Ottawa's municipal ward boundaries

[rocketphish]

City recommends ward boundary review and wants to give Premier Ford a heads-up about it

Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: May 27, 2019

The City of Ottawa wants to review the size of its 23 wards, while giving the Ontario Progressive Conservative government fair warning in case Premier Doug Ford has plans to trim more municipal councils.

“I don’t want this to be an exercise to add seats and I think given what the province did to the City of Toronto, we’re probably best to at least state up front exactly what the boundary review is going to be about,” Mayor Jim Watson said Monday.

The PCs cut the size of Toronto city council last year. A ward boundary review in that city increased the wards from 44 to 47 before the provincial government slashed the number to 25.

Toronto was the only municipality the provincial government targeted for a council reduction, although there are ongoing reviews of regional governments.

Ford and other PC MPPs have suggested they aren’t interested in touching the size of Ottawa council, but since municipalities are at the mercy of their provincial masters, nothing is guaranteed.

Ottawa is long overdue for a review of where its municipal ward boundaries fall.

If council agrees with the city’s clerk recommendation on reviewing the ward boundaries, a new municipal election map would be in place for the next vote in 2022 and likely still hold up for the two subsequent elections, based on projections for population distribution.

The city would hire an outside consultant to do the ward boundary review, with options coming back to council in mid-2020, followed by additional public consultations and a council vote that fall.

While a ward boundary review for Ottawa was estimated at $300,000 four years ago, the city won’t know the actual cost of a consultant until a competitive bidding process is complete.

Watson said the City of Ottawa’s 24-member council is the right size but the wards have to be tweaked to balance the populations.

The populations of the 23 wards are, in some cases, wildly lopsided.

At the end of 2018, the average population of a ward was 43,106, according to city data. Barrhaven ward had the highest population at 61,528, while West Carleton-March ward had the lowest at 25,644.

At the rate the city is growing, Barrhaven is expected to add about 7,000 more residents by the next municipal election in 2022, while West Carleton-March is poised to add about 550.

Until the city redraws the boundary lines, the clerk is suggesting that Barrhaven Coun. Jan Harder’s office receive temporary annual funding equal to one full-time staffer ($83,000) since the ward population is 43-per-cent higher than the average for the 23 wards.

Watson’s tenure as mayor started after a 2010 municipal campaign promise to reduce the size of council to between 14 and 17, potentially saving $2 million annually.

On May 23, 2012, Watson couldn’t convince council to start a ward boundary review; he ended up on the losing end of a 15-9 vote.

The current ward boundaries drawn in June 2005 were thought to be adequate until 2015.

In 2015, council decided on the status quo for the 2018 municipal election.

After the provincial PCs shrunk the size of Toronto council last year, Watson said he no longer wanted a smaller council size in Ottawa.

“I’ve recognized over the years we do have a special situation with the large geographic mass that rural Ottawa makes up and it’s really hard to start lumping all three of those rural wards together. Rural folks would lose a voice,” Watson said Monday.

“I think we can do some tweaking with the boundaries using our staff who have expertise in this and do our best not to divide communities of interest, but to make sure there’s more equity in the distribution of voters per ward.”

The finance and economic development committee will vote on a ward boundary review on June 4 and send a recommendation for council to consider on June 12.

[email protected]
twitter.com/JonathanWilling

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-new...to-give-premier-ford-a-heads-up-about-it

[waterloowarrior]

Round 2 consultation starting June 12 (dates subject to change)

Round 1 presentation/background info on this site
https://ottawa.ca/en/city-hall/public-engagement/projects/ward-boundary-review-2020

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by waterloowarrior

Round 2 consultation starting June 12 (dates subject to change)

Round 1 presentation/background info on this site
https://ottawa.ca/en/city-hall/public-engagement/projects/ward-boundary-review-2020

We that's a bad start:

Voter Parity: Ward populations should be similar but not identical and should be in the range of +/-10 per cent to +/-15 per cent of the average ward population. Larger percentage variations are possible, but only in exceptional circumstances such as in Ottawa’s functioning rural community.

Why should the rural areas have more representation?

Population Growth: The results of the Ottawa Ward Boundary Review 2020 are meant to last for at least three municipal elections (2022, 2026 and 2030) and, perhaps, a fourth municipal election in 2034. The target election for an evaluation of effective representation will be 2026. This allows for Ottawa’s expected growth to be factored into ward boundary calculations.

That's another policy that favours the suburbs over the urban core.

[Multi-modal]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

That's another policy that favours the suburbs over the urban core.

No it favours the urban core because we are going to "Hold the line" and most growth will happen within the inner greenbelt

[Fraser]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

We that's a bad start:



Why should the rural areas have more representation?



That's another policy that favours the suburbs over the urban core.

