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February
23, 2004
SEVERAL UPDATES
Expressway
Committee
The
Expressway Implementation Committee of City Council is meeting
tomorrow morning (Tuesday, February 24) at 8:30 am in room
219 of City Hall. The ‘agreements’ between the
City and the Haundeonsaunee are expected to be discussed.
The meeting is open to the public.
Steelworkers
Rally
Steelworker union locals have called a rally for Wednesday
at 6 pm at the Hamilton Convention Centre.
City
– Haudenosaunee documents available
The reported draft agreement between the City and some members
of the Haundenosaunee Six Nations Confederacy has been posted
on Indymedia at http://hamilton.indymedia.org/feature/display/5714/index.php
A portion of the accompanying article by John Milton is
reproduced below:
Since
mid-September of last year (2003) the City of Hamilton has
been involved in confidential negotiations with the Haudenosaunee
Council at 6 Nations over the matter of the Red Hill Creek
Expressway project.
There
have been a number of stories recently in the Hamilton Spectator,
and other press, praising the agreements which have been
said to have resulted from this process, but up until now
the text of the agreements has not been available to the
public, in Hamilton, or at 6 Nations. These stories seem
to have been based on second hand accounts of the agreements
contents obtained via discussions with Paul Williams, one
of the negotiators for the Haudenosaunee.
It
was recently announced that this coming Tuesday, (February
24) the Expressway Implementation Committee (of the City
of Hamilton) would be presented for the first time with
the full text of the agreements but it was not clear if
this would also lead to public release of the documents.
IMC
Hamilton has obtained what we believe is a complete copy
of the document to be given to Hamilton City council members
on Tuesday as a result of a leak from a high level, reliable,
source. We invite you to draw your own conclusions...
Power
at City Hall
There are six standing committees that make all the key
decisions at City Hall, except for police matters. Mayor
DiIanni chairs one committee and is automatically a member
of all the other committees. He also sits on the police
board. While the mayor is obviously the most powerful elected
official, in theory at least the 15 councillors are all
equal. Each represents the people of one ward, and presumably
everyone in Hamilton should enjoy equal representation.
But it doesn’t seem to work that way in the DiIanni
government.
The
various committees have between five and eight members each.
Who gets on what committee is chosen by the mayor. Some
councillors appear to have been shortchanged. Ancaster Councillor
Murray Ferguson isn't one of them. Ferguson sits on four
committees plus the police board. Tom Jackson and Sam Merulla
come next with seats on four committees. Five others sit
on three committees each. The remaining 7 councillors only
have seats on two committees. How come?
One
reason could be experience. There are four councillors who
were first elected this past November. Three of them are
in the 2-committee category. The other one, Stoney Creek
councillor Phil Bruckler, is on three committees.
Another
reason might be politics. There are five anti-expressway
councillors. All of them are in the 2-committee group. One
is newly elected – Brian McHattie – but the other
four include some of the most experienced members of council.
Dave Braden, Margaret McCarthy and Russ Powers, for example,
have been councillors for ten years or more. Andrea Horwath
is into her seventh year.
Indeed,
all seven councillors on the bottom rung are either anti-expressway
or newly elected. Coincidence?
Budget
Crisis Continues
Five
council committee meetings this week on the city budget
have been cancelled. And one of the two scheduled standing
committee meetings has also been called off. No further
budget-related meetings are currently scheduled.
Councillors
were supposed to have received a “Decision Package”
of proposed spending cuts by the third week of January,
but it still hasn’t arrived. It is unclear if the cancellations
result from the failure to produce a plan to deal with the
$83 million budget shortfall, or if they are related to
the recent firing of the City Manager. A December schedule
called for final adoption of the city budget by March 24.
The
only standing committee still meeting this week is Community
Services – apparently in order to approve spending
$17 million in 2004 on the construction of a new four-pad
hockey arena to be located on part of King’s Forest
Park, just east of Mohawk sports park.
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