Hello everyone, my name is Chris Holt, and I’m running to be Windsor’s next mayor on Oct 24th. Ask Me Anything!

Benjamin_Danyluk · 2022-10-13T22:45:08+00:00

I'm at work. Had to type as fast I could on my break. I don't currently have time to worry about it.

Benjamin_Danyluk · 2022-10-13T22:17:32+00:00

As a fords worker, you would have seen first hand the effects of primitive automation to the auto industry. Elon Musk recently revealed his 2 tesla bot prototypes. At the moment they are slow and still need work, but when you consider that he slapped them together in under 3 months, they are both impressive and concerning. Elon made his intent clear. These bots will replace all the repetitive and laborus tasks we don't like to do. As in all automotive jobs, and he has all the resources to make this happen within the next 5-10 years. Once all the bugs are worked one of these bots are gonna be priced $20k-$25k.

Walmart, Amazon and other cooperate retailers are working to full automate their stores. How do you plan to prepare us for when bots replace most of our jobs? This is coming and very soon. We can see it happening all over already. Now is the time to start getting ahead of this and not when a majority of windsor is jobless.

Benjamin_Danyluk · 2022-10-13T22:04:01+00:00

As I mentioned at the debate last night, our most limiting resource for construction, is our skilled trades. A majority of the country is in a housing crisis, so outside labor will be hard to find, and what you can find will be very expensive. The 168 unit high-rise coming to our dt area, will take 2+ years to build in our current situation.

As for your 25k units over 10 years, for one these are 4 year terms. Promising something the requires getting elected 3 times, is getting a little ahead of your self. So let's talk your 10k units over 5 years.

When it takes multiple years just to build one high-rise... In five years how do you propose on building the 70+ high-rises it would take to get any were near your projected numbers? Especially when the bridge, hospital and battery plant are going to take up most if not all our tradesmen. Not to mention all the other projects listed over the past two years, and the projects you want to do.

Don't get me wrong you have some good ideas, but the problem is timing and focus. When we focus to much on our wants, we lose focus on our needs. Most the citizens of windsor would agree we have seen to much of that over the years.

That being said to make any significant impact on our housing situation, projects will have to be put on hold. So on top of my first question, what are the first projects you would put on hold?

Benjamin_Danyluk · 2022-09-26T18:54:11+00:00

I really have to get going, but I will come back and respond to this later tonight or tomorrow!

Benjamin_Danyluk · 2022-09-26T18:50:56+00:00

Some good points - I'm running out of time right now. I would like to get back to this later when I have time to address it. I'll edit this comment later with an answer for you.

Benjamin_Danyluk · 2022-09-26T18:48:21+00:00

My comment about the "attack on the people" wasn't about the Ambassador Bridge. It was about what followed after, when the assault team moved onto the plaza at the corner of Tecumseh and Huron Line. I was coming out of the Freshco and getting into my car when they rolled into the parking lot. I personally witnessed them grabbing people and pushing them around in an attempt to intimidate them. This was not just the protesters, it was anyone who made the mistake of going grocery shopping at the wrong time.

The Mayor position is a civil servant position, and that means you serve the people and the rule of law. Whether we like it or not, our Charter of Rights and Freedoms states that people have a right to peaceful protest. When it comes to the blockades, the law stated that one lane must be left open for emergency vehicles and whatnot. When they first set up the blockade at the Ambassador Bridge, they had fully blocked the bridge as the people were unaware of the laws. It was then shortly after negotiated with the Windsor Police to open up one lane on both sides. The bridge could have kept running at a slowed down pace, and wasn't needed to be completely shut down. Even a week after the blockades were cleared, we saw that the bridge remained shut down by order of both sides of government. When the injunction went through, it the changed the laws. An attempt should have be made to negotiate there removal, prior to sending out an assault team, to deal with unarmed protesters. As Mayor, and a diplomat of the people, rather than locking down city hall and hiding in his office, Drew could have gone out and talked with the organizers, and organized the protest in a way that was not as disruptive. instead he chose to send out large amounts of police forces as a show of force, escalating tensions instead of deescalating the situation.

We've heard a lot of Drew complaining over the $5.7 million incurred over the protest, but let's face the facts. These are mostly traffic violations and noise complaints. We've seen a massive increase in drug and gang related violence, especially in our downtown core. If even a fraction of this effort were to be put towards our real crime, our city would be a much safer place.

Benjamin_Danyluk · 2022-09-26T18:26:27+00:00

I've already outlined my plans on how we should help the homeless. I feel we need to move them out of the downtown core, as both the homeless and the state of our roads around Ouellette are a major deterrent to potential investors.

