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February
2002 Newsletter
The
End of the Federal Assessment
There
will not be a federal environmental assessment of the expressway.
The process begun in May 1998 officially ended with the
decision of the federal government not to appeal the court
decisions of last year that ruled no assessment is required
in law.
However,
the federal government says it plans to amend the assessment
legislation. This shows that they still believe the courts
have misinterpreted the assessment act. Interestingly, this
is also apparently the view of the City's lawyers who openly
advocated amending the act rather than appealing the court
verdict. However, despite everyone agreeing that the court
got it wrong, none of the three involved governments has
anything to offer Red Hill Valley.
It
is not possible to determine why the courts got so confused,
but there are a few things that might have contributed.
First
and foremost was the amount of money spent by the City to
confuse them. Council literally wrote a blank cheque
to its lawyers in the summer of 1999. They were told it
would cost $75,000 to $100,000 to stop the federal assessment.
By November of that year, the lawyers had already spent
$467,000. Council accepted this gross overspending and authorized
running the total bill to $1.2 million. This was also overspent
without permission, and eventually the bill hit $2.5 million.
The City estimated it spent an additional $2 million on
its own staff and other activities.
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Using
$4.5 million of our money, the City Council has
avoided a process that would have properly reviewed
the expressway and forced the City to explain its
detailed plans and its reasons for the project.
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Exactly how this money was spent may never be known, because
the City and its lawyers have refused to provide a detailed
accounting. We know that a portion was spent on lobbyists,
but have no information on what role lobbying plays in
a court case. We don't know how much the federal government
spent on the court case, but feel certain that it was
less than 10% of the City's spending, and likely much
less than that.
Other
factors that might have played a role in determining the
outcome include the ruling that limited the role of
Friends of Red Hill Valley to providing evidence
only about the natural features of the valley. We
were forced to sit in silence while the City re-wrote
history to fit their claim that irrevocable decisions
had been made decades ago, that the valley expressway
was merely the extension of the Linc, that impacts of
the road had been properly assessed, that re-locating
seven kilometres of the creek should not require a permit
under the Fisheries Act, and many other opinions presented
as 'facts'.
The
project faces many more regulatory hurdles as we noted
in our November letter — including the unresolved
problem of excavating a toxic dump in the path of the
road — and a massive financial crisis that appears
about to extract more than $1000 a year from homeowners
in additional taxes and fees. This includes an extra $425
in water and sewer fees per home, a $180 a year increase
to reduce business taxes, and at least $338 a year to
increase the budget for maintaining and widening existing
roads. These are all permanent increases and the associated
increased burden on homeowners doesn't include paying
for a new mountain police station ($10.2m), a four-pad
arena ($16m), renovation of Wentworth Lodge ($12m), a
plan for revitalization of downtown ($14.4m), remedial
work at the Rennie and Brampton dumps ($10.5m), and repairs
to City Hall ($40m), as well as about $40 million in additional
capital projects that were dropped from the 2001 budget
as 'unaffordable'.
It
is really quite unbelievable that some councillors still
think that Hamilton can also afford the Red Hill Creek
Expressway. Friends of Red Hill is expanding its
efforts to alert the public to these fiscal realities.
We have prepared an information bulletin [included with
the mailout newsletter]. Over 20,000 were distributed
door-to-door in the first three weeks or work. If you
can help, please call us at (905) 381-0240.
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