Politics: The week ahead

Flooding, health cuts on the watch list

Back-alley politics

Hamilton has a love-hate relationship with its alleys.

They can spur neighbour disputes or fill up with trash and needles.

But they can also connect neighbourhoods and their residents as creative spaces for gathering, pedestrian travel and art.

City council wants to sell many of those poorly maintained backalleys, mostly over liability concerns.

But increasingly, the city is being asked to rethink the laneway fire sale — or at least give residents more of a say.

Several residents will make that pitch in person Monday, even as council considers selling two more alleys in Ward 2. (The for-sale lanes are off Wellington Street North and Colbourne Street, if you’re interested.)

Want to check it out? The meeting starts at 9:30 a.m. at City Hall.

Cuts loom, but where?

The city learned last week the Progressive Conservative government’s deficit-busting quest will mean less provincial money for local public health and child care programs.

This week, we’re braced to learn the depth of that budget hole and what it means to valued programs like subsidized child care.

Until the dollar details are available, council can’t decide whether to try to fill the gap with local taxpayer dollars — or cut back services.

More details could emerge at a May 2 emergency and community services meeting. That could include more news — good or bad — on budgets for ambulance and social services. Stay tuned.

The May 2 meeting starts at

1:30 p.m. at City Hall.

Rising flood concerns

A $90,000 budget cut to local flood management programming seems a lot bigger when swollen rivers are spurring states of emergency across Canada.

Hamilton Conservation Authority board members will discuss those lost dollars — the result of the recent provincial budget — formally at a meeting

Thursday, along with other still-vague provincial plans to “modernize” watershed-protecting agencies across Ontario.

That meeting might even coincide with a local flood warning, if federal regulators have correctly predicted a rise in Lake Ontario water levels this week. Another four inches and we could see flooding in some low-lying shoreline areas.

Want to sit in? The meeting is at 7 p.m. at 838 Mineral Springs Rd.