Hamilton This Week

Tim Hortons in Africa?

Jetta Lo of Dundas has a great website to tell the story of her campaign to share Hamilton youth soccer equipment with children in Senegal.  You can find the story on her site, http://www.senequip.com .

One reason why Hamilton is Not the "Best Place to Raise a Child"

On the back of every business card for every City of Hamilton employee and Councillor you will find the City`s mission statement. Priority One reads: To be the best place to raise a child. The gap between the mission statement and the reality of life in the North End is very clear when you live on or near Burlington Street East.

Burlington Street East between James and Wellington has over 10,000 vehicles per day. Children cross Burlington Street to go to school, visit friends, go to the park and the recreational centre. The traffic is a constant danger. Here, residents of Burlington Street talk about the experience.

 

Ten Tough/Easy Questions about Hamilton

 Cal Difalco, the publisher of thehamiltonian.net has  a series of blog postings in which he asks people living in Hamilton to answer what he labels as "10 Tough Questions.   When he asked me to respond, I received his permission to ask myself my own questions.  It was a bit of fun at the end of the year to be asked to deliver all my old sermons in one lump.   By publishing them here I can imitate the group of inmates in a penitentiary somewhere who labelled all their old stale jokes by number.   That way one could tell a joke simply by saying "22" or "13".  Now whenever I`m tempted to preach on something about Hamilton I can just say "Question 1, Answer 4." and get on with real life.  Here goes:

10 Easy Questions:

=====================================
Question 1.  Can you name 10 major current Hamilton success stories, listing them in priority of success?

 Sure:

Paid by taxpayers? Not!

Saturday morning July 11th presented a great example of how best to implement the City`s vision.  Dozens of volunteers had worked to arrange and manage the FOGH Boorman race for young people.   Working on their own, not on any city payroll, these volunteers packed the West Harbour parking lot, brought hundreds of people to the water`s edge, helped make Hamilton a great place to raise a child and implemented the City`s mantra of "engage its citizens".  The role of volunteers in developing and maintaining Hamilton`s West Harbour is an issue in the current negotiations between the City and the entities who started life on the West Harbour when it was written off by the rest of the community.  Today those entities are a fabulous part of Hamilton`s life and attractiveness.  They need all the help they can get.

(Disclaimer: The writer is not a member of the Hamilton Yacht Club.)

And the parking lot was jammed on a rainy day. 

My car is my friend. My car is your enemy.

What if we could reduce child pedestrian casualties in our downtown neighbourhoods by 70%? 

After the Ontario Legislature changed the law to allow cities to lower speed limits to 30K, a group of residents in Hamilton's North End started to look at what other cities were doing about speed limits. They found a huge body of research on what speed does to people and to neighbourhoods. 

One such UK research report put it very simply:

"A recent study of the Government's trial 20 mph zones provides overwhelming evidence of their benefits. Average speeds fell by 9.3 mph and casualties fell 60%. Child pedestrian casualties fell 70%."

West Harbour Project Question 4: Where is Hamilton's Real Waterfront?

Is the confusion over the use of the title "Waterfront" deliberate?  We have a lot of shoreline next to a lot of water.  Technically, Coote's Paradise is water-front.  So is the tiny West Harbour shoreline.  But, as in the case of Kingston, Brockville, Port Hope, Toronto, Mississauga, Oakville, Burlington, Grimsby, St. Catherines and a host of US cities, we have one real waterfront:  20 kilometers of beautiful and accessible shoreline on Lake Ontario.

Click Here and see Hamilton's real Waterfront

Harbour West Project Question 3: How did this all start?

Where did the idea of spending $81.5 million to tear down and rebuild the current operations in Harbour West come from? 

Was there a ground swell of public opinion in some part of Hamilton that we need to fix something in the west harbour?

Did the people who were using the parks and the marinas complain that something was missing? 

Did the volunteer organizations who are doing a great job bringing people to the water's edge demonstrate there was a need for radical change?

Did we learn something from the failed experience of designing a Crystal Palace on Bayfront Park?

Is it true that this project is an offspring of Setting Sail?  

Here are some of the answers:

Harbour West Project Question 2: Who cares, who needs it?

When he was building his business in Hamilton would Ron Joyce let someone build a Tim Horton's on one of our corners before he first made sure there would be customers for the location?  Not likely.  Before we spend $81.5 million on wholesale changes in Harbour West as recommended to Council by Mr. Stewart, staff and consultants, could we look at the customer data:

Question 1: What would we do with $81,500,000.00 if we had it?

"Based on the draft financial strategy, the estimated total capital cost of the plan (including contingency, engineering and PST), as presented in May of 2007, is $81.5 million."

Scott Stewart, C.E.T.
 (Former) General Manager
Public Works Department
Report to Council, December 15th, 2008

Scott Stewart and friends at Public Works and a host of consulting companies have proposed to completely rebuild Harbour West, Hamilton's unique and highly successful recreational boating resource.  Some ideas just never seem to die.  This is the fourth or fifth time, since Urban Renewal died, that someone at Hamilton City Hall has proposed to spend tens of millions of dollars on turning the west harbour into a local version of Chicago's waterfront. 

Before we even start to look at whether or not this is something Hamilton needs, we might ask if we actually have $81.5million to spend?  If we do, should we look at different ways to spend it?