Because the case law suggests the rurals are distinct from subruan/urban areas. Read the previous boundary reports on this. I believe a decision in south western Ontario (Hamilton?) relating to rural lands was issued by the OMB confirming this point.

Not sure how it favours the suburbs? According to the stats on the city’s ward boundary page, residents in Barrhaven have 1 vote but the ward is 1.5 to 2x bigger than most urban wards and is going to get bigger. If anything, is suburban residents are under represented at council.

[CityTech]

One can argue that the urban core, now that it has a increasingly small minority of the city's overall population, and has different needs than the suburbs which are the majority, is also a distinct area that is entitled to adequate representation. If the review does give the urban core fewer councillors per person than the rest of the city, I hope Leiper or McKenney or someone challenges it using those arguments, and we may very well get a rule similar to the "adequate representation" rule they use for the rural areas.

Another consideration could be citing a precedent from a few years ago from Kingston's last ward boundary review that post-secondary students who live out of town (who are not counted in the census) need to be considered, which could boost the representation needs of areas like Sandy Hill.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Fraser

Because the case law suggests the rurals are distinct from subruan/urban areas. Read the previous boundary reports on this. I believe a decision in south western Ontario (Hamilton?) relating to rural lands was issued by the OMB confirming this point.

Not sure how it favours the suburbs? According to the stats on the city’s ward boundary page, residents in Barrhaven have 1 vote but the ward is 1.5 to 2x bigger than most urban wards and is going to get bigger. If anything, is suburban residents are under represented at council.

If rural areas are distinct, than make it so and create a municipal/reginal goverment seperate from the built-up area.

It will favour the subrubs because if the consider future population, suburban wards will have a lower population a the beginning than urban wards, hence more representation for the 1 or 2 elections.

[Ottawa Champ]

Originally Posted by CityTech

One can argue that the urban core, now that it has a increasingly small minority of the city's overall population, and has different needs than the suburbs which are the majority, is also a distinct area that is entitled to adequate representation. If the review does give the urban core fewer councillors per person than the rest of the city, I hope Leiper or McKenney or someone challenges it using those arguments, and we may very well get a rule similar to the "adequate representation" rule they use for the rural areas.

A great idea but the Watson Club will shoot that down without hesitation.

[CityTech]

Originally Posted by Ottawa Champ

A great idea but the Watson Club will shoot that down without hesitation.

The downtown councillors could go over Watson's head and take it to the courts. That's what happened in similar disputes.

[rocketphish]

Options for Ottawa city council include shedding 6 seats, adding 2
Ottawans prefer a larger city council, early consultation suggests

Joanne Chianello · CBC News
Posted: Jun 26, 2020 11:13 AM ET | Last Updated: 2 hours ago

Is the current Ottawa city council too big, too small, or just right?

That's what elected officials and voters will be asked to judge in the coming months, starting with five new options from a team of consultants.

Whatever the decision, the council chosen in the next municipal election will likely be different than the one we have now — even if the number around the table stays at the current total of 23 seats, plus the mayor.

Generally speaking there are now 12 urban, seven suburban and four rural wards (which includes vacant Cumberland).

Most of the five options released late Thursday change this mix:

• 25 wards, which would include 13 urban wards, nine suburban wards and three rural wards. It adds one urban and two suburban seats, while removing a rural seat.
• 24 wards, which has the fewest boundary changes of any option. It adds a suburban seat by making the suburban part of Cumberland a separate ward.
• 23 wards, which would include 11 urban wards, nine suburban wards and three rural wards. While it maintains the size of council, it requires major changes to virtually all ward boundaries. Two suburban seats would be added, while one urban and one rural seat would be removed.
• 23 wards, similar to the previous option in distribution of urban, suburban and rural seats, but individual ward boundaries are different.
• 17 wards, which would include nine urban wards, six suburban wards and two rural wards. It represents a major departure from the current situation as it reduces the number of wards significantly.

This would be only the second time that the ward boundaries would be redrawn since amalgamation in 2001.

The 23 wards as we know them were set in 2005, although there was a tweak in 2009 that saw some rural land added to two suburban wards.

In 2010, Mayor Jim Watson had campaigned on making council slightly smaller, but he and the rest of council abandoned that idea in 2012, with the understanding that council would look at the issue in 2015.

But 2015 came and went, and again, council did nothing.

Now, many wards are wildly different when it comes to population size — Barrhaven has more than twice the residents than either West Carleton-March or Osgoode, for example.

While the average population was 43,106 in 2018, 10 wards strayed at least 15 per cent from that average.

That means Ottawa's "voter parity" is out of whack.

"The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees citizens the 'right to vote,'" according to the report by the city's consultant team, led by Beate Bowran Etcetera Inc.

"Part and parcel of this right is the assurance that votes are of equal weight."

But it isn't only population equity considered by the consulting team when redrawing the ward lines.

