# Bear Spraying Penguin With Water

An episode of [Rose City Politics](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1247337855), 18 Jun 2024, 43 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/60429948/bear_spraying_penguin_with_water.mp3

Jon, Frazier, Kristen, and Doug talk about spending cuts at the University of Windsor and the decline of Windsor water fountains. Rose City Politics is brought to you with the kind support of LiUNA Local 625: Building Better Communities. Support the show at patreon.com/RoseCityPolitics. Read our stuff in Biz X Magazine or online at BizXMagazine.com and RoseCityPolitics.ca.

## Transcript

[0:25] Hello, everyone, Welcome to Rose City Politics. It is June the eighteenth.
[0:31] Regular panel includes Doug Sartry, Fraser Fathers, Kristen Ciappis myself, John
[0:37] Lydkey, Don Meryfield Junior might show up. He's trapped in the void right
[0:42] now. We are doing it via zoom. I'm triggered back to the COVID
[0:46] days. Don't like seeing you all in the little tiny boxes. But here
[0:51] we are. Head to patreon dot com slash you know what, We're gonna
[0:56] kick an old school head to patreon dot com. I can't screw up by
[1:00] saying backslash because then that just won't work as an actual link through. Is
[1:04] what you want to say is yes, that's horrible. John, how dare
[1:07] you? Yeah? Well, I wanted to, you know, go a
[1:10] little bit patroon dot com slash Rose City Politics. We would support it.
[1:14] We are in print magazine online to be sure to like, share and subscribe,
[1:19] and Rose City Politics able to broadcast live on tape thanks to the kind
[1:23] support of LEUNI six two five building Better Communities. Well, it's good to
[1:29] be here with all of you, if not only because we are in a
[1:33] zoom and kicking at old school, but not the best of days. I
[1:38] think we'll start things off with the most breaking of the topics. I've already
[1:44] spoken with our panalyst and co host and friend and colleague, and just generally,
[1:51] I'm going to say emotive person Kristen c appis right now, only because
[1:57] I'm very curious to hear a Rose City politics conversation rather than just one that
[2:02] was on AM eight hundred CKLW. We have found out that the University Players
[2:09] is ceasing operations. There has been a budget realignment. Sixty plus years,
[2:16] sixty plus productions, internationally renowned, lots and lots of people have gone through
[2:23] University Players and have left an indelible mark, and really, really unceremoniously.
[2:30] Today they've found out in the middle of having two months into having productions set
[2:37] up, having people get prepared for them, mounting them, everything has had
[2:42] the rug pulled out from underneath. Kristen. I'm going to just hand it
[2:46] over to you without any questions or anything. Oh my gosh, well there's
[2:51] a lot of cover here. I'm going to say. I am really coming
[2:54] from a very understanding place when it comes to the budgetary constraints that the university
[2:59] is facing. I think that this topic is going to be one that comes
[3:01] up for us as Roast City Politics panelists. It's going to come up for
[3:06] us time and time again, especially over the course of this summer, as
[3:08] we see the budgetary constraints. The effect of those budgetary constraints and the decisions
[3:14] of the university is going to have to make I think everybody knows that the
[3:19] budget has been cut, that there are pressures which you can read about in
[3:23] one hundred different articles that are on the university right now, that are causing
[3:28] them to have to make some serious cuts across the board. So to say
[3:31] that this is a surprise would be false. I think we know that there
[3:36] will be cuts, We know that there will be layoffs. We know that
[3:38] there will be more than just your average belt tightening happening at the university.
[3:45] I think that's something that's come across in a lot of the sort of doom
[3:47] and gloom articles that have been out there. It won't come as a surprise
[3:51] to anybody. As far as my department, my home of drama, the
[3:54] School of Dramatic Art, there's some obvious challenges with any kind of performing arts
[4:00] program. When it comes to the challenges that we've seen through the pandemic,
[4:06] even the increasing pressure that we've seen to bring in international students in programs where
[4:12] it is performance based, language based, physicality like these are not programs that
[4:16] are appealing very often to a broad range of international students. So we haven't
[4:23] been able to boost our enrollment over the last several years the way that you
[4:27] might see in some of say business or engineering programs, just to name a
[4:30] couple of examples, those numbers have really skyrocketed. And in science as well.
[4:34] I think they've been able to boost their enrollment a lot. In the
[4:38] arts, we haven't been able to boost our enrollment with international students with other
[4:43] things, you know, the challenges that we've had with enrollment through the pandemic,
[4:48] and so our numbers are lower and it makes us, I think,
[4:51] an easy target. This really is low hanging fruit for the university. There
[4:56] were rumors last week that Monday was the day that that you know, that
[5:00] was d Day where the budget was going to hit the fan, and that
[5:03] we were going to get some news starting on Tuesday morning. And I will
[5:06] tell you Tuesday morning, eight thirty in the morning, the very first cut
[5:11] of the day that was Drama that was University Players. So I'm surprised.
