Raise the Hammer Newsfeed - Blogs

No Respect

2010-09-09T12:00:00Z

I had just read Graham Crawford's piece, Some Counsel For Council, in which he describes the unimaginably boorish behaviour at Hamilton City Hall. A little discouraged, I nevertheless continued on my semi-regular sweep of Internet news.

Immediately after "Counsel For Council", I read Harper Prepares To Buy Off Quebec, by Don Martin of The National Post:

Apparently, Stephen Harper is prepared to give a Quebec City Billionaire $200 million to build a new NHL arena in Quebec City, which added insult to injury.

"Why doesn't Hamilton get any respect?" I asked myself.

On Increasing Civic Engagement in Governance

2010-09-08T12:00:00Z

Adrian of the MyStoneyCreek has kindly invited The Hamiltonian's Cal DiFalco and your humble RTH editor to offer an answer to the question: "How we can increase civic involvement in the governance process?" Here's my attempt at a response.

The twentieth century, for the most part, was the century in which the prevailing communications technologies conspired to produce the idea of a mass audience, i.e. the citizenry as a more or less undifferentiated collection of atomized consumers.

This mass audience were consumers not only of the goods and services that were advertised on the broadcast media and whose ad revenues paid for those media; but also, pointedly, consumers of the information broadcast on those media.

Because of the centralized, top-down nature of the broadcast media, access to the production side was inherently scarce, and a professional class of content producers and quality control gatekeepers grew around the media outlets.

The primary purpose of these professionals was to protect the capital investments of the owners by ensuring that the content produced and distributed through these scarce, expensive channels was good enough to attract viewers/listeners/readers. Yet the professionals came to take themselves so seriously that they often deluded themselves into thinking they were controlling quality on behalf of their audience - as if the audience was incapable of determining quality for themselves.

But a major practical consequence of the decidedly one-way and gatekeeper-controlled media environment was to frame the actual citizenry as mere passive spectators to the production of culture and to the political process.

A major deterrent to wider political participation was simply the high transactions cost of one-on-one discussion and organization, which was the only means of communicating in a culture dominated by centralized, one-to-many communications channels. A few rebels attempted to run 'alternative' one-to-many media entities with varying levels of success, but such entities were always economically insecure and vulnerable.

The effect of this enervation on political engagement is obvious: mere consumers could no more produce their own political change than they could produce their own consumer electronics.

Of course the idea of citizens-as-consumers was always a contrivance and never entirely took hold; and the underlying liberal democratic principles of most industrialized societies was a significant countervail that flared up periodically in popular movements.

But for most people, most of the time, politics was something you watched on TV and read about in the paper, not something you did. At most you maybe complained about the damned politicians as a kind of social ritual.

Many-to-Many Communications

Now that's changing. The internet, fast becoming the dominant communications medium of the 21st century, is an inherently decentralized, distributed, many-to-many communications medium. The economic and technological barriers to entry for content producers are negligible compared to the barriers to entry for radio, TV or print.

For the first time, citizens have a practical, hands-on opportunity to see themselves not just as passive, atomized consumers watching/listening/reading in isolation, but as active, connected producers taking part in a larger ecosystem of citizen-producers communicating with each other.

Whether it's facebook status updates, short posts to twitter, photographs uploaded to flickr, essays and reports posted to personal blogs, homemade videos uploaded to youtube, annotated cat pictures posted on comedy forums, self-conscious check-ins to location-aware social networks, comments added to someone else's content, or any of an astonishingly wide variety of other forms of content creation, citizens are for the first time producing culture as well as consuming it.

Some of these activities may seem amateurish, banal, even puerile; but that's beside the point. The point is that the internet has given people an opportunity to participate in the manufacture of their own culture to an extent never before seen in industrial liberal democracies - and people are participating in spades.

Political Engagement

What emerges from a communications medium based on participation rather than consumption is an inclination toward participation that spills over into areas of life still framed by the 20th century consumer model - like politics.

The pressure for internet-values to cross-fertilize into politics is already driving the Gov. 2.0 movement as well as politically oriented websites like Raise the Hammer, The Hamiltonian and My Stoney Creek.

These communications channels take advantage of the low barriers of the internet to create online communities where citizens who want to be more politically engaged can talk to each other about their community, its challenges and the opportunities to produce change.

