Change wards, OMB orders

Sat, December 31, 2005

The board rejects city requests for a delay and insists the election map be redrawn now.

By JONATHAN SHER, FREE PRESS CITY HALL REPORTER



Next year, candidates for London city council will be seeing double -- 14 wards instead of the usual seven.

With a year-end deadline looming, the Ontario Municipal Board has ordered London to replace its election map with one that has 14 wards.

The new ward map will be in effect for next year's civic election unless a court or the OMB strikes down the order.

In the two-page order issued yesterday, OMB member Douglas Gates rejected requests by council to delay an order until a court hears a city appeal.

"This would undermine the whole or main purpose . . . which was to effect change in the ward structure for the City of London for the 2006 election and thereafter," Gates wrote.

The order's timing angered Deputy Mayor Tom Gosnell, who supports keeping council's seven wards -- each with two councillors -- and board of control as they are.

The new system ordered by the OMB would create 14 smaller wards with one council representative each.

"He waited to the very last day of the business year to send it to us and that's hardly a class act," Gosnell said.

But council members have themselves to blame for the timing, said Stephen Turner, a member of a citizens' group, Imagine London, which challenged the seven-ward system.

Council failed to implement changes called for in a 2003 ballot initiatives by Londoners who voted to scrap board of control and shrink the size of council, he said.

Then, council refused to co-operate after Gates decided Nov. 22 to replace the city's ward system, choosing instead to appeal.

"There's some on city council who will oppose change at all costs," Turner said.

London Mayor Anne Marie DeCicco, who supported changes, said the timing of the order wasn't ideal, but it came after council failed to make changes Londoners wanted.

"We missed a golden opportunity the last two years . . . to make some sort of change," DeCicco said.

But most Londoners oppose change, Gosnell said.

"(DeCicco's) dead wrong."

After a four-day hearing in October, Gates found Londoners were ill-served by the status quo of seven wards with two councillors each.

"It appears . . . council is not well connected to its constituents at the neighbourhood level," Gates wrote Nov. 22.

Gates held off on formally ordering the new wards, saying he preferred the details to be "made in London" between city officials and Imagine London.

When council instead voted to challenge his decision, Gates drew his own 14-ward map, borrowing heavily from from one drawn by city officials considering options this year.

That's wrong, Gosnell said.

"We have one man from a small town, Oakville, taking it upon himself to impose this on the city of London and I find that quite offensive," he said.

The deputy mayor shouldn't be so quick to condemn others when his own conduct was so questionable, said Imagine London founder Sam Trosow.

Gosnell was among a majority of council members who voted in June to end debate before it began after Imagine London submitted a petition from nearly 1,000 people.

"It's a classic example of the arrogance of power. If Mr. Gosnell and company had taken this matter more seriously and at least debated it, then this may have never happened," Trosow said.

With civic candidates eligible to file nomination papers as early as next week, the city clerk will be required to do so with the 14 wards drawn by Gates, city lawyers said.

The city, which has hired a highly-regarded and expensive Toronto lawyer, will ask the courts to move up a hearing now scheduled Feb, 13 and may ask that Gates' order be placed in limbo until the city's appeal is decided, city lawyers say.

Some on council say they support changes but not the way it was imposed by Gates.

"I've never been upset about some of the changes. It's the process I find objectionable," said Controller Gord Hume, who favours single-council wards because they create greater accountability and make campaigns more manageable.

There also are those who have some reservations about some of the changes, but still think that some change was long overdue.

"It's ironic we have to have someone impose greater democracy when we've been unable to do it ourselves," Coun. David Winninger said.

LONDON'S NEW WARDS

Ontario Municipal Board member Douglas Gates yesterday ordered the City of London to replace its seven-ward map with one he drew that has 14 wards. Highlights:

- The following communities now split among different wards will each be assigned to single wards: Downtown, Old South, the Old East Village, the Hamilton Road business district and the area around the University of Western Ontario.

- The south of London won't feature a single, giant agricultural ward, as favoured by a citizens' group: Instead, it will look more like that drawn by city officials, with four long and narrow wards stretching up from the city's south end.

- Most boundaries between wards will be along major barriers such as waterways or railway tracks and along major streets such as Wellington and Commissioners roads.

- Lambeth and Byron remain combined in a single ward on the city's southwes