Latest news with #FabioCostante
CTV News
26-05-2025
- CTV News
Barron Bowl project scaled back due to rising costs
A nearly decade-long effort to enhance a skateboarding park in honour of a Windsor man killed in a hit-and-run has fallen short of its goal, but there's still a plan to see something done in his memory. An administration report going to Monday's council meeting is asking for approval to provide $59,261 from the Parks Community Partnership Initiative Capital Project to move forward with smaller improvements at the Ryan Barron Memorial Skate Park located in Atkinson Park. The funding would be paired with $18,739 in donations raised by the Friends for Atkinson Park along with $40,522 in ward funds already provided to help build a skateboarding bowl in the park. When the 'Barron Bowl' project was first proposed in 2016, it was estimated it would cost $100,000-$120,000 to install a full skateboarding bowl, but the estimated cost now stands at $400,000-$450,000 due to inflation and rising costs, and construction has yet to begin. As a result, the father of Ryan Barron has asked city administration to reprioritize the money that's been raised to fund improvements to the skate park, which could include rails and various concrete ramps to be determined through stakeholder consultation. Ward 2 Coun. Fabio Costante says it's a very busy skateboarding park. 'All you have to do is go there any given evening, and you'll see how busy it is. It's all ages. You've got young kids, not-so-young adults, and everyone in between,' he says. 'There's broad consensus to do more. This is an effort in doing more and honouring his legacy.' Costante added, the original proposal is now out of reach in terms of the price and what the cost would be to maintain the bowl. 'It seemed only logical to focus on expanding the skate park in a reasonable way given the funds that we have and given what we can do that's within our control and still honour the late Ryan Barron,' he says. Barron, 30, was riding his skateboard in Vancouver in April of 2016 when he was killed in a hit-and-run. In 2018, Vancouver police arrested the then 23-year-old Amanpreet Singh Sohal in connection to the case. In 2020, Sohal was sentenced to 18 months in prison plus a one-year driving ban after pleading guilty to a charge of failure to stop at an accident causing bodily harm. Atkinson Park is located at 2005 Riverside Dr. W, while the skate park is at the opposite end of the park at 1934 University Ave. W. City council meets Monday at 10 a.m. — Rusty Thomson/AM800 News
CTV News
07-05-2025
- Politics
- CTV News
Ambassador Bridge ramp being demolished
Some residents in Ward 2 don't need an alarm clock to get them up for work. 'It's shaking every morning actually from 7 a.m.,' said Henry Cui about his house on Indian Road near Wyandotte Street West. The ramp to a preposed second span of the Ambassador Bridge, a span that was never built, is being demolished. Jackhammering began Monday and before that a number of homes were demolished on Cui's street in March. 'It's just funny that one day, all of a sudden, these homes are all gone and nobody said anything. After 25 years of fighting, we don't know,' said Chris Siefker, who lives a block over on Rosedale Avenue. Jennifer Jackson, 74, who lives behind Cui, said, 'I don't know what's happening behind us right now. I'm kind of scared because I don't know if I'm going to have to move or what's going on. Nobody tells you anything.' Ward 2 Coun. Fabio Costante said the demolition is part of the Bridge Corporation's plan to build a new plaza in this area north of the tracks on Huron Church near College Avenue. 'They're just tearing it down now and moving forward with their other plans looking at amalgamating their plaza inspection to the foot of the bridge,' Costante told CTV News. The permit to build a second span had a five-year window and expired in 2022, primarily due to permitting issues and disagreements with Canadian authorities. Requirements included having to demolish the existing bridge after a new one was built. Costante said a new plaza on the west side of Huron Church road will satisfy federal conditions imposed in 2017, but neighbours say they remain in the dark. 'They (Bridge Corporation and City of Windsor) haven't told us what the plaza is going to look like, what the street closures are going to look like, where the fire hall is going,' Siefker remarked. 'I've heard through the grapevine different things that have happened, but that nobody's communicating with any of us and this affects our entire neighborhood, like we're talking 40 blocks that are all going to be affected.' Costante said progress has been made and is optimistic about the outcome. 'There's been a change of tone, certainly, from the Bridge Company in the last few years and again, I'm very hopeful that we're at the tail end of this very, very long journey,' said Costante. Jackson hopes Costante is right, 'My hope is that this gets resolved soon and we don't have to wait years and years and years like we did with the boarded-up houses.' CTV reached out to the bridge corporation but did not get a response for this article.
