Alberta think-tank tracks Hamilton council patterns

Good news, busy Hamiltonians: a think-tank based in Alberta wants to help you keep track of your own city council.

The Manning Centre released its second “council tracker” report Thursday highlighting trends in councillor attendance, voting patterns and closed-door meetings.

The small-c conservative centre began the effort with its own local Calgary council, but has since decided to dive into voting data from Toronto, Ottawa and Hamilton.

Research director Peter McCaffrey said the effort is meant to help residents “stay engaged” with their municipal decision-makers.

“The problem is there is so much going on at City Hall. What we’re trying to do is take this data, put it into a more digestible format,” he said.

The result, so far, are charts tracking attendance (93 per cent at council meetings, on average), time spent in secret discussions (8.2 per cent) and even comparisons of how often various members vote together.

The problem, as local council watchers can attest, is that it’s not easy to gather that data from oldschool city council meeting minutes. While Toronto electronically records all votes, Hamilton meeting minutes only rarely reflect individual councillor votes.

Those challenges meant the Manning Centre only manually searched the records for council meetings, not standing committees where much of the debate on the issues takes place.

The report acknowledges the vast majority of council votes appear to pass easily, “implying that the policy disagreement happens behind the scenes, in committee or otherwise.”

The limited study of council votes also suggests “no clear polarization or substantial voting coalitions” — which would probably be news to anyone watching old city-suburban debates over transit, ward boundaries or area rating in recent years.

McCaffrey said in the long term, the team would love to dive into all committee voting records — but that will depend on how quickly Hamilton’s “open data” aspirations come to fruition.

“When that data becomes more easily accessible, we would certainly look at it,” he said.

To see report findings, visit manningcentre.ca.