Deciding on the size of a ward should also incorporate the principle of "capacity to represent" — or the workload in each ward, they said

Urban Kitchissippi, for example, may see more contentious planning files than others.

Ward boundaries should ideally follow natural or built borders, such as rivers and highways, but also keep communities intact.

Then there's the issue of the city's massive physical size.

If rural wards were to have the same number of residents as other wards, there'd only likely be one or two councillors representing the countryside.

"Ottawa's geographically large rural area and its communities need to be respected and will have larger voter parity variances," according to the report.

Almost 500 individuals and groups participated in the first round of consultations on the boundaries, though only two of the nine in-person consultations went ahead because of the pandemic.

A little more than half indicated they'd like a larger council, although how large ranged considerably: from a few more seats, to more than 30, to calls for a return of a two-tier system.

There's a sentiment among many respondents that "as Ottawa is growing, more wards are needed." Ottawa has grown from just over 806,000 residents in 2001 to a million.

The finance and economic development committee (FEDCO) and council will consider the options next month and decide whether to consult on all five possibilities, or simply cherry-pick the ones they like.

More consultation will happen in the fall in time for council to make a final decision this December.

The decision has to be made well ahead of the 2022 election to leave enough time for any appeals, which are usually filed in ward-boundary reviews across Ontario.

Any appeals to the provincial tribunal must be finished by the end of 2021 for the new ward make-up to be in effect.

Maps of 5 options to redraw ward boundaries


https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-council-ward-boundary-review-1.5627639

[rocketphish]

Study tables options to redraw Ottawa's wards for 2022 municipal election

Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Publishing date: Jun 26, 2020 • Last Updated 13 minutes ago • 2 minute read

There are options on the table to significantly reduce the number of councillors in Ottawa’s municipal government or add more politicians to help serve a growing population.

A redistributed 23-ward status quo is an option, too, and probably the leading scenario heading into the next phase of a ward-boundary review.

Because, what councillor would want to add more politicians to city hall? And, would councillors whosejobs could be in jeopardy in a ward reduction really vote in favour of one?

On top of that, council has already indicated its preference to retain a 24-seat council (23 wards plus the mayor) in a letter to the provincial government.

For now, every option put forward by consultants Beate Bowron Etcetera, Hemson Consulting and The Davidson Group is being treated with equal weight, knowing that council’s decision later this year will likely be appealed to the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal and the consultants could be called to provide evidence during a hearing.

The population distribution on the current 23-ward map is lopsided, requiring a review of the number of wards and where the ward boundaries fall. The current ward map was created for the 2006 municipal election and the city hopes to have a new ward setup in place for the next election in 2022 and use the map for two or three subsequent elections.

Currently, there are 12 wards in the urban area, seven wards in the suburban area and and three wards in the rural area. There’s one more ward, Cumberland, that has elements of both the rural area and suburbia.

Consultants came up with five options for the number of wards: 25 wards, 24 wards, two 23-ward options and a 17-ward option.

According to the consultants’ report, “all meet the test of effective representation” established by the courts and the provincial appeal tribunal and, according to them, there’s no best option.

The two 23-ward options add two wards in the suburban area, but reduce a ward in the urban area, while setting the number of rural wards at three.

When it comes to the 17-ward option, the number of rural wards would be reduced to two and there would be nine urban wards and six suburban wards.

The consultants said they heard from 483 individuals and groups in the first round of consultations, a number they said is impressive considering there wasn’t a proposal on the table.

In a public survey responded to by 448 people, most indicated a desire to increase the number of wards, with 24 or 25 wards receiving the highest number of votes.

Of the 21 current council members who responded to the question, 10 preferred the current number of wards and eight indicated 24 or 25 wards, while two said 19 ward or less and one said 21 or 22 wards.

To help the public and council determine which is the best option, the consultants have come up with a category ranking sheet, taking into account voter parity, natural and physical ward boundaries, geographic communities of interest, minority interests, ward history, capacity for councillors to represent, geographic size and shape of the wards and population growth.

A final report is scheduled for December.

The city has posted the reports with more details about the options on its project webpage.

[email protected]
twitter.com/JonathanWilling

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-new...cm/4c8e9910-efaf-4fb3-9bc0-ebd965c2db18/

[TransitZilla]

Bit bizarre that all the options show Earl Armstrong Rd as the southern boundary of the ward that includes Riverside South. That means the nearly half of the land inside the urban boundary will be part of a rural ward.

Shouldn't there be some sort of alignment between the urban boundary and the ward boundaries?

[J.OT13]

I like that all but one of the options remove a rural ward, though 3 of the 5 options remove urban representation.

