Back to business
As Hamilton’s new city council gets to work on Monday, The Spectator’s Matthew Van Dongen takes a look at the newest members of the team — and the five major issues councillors will face in their first days on the job
CITY COUNCIL’S ELECTION
hiatus finally ends Monday night when members are sworn in at city hall.
The largely ceremonial meeting is most important to the five new faces on council who will officially be on the job six weeks after voters had their say. It’s shaping up to be a big job.
The next four-year council term includes tough decisions about the ongoing housing crisis, legal marijuana and the fate of the biggest infrastructure project in Hamilton’s history.
Turn to page A6 to see details of five big debates looming for the new council — and get to know your newest councillors.
LRT will loom over decisions, including a “road diet” on Aberdeen Avenue, with planners reluctant to give up car capacity ahead of project construction
Area rating and transit
The city’s HSR bus service
struggled last term with dropping ridership, a no-show bus crisis and growing demands to improve service outside the lower city.
You can argue all those challenges are wrapped up in the next big debate: Who pays how much for transit — and where?
Since amalgamation, transit taxes have been “area rated” — meaning different parts of the city pay different rates of tax based on former municipal borders and frequency of bus service.
If you live in rural Hamilton and receive no bus service, you pay nothing.
But an old-city homeowner pays easily three times more in transit taxes than a resident with the same value home in urban Dundas, Ancaster or Stoney Creek.
The differing tax rates are meant to account for vastly different levels of bus service by geography.
But the taxation system has resulted in “stunted or non-existent” transit in many parts of the city — and made it politically impossible to pay for improvements, say advocates such as Environment Hamilton, which championed phasing out arearated transit taxes during the election.
WATCH
Mayor Fred Eisenberger has said he expects a debate on area rating of transit. But some suburban councillors have vowed to fight a change. Ancaster’s Coun. Lloyd Ferguson, for example, has warned he might withdraw his support for LRT over the issue. LRT
Hamilton’s $1-billion light rail
transit line has survived years of study, countless council debates and now an unofficial referendum via Eisenberger’s win over “Stop the Train” mayoral candidate Vito Sgro. So what’s left for council to decide? Despite Eisenberger’s win, at least a third of councillors are publicly against LRT, with several others sitting on the fence.
That matters because Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford previously offered Hamilton the opportunity to kill the project and use the provincial funding “for roads or infrastructure or whatever they want to spend it on.”
In theory, a councillor could still put forward a motion to ask the province to fund a different project — or just seek clarity about the vague alternate funding offer.
Otherwise, council will need to debate an operating agreement spelling out city costs for the 14-kilometre line before a construction contract is signed, perhaps in late 2019.
WATCH
LRT will loom over all sorts of city
decisions. For example, those seeking a “road diet” for speedy Aberdeen Avenue will have to be patient, because planners are reluctant to give up car capacity with LRT construction looming.
Rental licensing and housing
Council has squelched the idea of licensing rental housing in the past, most recently in 2013. But the proposal is back in pilot project form thanks to a hotly debated recommendation from a committee of councillors, landlords and other community members just before the election.
The proposal is to test-drive a licensing regime for landlords of five or fewer units in Wards 1 and 8 — those with the most housing for students of McMaster University and Mohawk College.
Fans like outgoing councillor Aidan Johnson say the $200 fee per unit, mandatory registration and inspections will weed out “squalid, fire-trap units.” Detractors warn the plan will download new costs onto tenants or push landlords out of the business, cutting the number of rental units amid a major housing crunch.
WATCH
Expect housing and homelessness to dominate the council agenda: Rental licensing or no. Affordable housing on the LRT route. Social housing redevelopments in the North End. Residential zoning changes and rules around basement apartments. It’s all on the agenda for a new council.
Marijuana
It seems like only a provincial government ago that Hamilton was ready — or at least resigned — to welcome legal marijuana outlets to the city.
But now a new Progressive Conservative province will allow an unlimited number of private, rather than government-run, pot retailers to set up shop — without any municipal licensing controls.
Suddenly, around half of our city councillors are talking about the prospect of voting to ban legal pot shops from town — the marijuana equivalent of “going dry” on alcohol sales in decades past.
The city will likely vote on whether to allow legal outlets by the end of December.
But no matter what the decision, council will grapple with uncertainty over enforcement and costs associated with legal recreational pot.
WATCH
Growing medicinal marijuana also remains a contentious issue in the city, with a provincial tribunal hearing looming over a big greenhouse planned in rural Ancaster. Expect this debate to resurface.
Waste
The last term of council really stunk for city recycling efforts.
Hamilton’s mysteriously odoriferous compost plant shut down. Then its recycling plant contractor launched a $20-million lawsuit.
And the list of banned plastics from the blue box is growing to combat the increasing percentage of “contaminated” recyclables trashed after pickup.
A new council must weigh in on the fate — and maybe even the location — of its composting plant and start figuring out new contracts for its recycling plant and garbage collectors, too.
WATCH
The conflict between avid recyclers who want to stop food waste from ending up in the dump as soon as possible and the residents who rightfully fear being trapped in their homes by compost plant stench.
Affordable housing on the LRT route. Social housing redevelopments in the North End. Residential zoning changes and rules around basement apartments. It’s all on the agenda for a new council.