[5:16] I guess I'm a little surprised that we were like very first, but I'm
[5:19] a little honored, like, oh we were the ones, hey, Like
[5:23] we were the easiest ones. And you look at a program like University Players
[5:26] that's a subsidiarysidiary of the School of Dramatic Art. It's a cost to run
[5:30] that program, and if you don't have the enrollment to keep it going,
[5:33] I can understand looking at that as a very appealing target. Now that being
[5:38] said, you know, you can save this is a matter of like one
[5:42] point five million dollars. You can save one point five million dollars by cutting
[5:46] University Players, but at a time where you're trying to make this commitment to
[5:50] connect with the community, to have more of a community impact, you know,
[5:56] to bolster enrollment. Like the fact that this is cut it really is
[6:00] a death knell. I think for drama, for programs like music and visual
[6:04] art. Anybody that's having a hard time doing recruitment right now, seeing a
[6:10] cut like this has got to send a shiver through you because there's no way
[6:14] that those programs are going to be able to recruit without having this kind of
[6:16] practical proving ground that allows people to do that experiential learning piece. You know,
[6:23] we've always said about university players, it's a great place for experiential learning.
[6:27] It connects to the community, it's public facing, it's revenue generating,
[6:30] and all of those things you would think would protect it against a cut like
[6:34] this, because on the whole, the university might see the value in having
[6:39] something like this just as a piece to connect with the community or to have
[6:44] some kind of connection that way and to bolster the student experience and experiential learning
[6:47] and that kind of thing. That being said, we can all do math.
[6:51] We know that there are struggles, and we know that it's an easy
[6:55] thing to cut. If you don't have to spend that money, then don't
[6:58] spend it. What it means for the future is really the question for me,
[7:01] because I think that we're still going to see some difficulties in the future
[7:05] in the arts and in the university as a whole. Once you cut a
[7:09] program like this, it's not coming back. So I have so much more
[7:14] I can say about it too, Like I don't know if anybody else has
[7:16] commentary about it, But I also come from the angle of the community impact
[7:21] piece. Having worked a long time in the theater community, I know that
[7:27] when we look at all of these different theater groups across the region, we
[7:31] have graduates from university, from the University of Windsor, from the School of
[7:35] Dramatic Art, people who have that experience working in university players. And without
[7:40] that experience, without those students graduating from that program, it's a huge loss
[7:44] for the community as well, because it means we won't have those graduates going
[7:47] into the community building and making and doing those works. I can say I've
[7:51] also had involvement with the Windsor Essex Theater Alliance where we've sort of taken an
[7:56] inventory of how many different theater groups there are, individual art artists, venues,
[8:01] theater companies, youth theater companies, and there's easily twenty different groups that
[8:05] are all operating in this region. When you see a cut like this,
[8:09] it doesn't just hit the current population or the current students. It affects the
[8:15] future as well. Just as when we saw the Saint Clair College cut their
[8:18] entertainment technology program, we also saw a big hit in all of our crew.
[8:22] So now the casino has trouble getting crew for their shows. They have
[8:28] trouble getting backstage crew the Cleary or the Cleary, God bless us. I'm
[8:33] so old. Saint Clair College and the Chrisler Theater has trouble getting crew for
[8:37] their shows as well. So now when it comes to putting on a live
[8:41] event, you don't have that population to draw from. You don't have that
[8:45] constant influx of students graduating and moving into the community. So I mean,
[8:48] it's also a great loss for our history and our legacy and you know,
[8:54] all of those beautiful nostalgic things that we love about having an organization that's been
[8:58] a part of the community for sixty five years. But it really to me,
[9:01] I'm more concerned about what this means for the future of the arts industry,
[9:05] such as it is in Windsor Essex. I have a question, and
[9:09] I'm not sure who can answer it, but I have a general question here,
[9:13] Like what I notice is two public organizations in the last two episodes that
[9:20] we've had we've had to talk about budget cuts. School Board last week,
[9:24] University this week. And I know that the school board didn't go through with
[9:26] their cuts, but what struck me is that the school board was looking for
[9:35] opportunities to trim staff within the programming that they deliver, and the university is
[9:41] choosing to end programs, you know, I think that, Like, I
[9:46] don't know anything about the university's budget, but five point six million sure seems
[9:50] like a number that there's probably one hundred ways to solve for that in the
[9:54] budget. And I'm just curious, are there structural or like a straight of
[10:00] reasons why cutting programs would be more attractive than just like trimming stuff. I
[10:05] would think it's a lot easier to take one program and say, oh,
[10:09] look, there's one point five million right there, Like there's a big chunk
[10:13] that I can just chunk right out and I don't have to think about it
[10:16] and I don't have to worry about it. And yet it's you know,
[10:18] it's a group of six staff that are being laid off and being you know,
[10:22] bumped into other positions. But that's sort of one chain. That's one
[10:26] little group that we can just deal with, and then everything else can be
[10:31] liquidated and sold off. Whereas extricating someone or a program or part of a
[10:35] program, or combining things often involves rewriting curriculum forms or justifying to the union
[10:46] why you're like to the faculty union, why you're not getting with these jobs.