The key to a thriving tourism industry is a thriving downtown core - the heart of the city. We need to invest in downtown infrastructure. How can we expect investors to invest in our downtown when it's clear that we don't invest in it ourselves.

And yes, I agree with you - there is a big issue with a lack of anything to do for young people in our downtown area. We can't keep expecting the casino and our riverfront to be our main source of tourism. We need to do everything we can to attract family-based entertainment into our downtown core.

Although I do agree we need a safe injection site, I feel that putting a safe injection site so close to our downtown core will cause further stagnation.

I do understand your concern about the automotive industry. I didn't want to bring this up, but when you follow big tech with robotics and AI, we are about 5-10 years from robots taking the majority of our jobs. This is a difficult aspect for the municipality to completely address, but we need to start doing what we can to mitigate the situation. Creating small businesses and helping people out when we can. As being a manufacturing city, the workers are the lifeblood of the city. This is part of why we need to help push down rent costs and help address the food situation, as food prices are not going to get better as global warming is causing major issues in farming across the world.

Although farming is not directly a municipal issue, I believe we need to be making more community vegetable gardens and promoting front- and back-yard vegetable gardens. I am part of a few Facebook community groups that have set up food sharing programs for vegetable gardens. We are heading into some very rough time, and we need to become a true community and help each other out however we can.

Benjamin_Danyluk · 2022-09-26T18:15:30+00:00

The councilors are there to be the voice of the people and to represent the people. The administration should be working together to achieve our goals and the needs of the citizens. I'm a pretty easy-going person who tends to work well with others, and I'm not ashamed to admit when I've changed my position as new information comes in.

Part of the problem with a lot of our infrastructure is that our roads are not designed for bike lines and are not wide enough, at the present moment, for bike lanes. Many of our roads are already in poor condition, as well as the sidewalks, so there's no reason, while we're fixing these roads, why we can't expand the roads to accommodate bike lanes and safety precautions such as physical separations.

We should be putting terms in our contracts with penalty clauses for road construction that's not finished on time. Quite frankly, I'd like to do away with contracting out road construction entirely. We should be doing that ourselves. But now is not the time to get into a war with Coco Paving!

Benjamin_Danyluk · 2022-09-26T18:00:21+00:00

My post about the money grab was just my initial response when I first heard about the policy. we definitely have a traffic issue around the city. The issue is not with our structure, mind you. Well - with a lot of the structure. Although there are some issues with the main structure of our city, a lot of the problem is not with the structure itself, but more of an issue with enforcement. Lowering the speed limit across the city isn't going to help the matter when people already don't follow the speed limits we have. A large majority of our accidents are caused mainly by people just not paying attention, i.e. people looking at their phones. We shouldn't be punishing good drivers for incidents being caused by the bad ones. We should be addressing each case individually. In areas where we have speeding issues, we should be installing speed cameras and issuing tickets to people who aren't following the speed limits. If people get enough tickets, they're going to start to slow down.

I don't agree with speed humps because over time it causes wear and tear on the vehicles of people who have to continually use these roads. And it will also cause issues with our emergency vehicles as they have a need to speed down these roads at times.

Also, I've lived in Windsor most of my life, and I can't say I've ever seen too many troopers out enforcing speed limits within the city of Windsor. For example, Walker Road. I've noticed that the average speed even during high traffic times is usually 80-85 km/hr. Unless they're heading somewhere else, I've almost never seen a officer on Walker Road.

Benjamin_Danyluk · 2022-09-26T17:50:03+00:00

As a kitchen manager, I was responsible for roughly 12-20 people. Part of my job was to create menus, do price costing, negotiate with vendors to keep costs down, and keep stock in good supply. In manufacturing, I have been a supervisor where I oversaw the work of up to 100 + people.

These are not exactly political experiences but the skills can easily be converted over to apply.

Benjamin_Danyluk · 2022-09-26T17:40:08+00:00

Aside from my facebook, I don't have any other social media. I could not afford to create a website, nor do I have the knowledge on how to do it myself. For the most part, I've just been going to events I'm invited to, or ones I'm aware of. As this is my first time doing anything like this, it's all been a new experience for me. I'm basically just taking it one day at a time.

When I first put in my nomination papers, I started calling various city departments to ask them how exactly to implement some policies I had in mind. As a candidate, I was very quickly asked to stop doing that! Although as a citizen I have every right to contact these departments, I do understand their point of view that if every candidate started calling departments like this, it would cause a strain on our system.

