the community has supported the University in their decision not to build their engineering campus downtown by stating that it is not within the mandate of that institution to revitalize a district, it is also not within the mandate of the other educational institutions either. Yet, with our school boards following the people out to the suburbs they have profoundly affected the health of of our communities as well as their students. While they may not have the responsibility of resurrecting a district, they have a responsibility to their students.

At what point do we determine that the school boards must play a proactive role in determining the physical layout of our community by cooperating in master plans as developed by our planning department? At what point do we transfer more of the control in determining the success of our communities from the school board trustees who merely follow the real estate developers over to our trained professionals who knows how to guide them?