[10:48] I mean, one of the things that they've said is that a lot
[10:52] of the cutbacks happen through open line items in the budget. So where somebody
[10:58] retires that it's an open line line item in the budget, and we can
[11:01] just leave it and make up our budget that way by not hiring into those
[11:07] positions. There was no way to do that through through these cuts, so
[11:13] or through through this round of cuts, I should say, they weren't able
[11:16] to do that this time, and so they had to actively look for something
[11:18] to cut. So if you look at something like university players and you go,
[11:22] okay, well how many If our if our responsibility, this is what's
[11:28] excited about. This is what I'm gonna say. If our responsibility is to
[11:31] is just to the students. The students give us money, we give them
[11:35] credits, they leave with a degree, that's our only responsibility. Then we
[11:39] cut university players and yeah, maybe the students will have a slightly different experience,
[11:45] but we can still fulfill those credits in some other way. We'll make
[11:46] up some other project, We'll do some other thing, you know, We'll
[11:48] we'll figure out some other way that they can still graduate and we still get
[11:52] their money. Yeah, but there's no way to figure that out in other
[12:01] programs like there's there's if there's if there's something that they cut, they're going
[12:03] to have to say, okay, well we can't offer this any longer,
[12:07] or we can't do this any longer, whereas university players just became an easy
[12:09] target because of that. It's you know, it's just it's such a tough
[12:18] situation. And we talked about this on air, and you mentioned it at
[12:22] the beginning with the external pressures that are coming with the budget, ongoing domestic
[12:26] tuition freeze, provincial policies, funding impacts, and then of course you know,
[12:31] just it it's an it's a weird fluctuating environment where interest change and people
[12:37] decide to enroll in different programs than they have in the past. And I
[12:41] just I wonder what it means more broadly, you were talking about, you
[12:43] know, for the arts industry and whens there because of these cuts, But
[12:46] I mean, what does it mean for the viability of arts programs more generally
[12:50] speaking at you know, universities or at our university. Well, what would
[12:56] it look like without it? The frustrating thing is is I would say you
[13:01] could certainly come up with a more creative solution if you were dedicated to finding
[13:05] one. I think I think that the problem here is that it's it's what's
[13:11] shortsighted about it is that it's just like, well, our only our only
[13:16] responsibilities to our students, so we'll just cut this program, and that's fine.
[13:18] But your responsibility is to the community. Responsibility is you know, if
[13:22] you you want to be the university has a choice about how they appear in
[13:26] the community, how they connect with the industry, how what they offer their
[13:31] students, not just in terms of here's a credit, but also you know,
[13:35] what type of experience are you having? And and uh, you know,
[13:39] why would you actually want to come to this school? When you take
[13:41] all of those other considerations into account, it can't just be about a line
[13:46] item. It can't just be about the budget. There has to be a
[13:48] balance between all of those priorities. And I think what we're seeing here in
[13:52] this particular case is that it just comes down to numbers. But it makes
[13:56] you question, with all of the lofty goals that they have with things like
[13:58] the Aspire strategy or you know, their connections to other industries, how much
[14:03] of that are they going to be able to fulfill if they don't have the
[14:07] budget to do it? Well, we just opened up a School of Creative
[14:11] Arts. I mean, I'm somewhat familiar with the enrollment numbers at School of
[14:20] Creative Arts, and I don't think they're probably high enough to sustain that building
[14:26] either. I don't know what the future is for that building, but I
[14:30] know that the pandemic really devastated those numbers. So what does that look like
[14:33] in the future, And what does it mean for someplace like the University of
[14:37] Windsor that has said, hey, we're here to support the downtown. Look
[14:39] at this beautiful renovation that we've done to the armories. And do they even
[14:46] have the budget or the ability of the students to run it? I don't
[14:50] know. These are questions, like I'm not I don't know what the future
[14:52] holds. This is how we will see those budgetary constraints play out as a
[14:58] community. This is how we see those holes affecting both industry and physical locations
[15:03] in our community. Will they be able to fill the three hundred building the
[15:09] corner of University and a lot that currently is papered Like, I don't know,
[15:15] the answer to that, I mean, what is the future for that
[15:18] space and how can they continue to be a good neighbor despite these vegetary constraints.