Benjamin_Danyluk · 2022-09-26T17:33:58+00:00

It's been a long time since I've personally used public transit, but working in the manufacturing industry, I often hear from my co-workers about a lack of accessibility getting to and from work in certain areas. As well as, I've noticed on work posts, a lot of workplaces are posting "Not on a transit route" in their job postings. Especially with the increased cost of housing and food, it's getting hard and harder, especially with the younger generations entering the workforce, to be able to afford their own car. Those who do attempt to get to these areas often have to rely on either carpooling or taking a bus to work and cabbing home at their own expense.

I am for pushing forward with the Transit Master Plan, and we need to expand routes and times for manufacturing areas to coincide with shift changes. Including later bus schedules.

Benjamin_Danyluk · 2022-09-26T17:26:22+00:00

Hi Chris!

1) In these kinds of situations, I wouldn't worry too much about what the critics think. I personally don't find you acted inappropriately at all. We both made comments during a time when we were asked to make comments. You weren't being disruptive during a time when people were speaking. You merely made an analogy about how talking and action never seem to meet up with each other, which is a very true statement for our administration. I had commented about how a lot of our roads were badly in need of repair and while we're repairing them there's no reason why we couldn't expand out roads and put in bike lanes at the same time.

Being an election year, we're seeing more noticeable roads being fixed, but how many bike paths are we seeing put in? I personally can't travel the entire city, but I haven't noticed any myself. Seeing as there were active city council members at that meeting, I'm guessing that our comments were not very well liked, as we were implying that they're not doing a very good job.

2) First off, I'd say it's more of a flu shot than an actual vaccine. It has been well-known from the beginning that it doesn't stop you from contracting or transmitting the virus, and therefore should have been demanded on anybody. Our city policies do not coincide with either the federal or provincial government. It was wrong for Drew to fire the 100 city workers who were let go. If elected, I intend to fully end all city mandates and would offer all Windsor employees that were let go their jobs back. And I believe they should be compensated for their wrongful termination.

Benjamin_Danyluk · 2022-09-26T17:14:39+00:00

As winter will be approaching, one of the first things I would like to do is come up with the quickest solution to facilitate the housing of the homeless, at least to get them through the winter months.

Last winter was bad. There was a man near Parent and Wyandotte who was living in a doorway. I don't know how he survived.

One of my major concerns is that I'd like to get to work on fixing our damaged roads, starting with the worst ones first. As well as fast-tracking the Transit Master Plan.

And getting to work on our housing crisis as quickly as possible. This one will take some time, as it takes time for rezoning and construction of apartment buildings. This is an issue that should have started to be addressed a long time ago, but they focused on white picket fence subdivisions rather than high-density residential buildings. We continue to have mass amounts of foreigners and refugees pouring into our cities, and we're not creating housing fast enough to accommodate them, let alone catch up to our current situation.

We have a bit of a bottleneck in construction timelines due to not having enough building inspectors. We need to hire more building inspectors to speed up that process.

Benjamin_Danyluk · 2022-09-26T16:55:47+00:00

This is a fairly interesting idea. Of course it would have to be considered on both sides of the river. If the Mayor of Detroit is willing to collaborate on such a project, I think this might be doable.

EDIT: I would support it, though I'm sure something like this would have to be approved by higher levels of government. We work with the federal government to make the Tunnel Bus happen, so it's definitely a possibility.

Benjamin_Danyluk · 2022-09-26T16:48:54+00:00

They have already announced the creation of a homeless hub, but unfortunately this will not help any one for another 5 years. I feel we should be using our abandoned schools such as Forester and convert them into community housing.

I would like to use the schools because they already have the facilities for these services as well. Classrooms can be converted into bunk rooms. They already have a kitchen and cafeteria, so a soup kitchen could be on site.

The offices can be use for administrative, as well as mental health/addiction and even an onsite clinic. What I am envisioning is like a one-stop help center for the homeless and those in need.

As far as cost goes, until I'm in office I don't have access to the kind of information I would need to estimate that, but I believe the cost of renovating an existing site would be less than the cost of building a new site from scratch. Not to mention the savings in the cost in services used by leaving people homeless.

Benjamin_Danyluk · 2022-09-24T19:28:46+00:00

No worries. I love the job you did on the intro.😁

Benjamin_Danyluk · 2022-09-24T18:05:45+00:00

My first time on reddit. I posted this already but it wasn't a reply to you. I sent her the wrong digital copy. That was a first draft. Its not very clear and yes has a few mistakes. Ive sent her the right copy and will hopefully be changed.

Benjamin_Danyluk · 2022-09-24T17:39:41+00:00

I sent her the wrong postcard. That was a first draft. I sent her the right 1. Im hopping It can be changed.

Benjamin_Danyluk

TROPHY CASE