[URBAN NOTE] "Proposed Ward Changes Call for Splitting Church-Wellesley Village"

[rfmcdonald]

I do not like the proposal, as described by Torontoist's Tannara Yelland, to partition Church and Wellesley into two separate wards at all.

Civic-minded residents of downtown Toronto may have been chagrined (though not entirely surprised) to learn, upon the release of information about the proposed restructuring of the regions represented by city councillors, that the three downtown wards each have thousands more people than the average ward population. Toronto’s population has exploded since the wards were redrawn in 2000, with much of that growth in the city’s downtown core—and more is expected in the coming years. For now, people living in wards 20 (Trinity-Spadina) and 27 (Toronto Centre-Rosedale) have significantly less representation than residents of other, less populous wards.

It’s for those reasons that the proposed changes to ward boundaries, presented to City Council in May, include splitting downtown into six wards rather than three, dramatically reshaping the political landscape of the area. But in trying to accommodate population changes and adhere to “natural and physical boundaries” and area history, the group in charge of redrawing the city split up some of Toronto’s most distinct neighbourhoods.

One of those areas is the beating heart of the city’s LGBTQ community, Church-Wellesley Village. Currently housed in Ward 27 and represented by Kristyn Wong-Tam, members of the Village have expressed concern at the thought of forming a smaller portion of two different wards. The proposal calls for a boundary to run along Church Street, the main artery of the Village.

“We understand the need for boundaries to change in terms of making sure that everybody in Toronto is fairly represented by the wards,” says Village BIA Chair Francis Gaudreault, “but we’re not a big fan of the idea of the Village being split in two to form those boundaries.”