Comment 114579

By JasonL (registered) | Posted November 02, 2015 at 22:50:27 in reply to Comment 114578

totally agree. I've heard about so many amazing cities in North America, and around the world, recently where the professional staff and planners are the ones given authority to implement a 10 year transportation plan, or cycling network, transit system etc..... Here, every single issue has to go through council and that's where anything even remotely progressive or urban goes to die.

A totally new governance system that removes council from every detail of every decision would be phenomenal. They authorize direction of course, since they're the elected officials. But then that council directive would be carried out by people who actually know what they're doing.

Look at our lame-o Shifting Gears cycling plan. As lousy and bare-bones as it is, fact is, it was approved by council. That should be where their involvement ends. A competent cycling staff should then be tasked with carrying it out with the allowed annual budget. Instead, we get the same councillors who voted to approve the plan a decade ago, now do these one-off votes to remove a bike lane here or there because a few speeding car drivers in their ward don't like it. I don't see how Hamilton will ever realize it's potential under this system.

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