Raise the Hammer

While I agree that equal representation is a desired outcome, this analysis seems to be ignoring the elephant in the room.

The inequity in representation in the new city is greater between the lower city and the mountain wards than between the lower city and the "suburbs". If my math is correct, the lower city has one repesentative for every 36,481 citizens, the mountain wards have one per 49,147 and the "suburbs" one per 24,959 That's a difference of 12,666 per representative between the lower and upper city and 11,522 between the lower city and the "suburbs".

There's really very little corelation between representation and income. Clearly, those with the highest income, Wards 9 through 15, tend to have the most representation but those in the middle income range, Wards 6,7 and 8 have the least. The lowest income wards, 1 through 5, have a level of representation that's almost smack dab in the middle.

Given that Wards 1 through 8 have existed unchanged for decades, and given that those boundaries could have been realligned on numerous occassions by Councillors in the old city, one has to wonder if the disparity in reprsention in the new city has less to do with income and more to do with Councillors in Wards 1 through 8 tacitly agreeing for years not to rock the boat and eliminate one of their colleague's seats in the lower city. Who really cares how big one's ward is if you've got a job for life?

Prediction: Ward reallignments necessarily begin on the fringes of a municipality and move to the centre. Hence, a rejigging of the existing 15 Wards would undoubtedly mean a radical reallignment/overlap of the "periperal" old city wards, 1,5,6,7 and 8 with the adjacent wards in Dundas, Ancaster, Stoney Creek and Glanbrook, I predict that, if any reallignment is proposed, it will involve an expansion of Council under the guise of preserving represntation in the "suburbs" when, it fact, it will be all about preserving Councillors' jobs in the lower city.