Georgina ward boundary review: short-term solution

NRU
Sept. 6, 2017
Sarah Neidoba

Today, Georgina council will consider a staff proposal to reconfigure its ward boundaries to create a balanced population distribution across its five wards, while maintaining a mix of shoreline, rural and urban areas in each ward. However, experts say the new boundaries will not address long-term population growth.

Consultants Watsons & Associates and Dr. Robert Williams had presented council with two options earlier this year, but council rejected both and directed staff to create a third option. [See February 22 NRU GTHA edition.] The staff proposal slightly alters the boundaries of Wards 1, 2 and 3 and leaves Wards 4 and 5 unchanged to achieve a more equitable balance of residents in each ward. For example, Ward 1, the largest ward, is proposed to be reduced from 15,950 to 11,166 residents.

However, Williams says that the changes do not address the ward’s projected long-term growth. Current forecasts indicate that 54 per cent of Georgina’s population will reside in Ward 1 by 2022.

“What we tried to give them in February was something that would last them for two more election cycles, and maybe a bit beyond that,” Williams told NRU. “What they’ve selected seems to be a minimal change to deal with what is going to be massive growth.”

The consultants’ options didn’t include a portion of the shoreline in each ward, leaving Ward 2 councillor Dan Fellini to reject them. He says the staff proposal maintains a distribution of shoreline, urban and rural areas that his constituents prefer.

“I feel that what staff has produced is more fulsome,” Fellini told NRU. “I like the idea that each councillor has a piece of the lake, the developed area and the rural area, and this option maintains that.” However, Williams says that by prioritizing the traditional ward composition—shoreline, rural and urban areas—council is limiting its ability to balance its population across all five wards.

“There’s not really a shoreline community as such in the town—it’s a very small percentage of the population,” he says. “To say that every ward has to include shoreline—to me it doesn’t serve the rural interests as well as it could. To put all three types of area together in every ward becomes problematic in a town where the urban population is getting so large.”

While he acknowledges that ward boundaries will likely have to be adjusted again in the near future, Fellini says the proposal is a good solution for the present.

“At some point Ward 1 is still going to be the biggest ward, but we’ll deal with that in 2022,” he says. “I think for the short-term, at least, this proposal creates the right balance for our community.”

Georgina CAO John Espinosa agrees.

“The proposed current option anticipates that there will be continued growth in Wards 1 and 3. This [option] is expected to provide some balance to the proposed Ward 2 population,” Espinosa wrote in an email to NRU. “The current proposal addresses the current population and any further growth will have to be addressed at another time.”