There’s Always A Dril Tweet: Windsor’s Budget Woes
If you know me, you know that I am an unapologetic booster for Windsor, Ontario, also known as South Detroit, or, pejoratively, many names by many haters who want to compare it to Detroit (more monumentally deteriorated) or perhaps Toronto (a completely different beast altogether). Anyhow, I will defend to my death the notion that Windsor is a great little city with charming residential neighborhoods, less-charming residential neighborhoods, mixed-use neighborhoods, a weird and occasionally kinda funky downtown, and, frankly, some of the best food you can find in a multiple-hundred-kilometer radius. But the Win City is missing out on wins these days, with recent announcements that the city is going to have to raise taxes by a truly obscene percentage to keep up with, uh, what? Inflation? Police overtime?
Or, what has been called out as a complete failure of transparency?
I make this critique as a big fan of Windsor who is woefully unimpressed with Mayor Drew Dilkens– in spite of the fact that I even once wrote him a handwritten note to ask him for a job to facilitate greater cross-border cultural and economic cooperation between our two great cities. (Unsurprisingly, I never heard back!).
There is, of course, always a dril tweet that could explain what might be going on:
I had to bring up the dril tweet to refer specifically to the ridiculous megaproject to build a huge hospital for the city and region— in the middle of nowhere, actually, and, in fact, nowhere near the city itself. Mysteriously, the estimates on costs for that project have ballooned. Is anyone surprised, as we face a historic construction labor shortage and, late in the business cycle, everyone’s trying to squeeze out more profit? Everything is over budget and behind schedule. Oddly, this project is over budget and behind schedule and they’re not even breaking ground for another year and a half.
Of course, money comes from different sources, so it’d be reductive to blame all of this on the mega hospital– but the city of Windsor and Essex County are going to foot the bill for 10% of the $2 billion cost– which is probably going to be more like $3 billion and therefore $300 million by the time all is said and done. I guess we’ll know more– *squinting at notes* a year and a half from now when they break ground.
Realistically, we know that it’s not possible to freeze anything price-wise assuming the economy is growing. Inflation of some amount is virtually inevitable if the economy is growing. Windsor seems to have artificially limited tax increases, perhaps in the pursuit of a solution that was politically expedient if not, well, appropriate. The Howe Institute report specifically cited how the city recently boasted about having a multi-billion dollar surplus, but just kidding.
Better Cities = Better Budgets
During a time when the city of Windsor rejected federal housing funds because the mayor and council refused to allow blanket upzoning (to all of fourplexes by-right, or, as our Canadian neighbours call it, “as of right”), it’s kind of hard to feel sympathy for a government in crisis that coulda, shoulda, but didn’ta. I am just hoping that it is possible to use outcomes like this to perhaps learn why a better urban fabric means more economic efficiencies, whether we’re talking about upzoning to allow greater residential development in great places where people want to live, or building buildings in cities where there is infrastructure rather than dropping $3 billion on development in a dang cornfield.