[15:26] And educational institutions don't pay property tax, right, they pay a per
[15:33] head tax per students, so they don't pay a meal rate like everyone else
[15:37] like a business or anything does. But pretty much they have a flat rate
[15:41] that they pay per enrolled student every year. Okay, so that would stay
[15:45] fixed then because they'd probably be shuffling numbers into other programs seeing increases there,
[15:50] But then we'd still maybe potentially be left Overall enrollment patterns would determine how much
[15:58] the city would get from the property tax, and in theory, if they
[16:02] have satellite campuses in multiple communities like the college does for example, each of
[16:07] those campuses pay tax in their particular community based on enrollment. It's not like
[16:11] some gross enrollment where it all gets going put into one plot as I understand
[16:15] it. But yeah, like again, it's a hard day, and it's
[16:22] not just university players. It's also the epicenter from what I also saw,
[16:26] so it's also like the university small business ecosystem space, which you know,
[16:32] if I can just say that we will lose the Epicenter as like the title,
[16:37] end brand and physical location probably of the epicenter, but it is being
[16:42] absorbed and they're they're saying reimagined. But there are as far as I know,
[16:51] those staff positions are not being lost, so that work will still happen,
[16:53] Yeah, in whatever new form. Yeah, it's just again it's it's
[16:57] a part of sort of that auto reshuffling of budgets and effectiveness at the university
[17:03] and space at the university, and like what that looks like. And I
[17:06] don't know particularly like again, I'm intimately familiar with Aspire given my work with
[17:11] it. Certainly this is a hard These are hard choices, right, and
[17:18] that it's unfortunate that it you know, obviously it fell to you, Kristen,
[17:22] and you know, and to all your colleagues and things like that.
[17:25] And I think, you know, fundamentally the university space is and I can
[17:30] zoom out a little bit and talk about those pressures a little bit that as
[17:33] I understand them, but like, fundamentally there's not just you know, we've
[17:37] heard about, you know, the multimillion dollar shortfall at this university, but
[17:41] really it's a tens of hundreds of millions of dollars shortfall across the province.
[17:48] You know, it's billions of dollars of shortfall across the province. And really
[17:52] the numbers that we're seeing and hearing in the short term now of you know,
[17:56] they were able to balance the budget this year and then this is the
[18:00] set up next year's budget. From my understanding, you know, this is
[18:04] just like the problem is there's not enough fundamentally, there's not enough domestic students
[18:11] and rolling at Canadian universities to fund the core operation of the of the universities
[18:15] in my opinion, and so they've had to augment that with international students.
[18:19] And that's a demographic challenge. And the demographic challenge does not go away because
[18:26] of yeah, we'll want it to and so and with caps coming in on
[18:33] international student rollments starting you know this year, like this is going to create
[18:37] challenges going forward. And unless the province and through the province, you know,
[18:41] either allows tuition rates to go up or is willing to core fund universities
[18:48] at you know, a systematic level, at a higher level. This is
[18:52] going to be a conversation happening at universities and colleges across the province in every
[18:56] community, and it's starting to happen already. I think Windsor is probably be
[19:00] a bit more of the tip of the spear. They're being a bit more
[19:02] proactive. But you know, you have launch and go bankrupt, and you
[19:04] have entire you know, queens shutting down an entire faculty, you know,
[19:10] and like conversations like that, like the systems in trouble, and it's something
[19:14] that no one's really talking about outside of the system in a lot of spaces,
[19:18] and it doesn't solve the individual impact that we're going to see on the
[19:22] ground here in the community. But certainly, you know, there's a much
[19:26] bigger political conversation and that no political party liberal NDP or Conservatives are talking about
[19:34] funding universities at the level that they need to be funded at or requiring people
[19:37] to actually pay the cost that it takes to go to university in Ontario.
[19:44] In the big picture of this is one that I don't understand because you know,
[19:48] we like is there is there a level of funding post secondary education where
[19:56] you get the social and economic benefits, but it's just cheap as possible because
[20:00] that like you know what I mean, like it feels like we're kind of
[20:03] trying to sound for that and and I don't know if that's I don't know
[20:08] if that's a good way to go. Uh Like, I like, I
[20:14] don't understand. I guess I just don't understand given the central importance of post
[20:18] secondary education to our like to our economic place and the future of our economic
[20:25] place as a country, like if if we don't think that education is a
[20:30] differentiator here, I don't know what Canada's differentiator is besides that we have,
[20:34] you know, a lot of rocks that are people want and some wood that
[20:38] people want. So it just strikes me as so so curious why governments aren't
[20:47] interested in funding post secondary education to the like in the ways that they did
[20:52] when I was a student. Well, I think, you know, and
[20:56] this is a broader conversation and you know that we can dive into. But
[21:00] I think there's two pieces to this puzzle. In my opinion, I think
[21:03] the first is the struggle with universities is that they're hard to change, right
[21:07] everything like ten year and the dual governance structures and like just even the process
[21:11] to get a new program created, like to get a new program created that
[21:15] some universities takes like more than a year year plus of like paperwork in meetings
[21:19] and documents being sent off to the ministry, gets approved, comes back to
[21:22] the goes of the university, Senate, goes to the Board of Governors.