At the same time, the traditional top-down media are starting to recognize that the role of professional content producers is changing, and they're slowly starting to reposition themselves as professional enablers and curators rather than gatekeepers per se.

The question of whether they can find a business model in this new role that preserves their professional status remains open, but is in any case secondary to the phenomenon by which citizens assert the right to get a word in edgewise, to contribute to the public discussion, and perhaps to shift the political momentum toward a more inclusive outcome.

Competing for Business: High Quality or Bottom-Feeders?

2010-09-08T12:00:00Z

Anyone who has freelanced for any amount of time quickly discovers that there are two kinds of business customers: professional clients who value high-quality work and are willing to pay for it, and bottom-feeders who suck up all your time while paying as little as possible.

Desperate entrepreneurs, by which I mean people struggling to break into a market and build a portfolio while generating enough income to survive, may be tempted to compete on price and undercut the competition. Unfortunately, discounted service pricing tends to attract a disproportionate share of the bottom-feeders.

In a kind of small-business version of Gresham's Law, those bottom-feeders not only crowd out more reputable businesses by making constant demands (and expecting you to swallow the costs), but also leave you with a portfolio filled with dreck that will only appeal to other bottom-feeders.

On reading this article in today's Spectator I was again reminded that Hamilton as a city still largely accepts desperation and embraces the death-spiral pursuit of bottom-feeders for its economic survival.

Whether we're clapping ourselves on the back for poaching a bread-making factory, humiliating ourselves to woo a pork processing plant, pinning our economic fortunes on warehousing, or sacrificing a long-term investment in advanced manufacturing to appease a $15 million-a-year sports retail business - Hamilton doesn't exactly present the face of a focused, visionary city competing on quality.

An inevitable vocalization of our endless economic kvetching is the oft-repeated but under-analyzed trope that we need to do more to "lure" businesses here - as if they'd never come unless we tricked them. Instead of playing the same old zero-sum game, why not concentrate our energies on growing new businesses by providing a rich, fertile climate?

Why not try to understand how cities work and then choose not to sacrifice our early foray into this understanding?

Di Ianni, Eisenberger Trade Barbs over Ethics

2010-09-08T12:00:00Z

this blog entry has been updated

Yesterday, mayoral candidate Larry Di Ianni issued a policy paper on "Improving Accountability and Transparency" in which he accused incumbent candidate Fred Eisenberger of trying to hide the details of Eisenberger's "secret meeting in New York City" with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, failing to disclose "pertinent information" to Council in regards to the Pan Am stadium site, and running "an increasingly dysfunctional Council" with "a toxic environment". Di Ianni also claims that Council moved a motion to remove the Mayor from Pan Am stadium negotiations.

Di Ianni's statement promises to: publish his daily schedule online; post a detailed account of his monthly expenses; publish details of any gifts received; disclose any annual income exceeding $10,000; limit in-camera meetings; reform election finance rules to ban corporate and union donations; and establish a mandatory Lobbyist Registry for the City.

Eisenberger's campaign shot back with a "Fact Check" stating that Di Ianni's policies are "largely cribbed" from Eisenberger's 2006 platform and that most of the items Di Ianni promised are already taking place or are at the advanced planning stage.

Eisenberger's campaign noted that the City's Accountability and Transparency Sub-Committee is already finalizing its plans for a Lobbyist Registry, adding pointedly that the Sub-Committee was established "after the previous mayor became the first Ontario Mayor in history to be convicted of violating the Municipal Election Act" for accepting campaign donations beyond the legal limit.

Likewise, Eisenberger says his schedule, expense reports, gifts received, and annual income over $10,000 are already publicly available. His response adds, "In camera meetings are already restricted by law and strictly limited and policed by the independent city clerks."

Eisenberger accuses Di Ianni of being "late to the party" in pledging not to accept campaign contributions from unions or corporations. Eisenberger didn't accept such donations in 2006 and is not accepting them in 2010.

The statement rejects Di Ianni's claim that he had "failed to disclose pertinent information" to Council regarding a phone call from the Premier's Office, stating, "The Mayor together with the City Manager confirmed that this simply did not occur."

Eisenberger also claims that his office voluntarily disclosed the expenses for the Mayor's New York trip and would have disclosed the details had they known that the FOI request came from the press.

