Council to consider new ward boundaries… again
Posted Mar 14, 2016 7:15 am.
Last Updated Mar 14, 2016 7:16 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
After rejecting staff recommendations for new ward boundaries last fall, council will compare them to a different proposal Monday.
The goal is to bring every ward’s population to within 10 to 15 per cent of each other, which is in line with city policy.
The legal requirement is that wards can’t have a population difference of more than 25 per cent in order to give fair representation.
The first scenario, the one rejected in the fall, saw five wards still outside the self-imposed limit. The new one has just one ward that falls outside those parameters.
Councillor Shane Keating tells City News, he doesn’t see the second scenario being any better than the one council rejected.
“We commissioned a task force to come forward and we gave them a set of instructions,” he began. “They followed those instructions, came up with a scenario and then when it came to council, council decided that it should be changed.”
“What we’ve done is we’ve tweaked the ward boundaries and do they have a real change other than the first one? Not really,” said Keating. “I’m not overly happy with the new part but I wasn’t overly crazy about the old one. It’s just the way it is.”
He adds he believes if you ask a task force to look into something, you should follow its recommendations and implement them.
The goal is to have new boundaries in place by the municipal election next year.