[21:26] All those things. They're not nimble institutions. They're not able to like transform
[21:30] themselves. So as a result of that, you have legacy costs. Right,
[21:34] Like there is there are programs and you know, John, you and
[21:38] I both did political science at Windsor. You know, I did my graduate
[21:41] degree at Windsor. But you know, in twenty fourteen, there were three
[21:45] hundred and seventy five and I pulled up the university's dashboard for enrollment. There
[21:49] are three hundred and seventy five students enrolled in political science. Now there's barely
[21:53] over three hundred, right, so you've lost seventy five students. Each of
[21:57] those are paying tuition, Each of those are a portion of that tuition is
[22:02] going to core fund institutional you know, activities beyond just what's happening, you
[22:07] know, paying for their courses and paying that you know, a portion of
[22:08] the tuition, whether that's fees going to like the student Alliance, that's paying
[22:12] for the aquatic center at the university there, or it's you know, just
[22:18] going to pay for a portion of administrative cost, like those things are all
[22:22] captured. And so you have legacy programs and you know, Kristen mentioned it,
[22:26] you know, creative Arts program. There's a decline in that program,
[22:29] so much smaller than program than than you know, political sciences, and so
[22:33] you have certain programs that have been on decline and the other programs like nursing
[22:37] and engineering which are high demand and you know, able to recruit internationally and
[22:41] attract international students that are you can you can view the university as a series
[22:47] of cost centers and revenue generators. And if that's the lens you're going to
[22:49] take at reviewing a university, then the conversation you're having Doug about what's the
[22:56] value proposition of the education becomes very different because it's like no question and I
[23:03] like, I think I understand at least dimly what kind of pressures university administrations
[23:08] under that leads them to this place. But government doesn't have those constraints.
[23:14] Government is choosing this area as an area where you know, growth will be
[23:19] limited and it will be limited by you know, whatever factors. And that's
[23:23] that's a policy choice that's enduring. It's been enduring for like twenty five years.
[23:27] So governments are convinced of all political stripes, are convinced that that that
[23:33] citizens should pay more and more and more of the true cost of their education
[23:37] over time. Well, let's be clear, they're not though, because tuition
[23:41] has been frozen, So residents are not paying more for university, right,
[23:45] like tuitions are frozen. So and like that was put in under the Win
[23:48] government. That's that's the problem, right the people. The argument is that
[23:53] the middle class shouldn't have to pay more for university because that wins votes and
[24:00] no one wants to now be the bad cop to remove that. And suddenly
[24:03] because at the moment that goes away, tuition's going to jump ten percent.
[24:06] Let's be honest. This is the thing, this is this is where I'm
[24:08] going. And I understand what you're saying. Yeah, I had forgotten that
[24:11] detail that that tuitions have been frozen. But we used to subsidize education to
[24:17] the hilt, like to the hilt. That's a choice, right, Like
[24:22] you know, tuition doesn't have to go up, it doesn't have to go
[24:26] up with costs and it didn't, you know, when I was a student
[24:30] again, it didn't. I think I paid seven hundred and fifty dollars for
[24:33] my first semester of school. Like it's it's not like that anymore. And
[24:38] and it I don't think there's any reason, Like I don't understand. There's
[24:41] an argument that has convinced absolutely everyone in the policymaking world that this is the
[24:47] right way to go. And I don't get it. I think it's short
[24:49] sighted political calculus. No one wants to be the one to wear the tuition
[24:53] spike, and no one wants to give the universities and a bunch of you
[24:57] know, professors who are already made making one hundred thousand dollars billions of dollars
[25:02] to cover their budgets. You know, that's the that's the paradox that we're
[25:06] in. It's like you have not enough people in Ontario anymore enrolling at universities.
[25:12] You have you know, international students which have been subsidizing it for those
[25:15] in rolling. You know, tuition freezes have been put in place now almost
[25:19] for a decade or getting close to a decade. So no one wants to
[25:22] be the political party to rip that band aid off and you know, the
[25:26] Ford government, you know, just did a blue ribbon commission that recommended like
[25:32] billions of dollars more and they gave like, I forget the exact number,
[25:34] but like half or a two thirds of like what was what their own commission
[25:38] said? Because why because they don't want to put tax dollars towards it.
[25:41] And so they they've pick and choose which programs, so like you can nursing
[25:47] and engineering and like a skilled trade and things like that that aren't necessary in
[25:51] the skill trades aren't necessarily university. But like certain programs, it's like what
[25:56] you're talking about, Doug, you can walk in and everything's free. But
[25:59] like the problem is like there's a lot of programs where it's not like that.
[26:03] And so the question becomes like, you know, are we going to
[26:08] centrally plan you know, what our universities should be offering, or are we
[26:11] going to be you know, doing it based on you know, market driven
[26:15] forces. So we need more teachers, you know, this decade. Therefore,
[26:19] let's make teachers college cheaper, and then you know, we're gonna make
[26:22] it for nurses and then lawyers or whatever, like I don't know, but
[26:26] like this is the the consequences that we saw today and unfortunately Kristen's going through
[26:32] and you know, and all of our colleagues are going through, Like is
[26:36] the is the real large response to political in action and lack of political leadership
[26:41] at the provincial level. Okay, well, thank you guys for that one.