CTV News
25-04-2025
- Business
- CTV News
‘We have a real problem': Taking rental licensing pilot city-wide could cost $4.3 million
A report heading to city council shows Windsor's Residential Rental Licensing (RRL) pilot program achieved the aims of improving safety conditions of rental units but expanding it city-wide may be prohibitively expensive. On Monday, council will discuss the options to move forward or kill the RRL program administration, pegged at a $4.3 million cost should it be rolled out across Windsor in its current format. 'I don't think that the proposal or the modeling that administration put forward in the report on the city-wide program is the only way to do this,' said Fabio Costante, the Ward 2 city councillor, in an interview with CTV News. Costante argues the report vindicates the thrust behind the study and shows the need for rental licensing and safety inspections is great. The pilot focused on Wards 1 and 2. Within those areas, the report shows only roughly a third of the units belonging to landlords who volunteered complied with safety standards on their first inspections. 'If the entire sample size and Wards 1 and 2 were part of this project, that number of 29 per cent, as low as it is and shocking as it is, would probably be even lower,' said Costante. 'And so, we have a real problem.' The report highlights the 'essentially voluntary' nature of the program may have impacted results and participation. Hiring staff to carry out the program became a struggle because of its innate short-term scope. The two-year pilot ended on February 13. Taking it city-wide, as outlined in the city report, would require annual licensing fees to jump 34 per cent to $625 at a minimum to cover the costs of carrying out the program based on 7,000 applications a year, which is an estimated 50 per cent of the rental licence pool. Costante calls that the 'Cadillac' model and believes it will take many more years to grow the licencing registry to that point. Instead, the councillor suggests a tiered approach to sort out good and bad actors may help to drill down on the problem more efficiently and more cheaply. 'Why do we have to inspect them every year as an example? Right? Why don't we inspect them every two to three years, or four years? And have classes of landlords so that we're surgically narrowing in on the bad actors in our city,' Costante suggested. Path Forward Administration recommends the bylaw be put in abeyance to allow more time to revise the program to be more cost effective. That could keep the law on the books without necessarily enforcing it. Repealing the bylaw could open up the city to litigation again should council decide to launch a new rental licensing scheme. While Ontario's highest court struck down a challenge from a group of landlords and sided with the city in upholding the bylaw, Costante — a lawyer himself — is wary of further legal disruptions. 'If they want to spend all that money on lawyers and radio ads as opposed to simply investing in this program that ensures that the people that are providing services for are living in safe conditions. That's their prerogative,' said Costante. 'We're going to continue doing what we have to do.' **Disclaimer: The author of this report is a landlord, but the property falls outside the scope of the RRL study and did not participate in any legal action against the City of Windsor. **
CBC
07-02-2025
- Business
- CBC
Windsor mayor vetoes tunnel bus; councilor believes there's an appetite to override him
A Windsor city councillor says he believes there will be an appetite among councillors to pursue an override of a mayoral veto that puts an end to the Windsor-Detroit tunnel bus. Ward 2 Coun. Fabio Costante said he had not yet spoken to councillors, and he needed to familiarize himself with the process for reversing a veto because this would be the first time council would attempt it under the province's new strong mayor legislation. "We're trying to build a plane as we're flying because this is uncharted territory," he said. "But certainly, I'm going to be consistent and support the tunnel bus. I think it's an operation that's integral, not just to the tunnel system but to our relationship with Detroit and to providing access to a core amenity for many Windsorites. Mayor Drew Dilkens on Thursday vetoed a Jan. 27 decision of city council that would have continued tunnel bus service and doubled its fare. He wrote in his mayoral decision, published on the city's website, that the bus serves as an economic development engine for the City of Detroit while providing almost no economic benefit for Windsor. And he said he was not prepared to continue funding it in light of U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff threats against Canada. He also said that the increased fare was likely to drive down ridership, reducing the likelihood that it would bring the service closer to breaking even. "This fare increase makes the tunnel bus service more expensive than driving a car to Detroit (including the cost of tolls and parking fees)," he wrote. Councillors have 15 days to override the veto and would need a two-thirds majority vote to do so. The union representing transit workers, meanwhile, says it's filed a complaint with the Canadian Industrial Relations Board over the decision. Dilkens has faced criticism elsewhere for his promise to veto the tunnel bus decision, which passed by a 7-4 vote last month.
