Building Complete Streets in St. Catharines – the wrong way

My response to Councillor Mark Elliott’s poorly conceived and poorly presented argument that we need to institute ‘road diets’ to build more cycling lanes and reduce the ability of car and truck traffic to navigate the city (the letter appears in today’s St. Catharines Standard):

Re:Complete streets(July 10). Coun. Mark Elliott’s apparently combative attitude towards cars and drivers is not needed, and unhelpful in the debate on shared road use by cars and cyclists.

As we’ve seen in Toronto, polarizing the debate as a battle between drivers and cyclists leads nowhere positive. If city council wants to improve the situation for cyclists and public transit users, it could start by ensuring that enforcement of the road rules was actually taking place, since some road users seem to be unsure of how to operate around one another, and fund Sunday transit adequately, as it has declined to do in the past.

Despite social engineering attempts, the car wins out more often than not. We have gas taxes, taxes on gas taxes, licensing fees, repair bills — and the list goes on. It is unfair to add more burden to the users of the road by wasting their time. In a cold weather country where bikes are not feasible for a large part of the year, a car driver’s needs have to be taken into account first and foremost.

A city has to be built in such a way that the most citizens are accommodated by city policy. Our road policy needs to reflect reality; increased use of “road diets” does not do that.

Mathew Siscoe St. Catharines

Mathew Siscoe is a candidate for St. Patrick’s Ward in the fall’s municipal election

source: http://stcatharinesstandard.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2674906

New development for the Old General Site

The city council meeting last night was interesting for a couple of reasons, not the least of which was the vigorous debate about the possibility of ‘pre-zoning’ the old General Hospital site on Queenston so that guidelines exist before a developer buys the property from NHS.  While I agree with the decision and hope beyond hope that this will do something to reinvigorate an area that desperately needs it, I have to wonder about the consultation process that was done with local residents.

The advisory committee definitely involved members of the community – Robbie Craine and Bernie Slepkov both spoke last night, and did a good job of explaining how they helped to create the site plan mockups and come to a decision on the road forward.  A number of other residents were also in attendance, however, and their speeches were marked by a distinct lack of understanding of exactly what the whole process would mean to them and their properties.

People who show up at city council meetings to speak are not the uninterested sort – if they were, they wouldn’t be there in the first place.  They’re local citizens who care about their community, but aren’t sure how to get involved, or even aware that they can get involved, because the city does such a poor job of letting them know. 

People work during the day, have families to take care of at night, and while lots of people might be willing to get involved, they don’t have the time to become familiar with the inner working of local government so that they can figure out what their next step is to become part of the conversation about the direction of their community.  The city eliminated the Standard City page a few months back – that was the wrong move for a City Council that should be trying to enhance visibility and transparency rather than undermine it. 

Last night was a perfect example of the city doing a poor job of informing local residents about changes that are coming to their community.  St. Catharines NEEDS to do better in the future.

Jobs coming back to St. Catharines; let’s help more follow

This is fantastic news for the whole city:

General Motors Canada has made it official.

It is building a new line of fuel-efficient transmissions at the Glendale GM plant in St. Catharines.

The $245 million investment secures up to 400 jobs at the St. Catharines plant, with the six speed transmissions to be produced by early 2012.

I have said repeatedly that we can’t rely on manufacturing to be the whole economic package, but that doesn’t change the fact that we have a manufacturing base we can build off of.  This is great news from a company – brought back from the brink – that is now repaying the employees who made that rebirth possible.

The key for the next city council is to take that job growth and use it to trumpet the fact that St. Catharines is open for business, and look to expand our job market by diversifying the economy.

Great day for a Run!

I had the distinct pleasure of enjoying the warm weather this morning while out at the annual Rankin Cancer Run here in St. Catharines.  It was an absolutely spectacular day for a run along the Welland Canal in northeast St. Catharines, and the crowd definitely proved it:

A crowd shot before the run

Thousands of people out for the 1/5k walk/run.  Me being me, I had to run it and run it as hard as possible, which may have been a mistake given the distinct lack of run training I’ve been doing recently.  I still managed to clock a 27:07 for the 5k though, which wasn’t half bad.  I look a lot better in this picture than I actually felt at the end:

In between gasps

It was nice for me to finally be able to run this one – in past years I’ve either been in Ottawa for the ING Half-marathon, or I’ve been in Africa meeting my son.  The ability to raise money for an excellent cause is definitely a benefit to running it as well.

As a side-note, Xavier is totally getting into that kids race next year – I have no doubt he could compete!

Another beautiful day in Niagara – off to the Farmer’s Market downtown when X wakes up to get our veggies, and then maybe the beach for the rest of the day.

City Council almost drops the ball on artificial turf field

Over an hour debating the tender for the new artificial turf field to be built behind the 4-pad arena.  Numerous councillors with serious issues about the project, related to budget miscalculations and site selection.  Continuous questions to various city bureaucrats about decisions that have been made.  $500,000 in needed repairs to Victoria Lawn Cemetery put off for a year so that the money can be ‘found’ in the 2010 budget.

Result – a unanimous decision to award the tender.  Oh well – I suppose the drainage issues at the cemetery can wait for another year.  A quick back of the envelope calculation by several of us at the meeting on how much work has been deferred until next year – somewhere in the neighbourhood of $1,100,000.

But if you ask, city council will CROW about what a low tax increase they brought in this year!