[27:00] It's a complex situation and it's interesting how university players is what we started
[27:07] out with in that conversation and where we ended up. But I think it's
[27:10] a pretty illuminating aspect. And as we've discussed before, Windsor is usually at
[27:17] the forefront of these kinds of things because we don't have such a big critical
[27:22] mass ourselves down here. So we'll keep an eye on it and see how
[27:26] it's reflected not just across you know, that organization's budget, but other public
[27:30] budgets as well. Moving forward, well, Windsor has splash pads, we
[27:37] have swimming pools, we have a beach, we've got cooling centers, and
[27:45] we've got eleven outdoor water fountains eleven not misspeaking either. That's across all two
[27:53] hundred and five parks on the riverfront. There's only two drinking fountains, three
[27:59] have been taken out of service over the years. The city says they've got
[28:03] no plans whatsoever to restore them at this point, and in fact, there's
[28:07] no requirements for how many drinking fountains are required on trails or in parks.
[28:15] The city's now at a point where they're encouraging people just bring your own water
[28:18] if you're going out. I spoke with Word nine Councilor Kieren mackenzie who said
[28:22] today, look, just because we don't have water fountains in every park doesn't
[28:26] mean that we don't have water. You can go into the bathrooms at any
[28:32] park. It's poddible water in these sinks and you can fill up your water
[28:37] bottles using that if you want as well. There's a lot of costs associated
[28:41] with replacing all of the ornamental and drinking fountains in the city. That number
[28:48] comes in at twenty two million dollars based off of an estimate from last year.
[28:51] But that number doesn't I don't know why it's a blended figure because this
[28:57] includes Burt Week Gardens parks and replacing the Peace Fountain parks, and then also
[29:04] water fountains that we drink out of that are in parks and trails. I
[29:08] don't get why they would be a blended number, but there's twenty nine of
[29:12] those. Of those eleven are those outdoor drinking fountains, seven fewer than the
[29:18] city had at least four years ago. Those eleven are spread across two hundred
[29:22] and five parks as mentioned, two more will be coming soon at Oakwood Park
[29:26] and Elizabeth Kishkan Park. But I was told by the councilor, and it
[29:30] was reiterated by the executive Director of Parks and Facilities for the city in this
[29:36] article here that we're reading from from CBC that when it comes to citizen priorities,
[29:41] when they delegate, when they submit their requests in public comment, they
[29:47] don't really want water fountains. They're more interested in seeing other amenities in parks,
[29:51] primarily benches or you know, game type facilities. So this is where
[29:57] we're at right now, unfunctional outdoor parks across the entire city in two hundred
[30:03] and five parks. There's over a lot of us now here in Windsor over
[30:08] two hundred and eighteen thousand, eleven outdoor water fountains. But don't worry.
[30:15] You can go to a bathroom and you can fill up your water bottle using
[30:21] the tap water. So I was I was all ready to come in here
[30:26] and talk about how these are you know, they're the horse hitching posts,
[30:32] you know, and that it's okay to let them fade away because because like
[30:37] the needs of the community have moved on and whatever. But like asking people
[30:41] to go and put like drink out of the bathroom sink, like, come
[30:47] on, man, just put a put a faucet outside, Like this doesn't
[30:51] have to be fancy. Put a damn faucet outside. Let people get water.
[30:55] But like, I think that that the key point in that piece was
[31:00] the comments about public feedback, Like I just don't I don't imagine there's much
[31:04] public interest in public water. Public water used to be something that we needed
[31:11] because a lot of people didn't have access to water, consistent access to water,
[31:15] you know, even even in like as recently as the times that Windsor
[31:19] has been a place like you used to be able to get a place to
[31:22] live with no water in it, right you get a room in a rooming
[31:25] house or whatnot, So access to water through the day would have been a
[31:29] big deal. I just don't think that that's the community we live in anymore.
[31:32] And when we were talking about this in the pre show chat, we
[31:36] were looking at some information out of London. It looks like London's in the
[31:38] same boat that they have a I don't know what you call it, a
[31:42] fleet or a system of water fountains that's in pretty much the same situation.
[31:47] It is a sort of a managed decline until they can turn the thing off,
[31:49] right, I think a better answer, like, I would like to
[31:55] hear a better, more creative answer, because I think that would be good
[31:57] to have filling station for water or something in public areas and bathrooms aren't open
[32:05] all the time. It would be good to have a water publicly available for
[32:09] those few who still need it and for those who are you know, in
[32:13] a momentarily like don't have water near them. Like, I think it would
[32:16] be good, But I don't think it's the same scale of public need that
[32:21] it was one hundred years ago. So I agree, Doug, it's not
[32:27] the same scale of public need. But I think it's also the reason why
[32:29] we don't hear about it is that people just take it for granted generally.
