Raise the Hammer
Council holds their first meeting of the month tonight. RTH will be there. Live discussion at the end of article.
It's the second Wednesday of the month, which means two days until Art Crawl and a Hamilton City Council meeting.
The underlying theme of tonight's meeting will likely be Council's ratification of a motion moved by Brad Clark and passed at committee last week that the City strive for no property tax increase this coming budget year.
Three items on the agenda are likely to generate discussion and debate tonight.
First up, very early in the meeting, will be the receipt of a letter from Julie Twyford [PDF link] respecting the Mayor's $10,000 donation to United Way.
Council may chose to receive the letter without discussion. However, it is unlikely they will pass up the opportunity to discuss the matter without the requirement of placing a motion on the table first. If they receive the letter and defer discussion until new business, a Councillor will need to move a motion first.
Following the receiving of letters, Council will consider committee reports.
The Planning Committee report [PDF link] is first, then the General Issues Committee report dealing with the budget, which includes Clark's zero tax increase motion, and finally the Public Works Committee reporthttp://hamilton.ca/NR/rdonlyres/2C3225FE-69EA-4723-B4ED-F486069E236E/0/Feb07EDRMS_n130994_v1_PW_Report_11002.pdf, which includes the grass collection issues.
Under motions, there are three items:
Councillor Clark is moving that the city create a policy dealing with International games bids which he hopes will prevent another fiasco similar to the Pan Am stadium debate.
Councillor Farr is moving to grant two hours of free parking on Saturdays to pardons of the Farmer's Market. This motion could spark debate in light of the additional cost and the likely decision of Council to ratify the zero-percent tax increase goal.
The final item on the public portion of the agenda, barring new business, is a housekeeping motion to appoint Councillor Ferguson and Morelli to represent Council in discussions with TO2015 and Infrastructure Ontario during renovations of Ivor Wynne Stadium.
Council will go in-camera to discuss the hiring of a new Fire Chief following the retirement of Chief Kay.
The hashtag to join the live discussion tonight is #HamOntCC
By Streamman (registered) | Posted February 09, 2011 at 22:19:37
I'd like to complement Julie Twyford on her very well writen letter. I'm looking forward to see this matter progress. Bob Bratina's regard for taxpayer's money is shameful.
By Andrea (registered) | Posted February 09, 2011 at 22:34:23
Thanks Joey, I went oldschool and watched it on TV :-)
By TnT (registered) | Posted February 10, 2011 at 00:35:57
Yay Bernie Morelli as liason to TO2015! With his trackrecord of success running ward3 into the most desirable locale in the city this should be a homerun!
This brings up an interesting procedural point.
Many of us wrote letters to our councillors about this donation. One might well wonder why this particular letter and only this one was mentioned at the council meeting.
Note that the letter was addressed to Rose Caterini, the City Clerk, not to council, a councillor or to the mayor or his staff. That, it ends up, is key. But I'll be damned if I can find that information anywhere on the City of Hamilton website (after a tedious three minutes of vigorous searching, that is).
By Julie Twyford (anonymous) | Posted February 10, 2011 at 10:44:55 in reply to Comment 59483
I discovered that the magic word is correspondence. If you want a letter/email discussed by council, you need to ask that it be entered as correspondence.
I should confess that Rose graciously let me re-write my submission - the first one was not nearly as polite.
By Streamman (registered) | Posted February 10, 2011 at 11:25:50 in reply to Comment 59491
Julie, Good for you! Thanks for sharing your discovery of Correspondence Who Knew??? I was very aggressive in my letter and that is why it was not chosen. LOL
Take Care
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