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Wait for it...

*off the cuff, despairing rant*

Gillingham campaigned on creating neighourhood action teams that will look for issues in communities, including icy sidewalks, he said.

"I've been working to, and will continue to work to improve snow clearing in this city, our winter city. I think the neighborhood action teams are really going to help," he said.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/sidewalk-snow-clearing-motion-1.6807358

Mayor Gillingham, can you seriously claim to be "working on it" when you have zero ideas and you outright reject the councillor who comes at you with a suggestion?

"People have the right to participate equally in society," Allard told the committee.

It's painfully apparent city councillors -- and our former-pastor mayor -- don't really believe that. 

Only people who get around in cars matter in this city. 

One councillor patronizingly explained that he wears grippy footwear in winter as though that would solve everyone's problems. The walkers? the wheelchairs? the strollers? Are they all supposed to add studded tires?

We love to claim we need made in Manitoba solutions (and then say finding them is too expensive), but the foolish arrogance of thinking we're such a special place that we can't learn solutions from anywhere else is probably the only thing unique about us. 

“When you are harnessing Mother Nature… you’ve got to use many tools in your toolkit to get to the end result… The public service is looking at all kinds of things. New technologies emerge, new machines emerge, new approaches emerge. Winnipeg really leads the way in snow and ice removal,” said Lukes.

https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2023/04/11/icy-sidewalks-create-shut-ins-city-told

Except that she has soundly rejected this attempt to put a new tool in the toolkit and she has no suggestions other than vague belief in the "emergence" of "new technologies."

Falling is the leading cause of injury-related hospitalizations in Winnipeg, and more than one-third of the province’s direct health-care costs are accounted for by injuries related to falls.

According to the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, 20 per cent of falls that require hospitalization are the result of slipping on ice and snow. In Winnipeg, a typical winter month can see more than 300 people, more than 10 per day, visit urgent care or an emergency room to treat injuries from a fall caused by snow and ice.

https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analysis/2023/04/10/winter-shouldnt-translate-to-a-lower-quality-of-life

So besides improving quality of life for everyone outside of a car, the expenditure of funds on clearing the sidewalks would actually save money on hospital visits -- and frankly, could forestall health decline in some people. But those pots of money live in different places, so even a balance sheet view can't convince. 

It's disheartening to live in a city where politicians with so little creativity and so very little care for anyone who doesn't look just like them get elected over and over again.



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