[32:32] You know, it's forty degrees outside today. Part of the reason why I
[32:36] was glad we didn't get together is that I didn't have to go outside because
[32:38] it's like forty degrees outside, right like, and so but if you are
[32:44] just going for a walk, or you know, you're walking your dog,
[32:47] because I have to take my dog out sometime later today, like pulp access
[32:52] to public water where I could just stop and I splash water on my face
[32:55] and she could drink water. That's actually a pretty good thing. And so
[33:00] I'm actually gonna think that this is actually just people take public water for granted
[33:05] because it's in their house. I recognize that, but they also, like
[33:07] the common from the city about well, people don't ask for that amenity.
[33:10] It's because generally you don't think about kneading water until you need it, right
[33:15] Like it's like when you go to the amusement park and you've got to bring
[33:19] your bottle of water, and now you have to pay fourteen dollars for a
[33:22] bottle of water, right like, this is where this is like the thing.
[33:25] And so I think, you know, and I think like, and
[33:31] this goes back to like things like quality of life and you know, like,
[33:35] oh, you want a good bicycle network in your city while having some
[33:37] spots where you can pump up your bike tires and get fill up your water
[33:40] bottle is probably a good part of most you know, good urban design cities.
[33:46] So the fact that we're down to like eleven you know, eleven water
[33:51] fountains or whatever doesn't surprise me. I would go to But I also think
[33:55] it's a broader symptom of, you know, we've chosen and not to invest
[34:00] in certain things in our parks and in our community spaces. And I'll use
[34:04] an example from this past weekend. I was at walking my dog. We
[34:08] were going by Micmac Park. You know, it was on Sunday. There
[34:12] was tons of people there. It was ed. There's tons of families sort
[34:15] of just celebrating in the park there using all the park tables and benches.
[34:19] Kids had hoped the fence and were swimming in Micmacpool because the pool was closed.
[34:24] It's a Sunday, it's twenty five degrees out, the pool is clean
[34:29] and ready to go. It opens July June twenty eighth or whatever. That
[34:32] last day of the June twenty eighth is the Friday, the last friday of
[34:36] June, that's when it opens. The city chooses not to open it for
[34:39] the rest of June. Right, because they don't want to pay for that
[34:43] lifeguard to be there for four hours a day and the fifty cents they're going
[34:46] to pay for for thet to have the lights on and whatever. So it's
[34:51] a choice. If they're redoing a park to as you said, attach a
[34:54] faucet on the outside of an outbuilding, is not. It's a rounding error
[35:00] of a cost. Like yes, okay, I admit, you know,
[35:04] running a water line down the entire length of the waterfront trail and putting in
[35:07] you know, five or ten new water fountains every thirty yards or whatever or
[35:12] fifty yards. Yeah, that's probably an exorbitant cost that doesn't need to be
[35:15] done. But there are you know, is the new for example, streetcar
[35:21] last structure going to have a water fountain in it that's publicly accessible? Yes?
[35:24] Or no? Is you know there's a bathroom at the end there right
[35:28] at next to the Ambassador Bridge if I remember correctly, There is I think
[35:31] a fountain on the outside of that building, you know, But like where
[35:37] along that trail. So if I'm going for a run today and it's forty
[35:40] degrees outside and I don't want to dye a heat stroke, but I'm trying
[35:44] to get in shape. Where am I supposed to get a drink of water
[35:46] on that trail? Well, I'm not because of the choices of the city
[35:51] has made. And so you know, I hear counselor Mackenzie. Yeah,
[35:53] you can go inside, but like, have you been in those bathrooms recently?
[35:58] Do you want to go in there with your own water bottle and fill
[36:00] it up in a sink? There? No, probably not, So put
[36:02] a tap on the outside of the building. It's not that hard. Yeah,
[36:06] I hear you, Frazer, and I think that you make some great
[36:09] points. I but I think that this, like this city is following public
[36:15] interest here, consumer patterns have changed. Like people people are less reliant on
[36:22] public water when they're out and about. They've it's you know, like I
[36:27] don't remember water bottles when I was nine years old. We didn't see them.
[36:30] You know that that wasn't a thing. Like it was just the infrastructure
[36:34] and how people were served was different, and we needed public water because you
[36:38] know, you didn't have water with you. But that's just not the case
[36:43] for many people now. And I'm not saying it's universal, but isn't this
[36:45] how universal programs end because you know, part of society no longer sees the
[36:50] need, and then those who are left behind are just kind of left behind
[36:53] potentially. But I also think like consumer patterns have changed. But we also
[36:58] talked about how the city has not been right at tracking its own you know,
[37:00] and engaging its own consumers and its own customers. Right. So the
[37:05] question I would ask is have they even put do you want a water fountain
[37:08] on one of those surveys as a part of a park survey. I don't
[37:13] remember seeing that being prominently, like, yeah, there's a basketball court and
[37:15] there's like, you know, a splash pad and all that. Did they
[37:17] have a water fountain option or was it just something that someone would have to
[37:22] write in themselves, right? And so there's like a give and take there,
[37:25] I reckon. So if water is and I don't know if this is
[37:29] for sure, but like if access to water is a human right at least
[37:32] I'm not sure if it technically is. But like, Okay, if we
[37:36] assume you're in Canada, you should have access to portable drinking water, then
[37:40] why isn't it accessible in a majority of our park facilities? You know?
