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May
2002 Newsletter
Where
is the City of Hamilton Going?
It
is clear that the 2002 budget is destructive of far more
than Hamilton's largest park. The Wade administration has
picked up where the Cooke administration left off and appears
determined to ensure that the priorities of the Hamilton
government serve a handful of powerful business interests,
while leaving the vast majority of our community to suffer
the consequences.
The
key direction in the proposed budget comes from a new "Vision"
statement adopted by Council last November "to focus
all available resources on economic development". This
vision was arrived at without public notice or consultation
and it effectively replaces Vision 2020 as the official
direction of the City.
A
strategic commitments document released in late March set
out the new priorities in detail as follows:
- lower
business taxes;
- build
the Red Hill Creek Expressway;
- try
to get money for business from other governments;
- attract
and retain businesses;
- subsidize
growth at the airport.
The cuts are essentially being made to accommodate these
priorities. This is especially clear in the capital budget
where $249.5 million in projects were submitted, but only
$141.3 million are being funded. Of the 179 rejected projects,
76.5% were from either the Parks department or the Community
Services department. There are pages and pages of capital
projects that are essentially maintenance and rehabilitation
of existing infrastructure that have been declared "unaffordable".
Many of them have been rejected several times.
If
you've decided three, four or five times that you can't
afford to fix leaky roofs in arenas and community centres,
or leaky windows in the Big Sisters building, or the heating
and ventilation system in Hamilton Place and the Football
Hall of Fame, then you've really decided to abandon those
buildings.
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