Discussions regarding whether to approve the budgets for Windsor's business improvement associations (BIA) have been put on hold for now.
It was expected that during Monday night's city council meeting that the subject would be a hot button issue, however, it was deferred to next week's council meeting.
Three of the nine BIAs -- Downtown Windsor, Via Italia and Erie Street- - have recently come under fire from the City of Windsor for pledging donations towards Citizens for an Accountable Mega Hospital Planning Process (CAMPP). CAMPP is a grassroots group that is opposed to placing the new regional hospital on County Road 42. It raised money for a legal defence to take the hospital zoning issue before the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal.
On May 17, Mayor Drew Dilkens held a news conference alleging that it may have been illegal under the Ontario Municipal act for these BIAs, which have budgets subject to city council approval, to donate to CAMPP. As a result, Dilkens said the BIAs may be penalized with a reduced budget.
However, after nearly two and a half hours of waiting during Monday night's council, representatives from the BIAs were told the discussion would be deferred a week, to allow more time for talks between the BIAs and the city.
Wyandotte Town Centre BIA Chair Wade Griffith was one of the people expecting to speak at the meeting. He said it came as a shock that the matter got pushed back and that many of them expected the discussions to take precedence.
"As we were sitting there we were getting more and more frustrated," he said. "When the deferral came, we were very surprised. We had our attorneys show up, we had all the BIAs city-wide show up only to be told 'come back in a week and we'll get in touch with you.'"
Griffith said he does take it as a good sign that the city may want to take some time to hear what the BIAs have to say over the next week. However, he said these talks should have happened sooner and without budget confirmations, they've been stuck in limbo and unable to spend. Something he said is hurting the local economy.
The point he hopes to make to the city before the next meeting is the same point he planned to say at Monday's meeting, that the BIAs were well within their right to support CAMPP and the opposition of the new hospital location. Griffith said the amount the BIAs pledged to the organization were so minimal that they would not impact the BIA operating budget. He added that he was shocked that the city publically threatened them with a reduced budget as a result of their donation.
"All three districts that pledged money to this campaign will be directly affected if the hospital leaves our city core," Griffith explained. "It'll be through both housing, it will be through businesses as far as restaurants and entertainment...will all be impacted when the areas largest employer leaves."
Over the next few days, Griffith said the three BIAs that pledged money expect to be contacted by city staff and councillors to review the legal stance of the issue and so that both sides can explain where they are coming from.
Griffith said that overall, BIAs are put in place to work cohesively with the city and he hopes both sides can come to a resolution for the sake of Windsor as a whole.
"Now we're at the point where the BIAs have lawyers, the city has lawyers and really it's getting counterproductive in producing anything for the city except for a black-eye in the province because we look really bad when we get into a war," he said.
Windsor's next city council meeting takes place on Monday, June 3 at 6 p.m.