I think I prefer the 17 Ward options, that brings us more in line with similar sized cities, population wise;

Edmonton: 12
Calgary: 15
Vancouver: 10
Winnipeg: 15
Quebec City: 21

The argument is always the size of Ottawa, but if you remove the rural wards, we're only left with 441 square kilometres. Adjust to include the suburban parts of Cumberland Ward, and we have 450 square kilometres. That's close to half the size of Edmonton and Calgary, about the same size as Winnipeg and Quebec, and close to four times Vancouver. Not to mention that 203 square kilometres of that is Greenbelt.

So yes, 17 seems very reasonable to me.

[passwordisnt123]

Option 5 (17 ward option) would be my preferred option as well. In looking at the proposals it seems like only option 5 and 1 maintain a balance where suburban and rural votes couldn't swamp the urban votes on council. But the map on option 1 just looks weird and wrong to me. I really struggle to figure out who the heck drew that map so that's why I say 5.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by passwordisnt123

Option 5 (17 ward option) would be my preferred option as well. In looking at the proposals it seems like only option 5 and 1 maintain a balance where suburban and rural votes couldn't swamp the urban votes on council. But the map on option 1 just looks weird and wrong to me. I really struggle to figure out who the heck drew that map so that's why I say 5.

I agree. I'm stumped as to why we would split the CBD in two, unless getting rid of either McKenney or Leiper really is their goal.

[passwordisnt123]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

I agree. I'm stumped as to why we would split the CBD in two, unless getting rid of either McKenney or Leiper really is their goal.

I'm quite confident that is one of their goals, actually. But I think another goal is disempowering urban voters and empowering suburban and rural voters, which is where Watson's power base comes from. That latter goal lends itself better to options 3 and 4 than 1 or 5.

[J.OT13]

Councillors unhappy with all 5 options.

https://twitter.com/KatePorterCBC/status/1283520195680763905

[rocketphish]

Council looks for 6th electoral map option, amid concerns about 'meddling'
Councillors had found a list of faults with 5 options presented ahead of 2022 vote

Kate Porter · CBC News
Posted: Jul 15, 2020 10:01 PM ET | Last Updated: 10 hours ago

Ottawa city council has sent consultants back to come up with a sixth option for redrawing the municipal electoral map, despite hesitations by some that they didn't want to politically interfere with such boundaries.

Mayor Jim Watson tabled the motion and it was approved in a 13 to 8 vote.



The mayor said he was trying to get at the "real root of the problem" and deal with three "outlier" areas that are growing quickly: Barrhaven, Riverside South and the Cumberland ward portion of Orléans. Already, votes in some populous wards don't weigh quite the same as small wards and the city needs to solve that.

"The notion that there's gerrymandering going on by asking that we consider one more option just defies logic," said the mayor. "There's only one person around the table whose boundaries do not change, and that's the mayor."

Every ward, however, will likely see big changes by the 2022 vote. The consultants told committee last week that they can't maintain the current council size of 23 wards, the mayor's and council's stated goal, while the population grows, with only a few tweaks.

But many councillors, from all parts of the city, have found fault in the five possible ways the lines could be redrawn. Two maps keep the number of councillor seats at 23, two add seats, and the last reduces Ottawa to 17 wards.

Some councillors argued at council Wednesday, as they had at committee, that the proposed wards split neighbourhoods in two and they didn't like the options.

But other councillors were uneasy with what they saw as meddling: asking the independent consultant for a sixth choice because they didn't like the options brought back to them.

"I fundamentally do not believe that it is our job to determine the areas that we are going to represent going forward. That's the whole idea of hiring an independent third party to do this work," said Knoxdale-Merivale Coun. Keith Egli.

Coun. Scott Moffat, meanwhile, argued the city simply can't fix its representation issues, and keep council at 23 seats, without causing new problems.

"Let [the consultants] do their job. They've already done this work. They've already checked to see if we can do 23 wards and stay at status quo for most of the wards," said Moffatt. "We can't. It's not possible."

Consultant Gary Davidson told council it would be "challenging", but they could go back and try to redraw the map yet again to offer a sixth choice in time for a second round of consultations this fall.

They've been asked to limit ward seats to the current 23. Councillor Shawn Menard attempted to not prescribe council size in a sixth map, but lost in a 13 to 8 vote.

Watson said he didn't want council to grow to the same size as Toronto's and risk having the provincial government impose a change of council size as it did there in 2018.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ward-boundaries-watson-harder-sixth-option-1.5650895

[J.OT13]

I hope the Province comes and and forces the 17 Ward option on the City.

The Mayor says there's no gerrymandering, but that's exactly what he's done with the committees. And his comments on growing suburbs proves his bias. At the moment, the inner Greenbelt still has a larger population than the burbs. Although rural loses one seat in most scenarios, they are still over-represented.

[J.OT13]

Here was the Mayor's motion. Literally gerrymandering the wards as much as possible from his position.



And here was the vote results:



https://twitter.com/KatePorterCBC/status/1283532947488935938