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The City of Hamilton's Vision 2020 - There are a number of citizen groups keeping watch on and reporting with growing alarm the demise of Hamilton. (See end of article for a list of organizations and web references to City of Hamilton documents.) It seems timely to take a second look at the city's own Vision 2020 document, which was adopted by Hamilton City Council in 1993 and reviewed in 2003, to compare their stated goals with the current situation. The document describes Hamilton as a place in which "we look after the environment, look after each other, and create safe and healthy places to live, work and play." Unfortunately Hamilton appears to be making little, if any, progress. Here, to remind you, are a few selections from Vision 2020 along with some comments on recent events at City Hall.
In a recent article printed in Straight Goods, Andrew Orkin, a Hamilton lawyer acting on behalf of a native claim to defend the valley, wrote that Hamilton's Red Hill Valley is the largest stretch of urban parkland in Canada and the only remaining intact corridor from the Niagara Escarpment to Lake Ontario. It is an So here we have a large, natural area in keeping with the goals of Vision 2020, and we are about to destroy it to build an expressway! As Orkin states, "Schemes to plough (expressways) through city parks and low income neighbourhoods have died everywhere but in Hamilton." Don't hold your breath and hope that the Federal Government will step in. Sheila Copps, who recently lost in her bid for the Hamilton East / Stoney Creek Liberal nomination, has long opposed building this road, but Tony Valeri and Stan Keyes are both supporters.
Air quality issues were addressed in the last article on the Red Hill Creek Expressway. To recap, the City's own figures predict a doubling of bad air days in the east end of Hamilton after this road is built. And the summer temperatures are expected to climb several degrees due to the loss of the natural air-conditioning provided by the 44,000 mature trees which will be sacrificed. A recent survey by the City's transportation master plan process of the 10 largest urban centres in Canada, has found that Hamilton (with 7.1 metres of expressway or arterial lanes per person), has one of the highest per capita levels of expressways and arterial roads in Canada. Only Ottawa has more, with Incidentally, Hamilton's figure does not include proposed Red Hill Creek Expressway. Hamilton's annual fuel use is the second highest (1,242 litres/person) of the cities studied,10% above the average for Canada's largest metropolitan areas. Hamilton ranks 6th out of the 10 cities in transit use and 3rd in cars per person. Transit use decreased to 7% of rush hour trips in 2001 (from 12% in 1986).
Current practices in Hamilton are on a collision course with all of these goals. The current budget does not provide us with any information about the renovation of older properties. Nor does it report any figures on the number of homes that have been declared unfit. If it was concerned about urban renewal, both of these areas would be a focus of study. It seems that new development on the fringes of the city is all that matters. The majority of Councillors are dedicated to more sprawl. The successful paving of farmer's fields is carefully noted but not the loss of productive agricultural lands. Remember that the new mayor, Larry DiIanni received much of his financial support from developers. (And The Spectator, the only daily newspaper in Hamilton, is a "platinum partner" of the Hamilton-Halton Home Builders Association.) There has been a great deal of speculation that the city hall manager, Bob Robertson, may have been fired in part over differences he had with Mayor DiIanni over the costs of developments on the city outskirts and the costs to the city of the Red Hill Creek Expressway. Far from curbing urban sprawl, Hamilton is actively encouraging it. Development charges run at about $7,000, which is less than half the charges imposed by surrounding communities. Our neighbours charge about $16,000 per house. Given that about 2000 new homes are built in Hamilton each year, the City is losing about $18 million in development fees.
Budget documents make no mention of unemployment rates, numbers of homeless and household incomes, yet 28% of Hamilton's workforce is now employed outside the city and 100,000 city residents live below the poverty line. Mayor DiIanni has been conducting a "public consultation" on this year's budget. This includes meetings where he speaks and a 12 page questionnaire in which he asks people to choose between tax increases and cuts to services. There is no place in this questionnaire for people to suggest that the Red Hill Creek Expressway be stopped or that there should be no further reduction in business taxes, since these two items are priorities of the Mayor and therefore "untouchable". In fact, using your taxes, Hamilton has paid $375 per hour to a professional lobbying firm, StrategyCorp, since 1999, to sway the province in favour of the expressway. StrategyCorp was founded by Leslie Noble, longtime Tory adviser and the former campaign manager to Mike Harris. Did you vote for that? In the past three years the City has reduced taxes on commercial property by 15% and taxes on industrial property by 30%. This reduction now totals about $31 million per year. The current budget proposes a further reduction of $7 million in 2004. Added to this is $33 million in expressway costs ($15 million of If Council decided to disallow further reductions in business taxes and stop the expressway, the budget deficit would drop by $40 million - from $65 million to $25 million. These two measures alone would go a long way towards balancing the city's budget. And the provincial allocation could be put to urgent use in Trial balloons regarding the tolling of this road and of the existing Linc, are currently being floated. Expect a new report on this by the end of March. Who knows, maybe the City will sell them to a private consortium such as the one running the 407. At least this will reduce traffic! Thanks to Friends of Red Hill Valley from whose reports much of this article was prepared. Friends sends regular updates by email on these and other Hamilton issues. If you wish to subscribe, contact Friends at www.hwcn.org/link/forhv/ If you wish to engage your students in a discussion about any of these issues, the following resources can be accessed on line:
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