WARD BOUNDARY REVIEW UNDERWAY: GOVERNING OSHAWA

NRU
Jan. 11, 2017
Leah Wong

A 2014 Oshawa referendum and 2016 review Durham Region council has Oshawa rethinking the size and structure of its council in time for the 2018 municipal elections.

Oshawa council members— mayor, seven regional councillors and three city councillors—are currently all elected at-large. This will change in the next election as Oshawa residents voted to revert back to a ward boundary system, last used in the 2006 election.

The size of Oshawa council also has to be reassess since Durham council voted to reduce Oshawa’s regional representation from eight to six members (the mayor and five regional councillors).

Oshawa retained consulting team Watson & Associates Economists and Dr. Robert J. Williams to make recommendations about the alignment of new ward boundaries and the size of council.

“Part of our public consultation will be to get some response from the community about how many city councillors are appropriate,” Williams told NRU.

The consultants will present an interim report to council next month. At that time, Williams says, they are going to ask council to determine the number of local councillors, so the consultants can move onto the alignment of ward boundaries.

“[Solving] how many people will be on the next [council]... will certainly help the process of designing electoral boundaries,” said Williams. “We are going to be aiming for five regional wards, which could be used for [choosing local councillors].”

Municipal councils have until December 31 to finalize changes to their ward boundaries and council compositions. Williams expects that council will vote on the ward boundaries in the spring, leaving time for a potential Ontario Municipal Board appeal to be resolved before the deadline.

Given this tight timeframe, Oshawa mayor John Henry told NRU that it’s important that Oshawa council not voice an opinion on the boundaries until it’s time for a final decision.

“Politicians need to stay out of this, so the final decision is the final decision,” Henry told NRU. “[It needs to be] based on fact and not based on opinion.”

Though Oshawa’s regional representation is decreasing, the region has committed to reviewing its council composition following every third election.

“Under the Places to Grow Act, Pickering and Oshawa are designated as urban growth centres. I think you’ll see that with the construction of Seaton [in Pickering] ... and with the development of the north part of [Oshawa]... that both of our communities are going to increase in size,” said Henry. “It’s good the region included a [requirement] to [regularly] review the size of council... It’s my hopes that as Oshawa grows we may get one or two [regional council seats] back. But that’s a decision for someone 12 years from now.”

The consultants are about to wrap up their first round of consultation on the boundaries, with the final open house on Friday. They are presently seeking public feedback on the number of local councillors and the principles for assessing a ward system, such as representation by population, communities of interest and future population.

“We’re asking the community to tell us which of those principles should be the most important,” said Williams. “Sometimes you have to do a bit of a trade-off. For example to achieve a specific population target you might have to cut through certain communities of interest.”

Due to significant population changes Williams said it is not feasible to use the boundaries from the 2006 election. Over the last decade the city’s population has shifted north, whereas in the past the population had been more concentrated in the south.

“There [are] some challenges with the simple layout of the city,” said Williams. “It’s been so heavily focused towards the southern part, and that is changing overtime. That means we have to encourage people to step back and look at the city of the new way.”