[37:45] I'm like, yeah, okay, you know, maybe there's a water fountain
[37:49] inside the library that's next to the park. Okay, cool in that case,
[37:52] fine, But like if I have to walk five kilometers down the riverfront
[37:55] trail and there's not a place to get a free drink of water other than
[37:59] jumping in the Detroit River, Like, what are we doing here? Okay?
[38:02] I just I know, Joe, what you want to get in,
[38:05] John, But I got to I got to respond to that point. Just
[38:07] like access to clean water is a human right, I believe it is that.
[38:12] I think the United Nations has sort of done whatever they do with that,
[38:15] but like virtually everyone in Windsor has access to water. In fact,
[38:21] I think everyone in Windsor has access to water. Is it is? It
[38:27] is having water at the riverfront when you're going for a run a human right.
[38:30] I'm not quite as sure of that, Like, is you know what
[38:34] I'm trying to say? And I hear you about the quality of evidence,
[38:37] Frazure, I imagine that the quality of evidence for when you want to do
[38:42] something, it would it could be quite low. But I don't think the
[38:45] city is wrong about the revealed preference or social trends here. So there's one
[38:52] other element that I wanted to make sure that we discussed about this story that
[38:54] I intentionally waited to bring up until the very end, which is that our
[39:00] executive director of City Parks and Facilities said that, well, a lot of
[39:06] these fountains just received repeated vandalism. They'd get broken or spray painted, so
[39:10] we just stopped repairing them entirely. It got to a point where it would
[39:15] be daily we'd fix something and then you'd get a complaint the very next day,
[39:20] so the city stopped repairing them. Well, again, I go back
[39:24] to what's the job of the city, right, Like, you know,
[39:28] they're not doing their jobs then, is what I'm saying, is like they've
[39:31] chosen, they've made an administrative choice to not fulfill their responsibility. Right,
[39:37] they have a piece of infrastructure in theory, they have an asset management plan
[39:40] for that infrastructure. They should be fixing that infrastructure, and they've then made
[39:45] a choice. And I don't know how many of those are, Like I
[39:47] remember like the Bear Fountain on the riverfront and kept getting spray painted, so
[39:52] they stopped trying to fix the Bear Fountain. And I know the Sandwich Town
[39:54] keeps getting soap dumped into it, so they stopped running the fountain Sandwich Town.
[40:00] Those are different. Those esthetic fountains are different than water fountains. I
[40:04] would love to know how many water fountains we're being, like visibly vandalized versus
[40:09] like some bear that has water sprang out of its mouth, over a penguin
[40:13] into a pool, a mic drop, if there ever was one. Frasier,
[40:22] listen, it's somewhere between all of this is probably the right answer I
[40:27] would like to see. Like you brought up, though, Frasier, I
[40:30] don't think we're asking these questions. I don't think they're interested in hearing the
[40:35] results. And I think, quite frankly, if all of the city's outdoor
[40:39] water fountains that people could drink out of are you know, broken before the
[40:46] Asset master Plan legislation does come into effect and they don't have to maintain them
[40:52] because there just aren't any left anymore. That's probably just what the hopefulness of
[40:57] this all is. But we can't go and make that statement or allegation.
[41:00] It's just a thought. But that'll do it for us. There was some
[41:05] other stuff that went on Caesar's windsor Casino windsor spent or just commemorated thirty years
[41:10] pretty impressive and as well, the Gordy Howbridge is now officially connected at the
[41:16] middle, which prompted it to become an international border crossing upon that connection,
[41:22] which means it now receives twenty four seven three sixty five passport surveillance and monitoring
[41:30] because they don't want those workers letting people cross the border at four thirty in
[41:35] the morning when no one's paying attention. That'll do it for us though.
[41:38] Here at Rose City Politics, pretty easy breezy show in terms of the last
[41:45] topic, they're about water bottles, albeit not an easy breezy one to start
[41:50] things off. Thank you for tuning. In June eighteenth, regular panel included
[41:54] Doug Sar, Tory Frazier, Fathers, Kristin Siappis, myself, John Lydkey
[41:59] head to Patreon dot com, slash Rose City Politics, pick up a biz
[42:01] s magazine like, share and subscribe. Roase City Politics Politics broadcast live on
[42:07] tape thanks to the kind support of Lenes six two to five Building Better Communities

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