RTH contacted the Spectator to ask for clarification on what happened. Spectator editor Howard Elliott explained:

The FOI in question was not launched about the mayor's meeting specifically. It was to seek expenses from a number of different individuals. When it came in, it contained all the details of the trip and meeting, and when we pursued it with the mayor, he was co-operative and forthcoming. So he is correct in saying we didn't ask him or his staff first, but that's because we didn't know about the specifics of the event until the FOI came back.

Events such as Eisenberger's meeting with Bettman and his private, $500-a-plate fundraising barbecue in June have raised questions about his commitment to openness and transparency.

Update this blog entry has been updated to include the response from the Spectator in regards to its FOI request. Thanks to editor Howard Elliott for his clarification. You can jump to the added paragraph.

NYT: Stadiums Leave Deep Debts

2010-09-08T12:00:00Z

A timely article in today's New York Times investigates the lingering debts municipalities must assume for publicly funded stadiums:

How municipalities acquire so much debt on buildings that have been torn down or are underused illustrates the excesses of publicly financed stadiums and the almost mystical sway professional sports teams have over politicians, voters and fans.

Rather than confront teams, they have often buckled when owners - usually threatening to move - have demanded that the public pay for new suites, parking or arenas and stadiums.

Sound familiar?

Remembering Alex Keating

2010-09-07T12:00:00Z

I haven't thought about Sister Wendy Beckett in a long, long time. But something she once said in one of her programs popped into my head while I read the Globe and Mail today.

She had been talking about a painting depicting legends about St. Nicholas of Bari. When she spoke about the centre panel, where St. Nicholas is delivering a dowry anonymously for the daughters of a poor widower, she noted that the painting shows St. Nicholas sneaking up to the window with the gold.

The lesson here, I recall her saying, is, "Do good by stealth."

In today's Globe and Mail, a Lives Lived column written by his aunt remembers Alex Keating, from our neighbourhood here. He was a schoolmate of many kids in the neighbourhood, our own included.

No one who knows his family was surprised when the visitation line up spilled out of the funeral home, down the driveway, and onto the sidewalk; or when lines of uniformed Bishop Ryan students formed an honour guard up both sides of the street for the funeral procession.

That so many young people recognized his quiet goodness and made a point of bidding him goodbye bodes well for the world, I think.

Hamilton Ready for Bike-Sharing

2010-09-05T12:00:00Z

This past Tuesday afternoon, the city of Hamilton hosted two bike sharing programs to set up a display at City Hall and gauge public interest in potentially starting a program here.

Bixi and B-Cycle both made presentations before council in the afternoon and then set up a display of their product in the forecourt to allow citizens to test ride the bikes and learn how the system works.

I had the pleasure of test riding the bikes and they are great bikes for an urban environment. Both had a carrying basket over the handlebars and thick tires suitable for city riding and the inevitable potholes, sewer grates and manhole covers that urban cyclists encounter. The bikes had different gears and handled very smoothly.

The Bixi bike was especially comfortable. It was more of a Dutch cruiser style bike than the B-Cycle. The ease of unlocking the bikes with the electronic keys was remarkable and it was simply a matter of sliding the front wheel back into the bike base upon returning.

Bixi depot on display at City Hall

Chatting with the staff who were involved with the display was informative and I got the distinct sense that they viewed Hamilton as being ripe for this sort of program.

As we all know, despite our massive downtown freeways and flawed planning over the past 30 years, Hamilton is still remarkably compact, walkable and bike-friendly (if you're brave or know safe alternate routes).

In researching the two companies, it is clear that both present a great opportunity for Hamilton. Both have annual memberships and have done a good job at keeping their rates low. With Bixi, Montreal's annual fee is $78, and Toronto's is $95. With B-Cycle, Denver's annual fee is $65, and Des Moines is $50 - $40 for seniors and students.

In my mind there are a few important points to consider when discussing a bike sharing program.

Affordable

Next to walking, bikes are the most affordable method of transportation and require the least amount of space. A simple lane next to vehicle lanes is all that is required.

Hamilton currently has a plan to criss-cross the city with bike routes for a grand total of $50 million. $50 million may sound like a lot of money, but it costs that much to resurface 14 kilometers of roadway.

This is an entire new transportation network for our city for the same cost as doing some roadwork.

Convenient

It appears to me that in order to be successful, a bike share should have many stations located in convenient areas.

