Another member of Windsor city council is not seeking re-election. Ward 4 Coun. Mark McKenzie has announced he is not running in October’s municipal election. “It was a hard decision to make, but I decided four years was enough to sit on council, so I’m not going to be running for re-election this fall,” says McKenzie. McKenzie has been a member of council since the end of 2022 and says when he was first elected, his son was eight years old, and over the last four years he has missed his son’s football games and school events. He says he doesn’t want to miss another four years of his son’s activities. “Any parent knows, they always say the time goes by quick, and you don’t really realize it until you miss four years of him growing up, and I don’t want to miss four more,” he says. McKenzie says being a councillor has been an amazing job. He says he loved serving the community, interacting with his fellow council members and city administration. “It’s great to be able to help people, and unfortunately, you know everything can’t be a win; you lose some, you win some, but when you do get something done for a resident who says, ‘I’ve been trying for years and years to get this solved,’ and when you finally solve it and people are crying because they’re just so happy that you were able to finally solve something, I’m going to miss that,” he says. When asked if McKenzie would run again in the future, he said. “Never say never, I don’t know. Politics has really become so divisive, and I think social media and COVID have made it a lot worse,” he says. During this term of council, McKenzie has been board chair of Windsor Public Library. He has also sat on the boards for Transit Windsor and Essex-Windsor Solid Waste Authority and is a committee member for a number of city committees, including Development and Heritage and Community Services. McKenzie says he’s proud to deliver on some core ward priorities, including front-yard parking reform, a new playground at Optimist Memorial Park and new crosswalks at Richmond and Chilver, Lincoln and Vimy, and Wyandotte and Marentette. As of Wednesday afternoon, Rasha Zaid is the only candidate to file nomination papers for Ward 4. Late last month, Ward 6 councillor Jo-Anne Gignac announced at a city council meeting that she is not seeking re-election this fall.