One great feature of these systems are that the bike stalls don't require any construction. They can be placed on a roadway in place of a couple parking spots or in any convenient location near shopping plazas, parks or transit terminals.

Montreal has done a wonderful job of filling their city with stations.

Attractive

One of the ways to further bike infrastructure and take a 20 year plan and turn it into a 5 year plan is to get more people cycling now. A bike share would do this in Hamilton.

In fact, I mentioned to the staff members from Bixi that I would have loved to have a bike system to take advantage of the day there were in town. I had just returned a U-Haul on Upper Wellington near the Mountain Brow and would have much preferred to pick up a bike at Sam Lawrence Park to ride downtown and drop it off near my home at Victoria Park instead of waiting for a bus and then walking home in the brutal heat.

Transportation Options

Ultimately, more convenient transportation options are a good thing for the city. In Hamilton it is only 4.5 kilometers from McMaster University to Gore Park. It is three kilometers from St Josephs Hospital to the Williams Coffee Pub on Pier 8 at the waterfront.

Think of all the destinations that exist in this small area, and this is just one part of our city - granted, the most densely populated heart of the city.

Think of the popular parks, commercial strips, education facilities, transit terminals, cultural venues, tourist attractions, neighbourhoods and workplaces that exist in the heart of our city.

A bike sharing system would give students the option to zip downtown without having to cram onto buses like sardines or be passed by several times by full buses. Folks making the short drive to work and spending money on gas and parking could get some exercise and save some money by grabbing a bike.

I can envision a system with 20-25 stations in the Downtown/Westdale area and then several more in convenient spots on the Mountain, Dundas, central and east Hamilton.

Contact Hamilton's cycling committee for more info and to show your support for bringing a bike share to the Hammer. It's long overdue.

Soot is All Over Hamilton

2010-09-05T12:00:00Z

I am finding it more difficult to breathe - especially the past three or four years. Soot isn't just a problem for the East Enders. The wind is taking this black devil all across the City, including McMaster University and Dundas.

I had a very bad day in May. It was a Sunday and a stink permeated all through my apartment. All windows were shut tight, but it managed to fill the air in my home to the point that I was very physically ill.

I called Arcelor Mittal and found the Environment representative. Being a Sunday, there was nobody to call, really. The man asking me questions was someplace else, not in Hamilton and reading Air quality information off a computer screen.

He kept telling me his monitors did not show the levels I was describing. We spoke for an hour until I realized nothing would be done.

What a horrible day. I wore one of those general face masks and just tried to get through it.

Not having a car, I can't really do anything about leaving town.

Then again, on a Sunday, August 22, I woke up at 4:00 AM struggling to breathe. It was pretty foggy out so I could not even see the stacks.

Since my first problem I have taken the habit of wiping the inside of my balcony screen with a white facecloth, or white sock.

I do this every morning to let me know what I can expect if I go outside. I do not rely on the weather and Air Quality index on the weather channel. It is often out of sync with my lungs.

At daylight, I grabbed one of my freshly laundered white socks and did what I always do. I wiped the inside of my balcony screen. Most days I get a brownish tinge, which I put down to car and Truck exhaust.

That morning I picked up heavy black soot, like a powder. I wiped the freshly washed floor inside the door with a dry white cloth, and picked up more black soot. It was everywhere. I couldn't understand how it got inside so easily.

Black soot on a white sock

I called Acelor-Mittal again, got a return call from one of their Environment reps but as before, not much could be done for me. At least my call let them know how far and when this soot was traveling.

I managed to get use of a car and simply left town. As soon as I left the City area, my voice returned and my breathing wasn't labored.

This needs to stop. The entire City is being covered with this black stuff. Totally toxic chemicals are getting into our lungs. We won't be able to flush any of it out of our system.

I have been doing some research, and plan to continue to dig into U.S Steel and Columbia, but the track record I found for Arcelor Mittal is appalling. It seems whereever that company goes, it pollutes the water and fills the air with toxins and soot.

I am now seriously thinking of moving out of Hamilton while I still can. In these times of climate disasters, we do not need money to be made at the detriment of the very air we breathe and the water we drink. Water is becoming a scarcity just due to the hot climate. But when companies like these add more pollution by using water in their process, how can we hope to have enough drinking water left for our children?

Everyone should take a look at the Good Neighbour Campaign website and join up with Environment Hamilton. We are lucky to have these volunteers.