Raise the Hammer

Also in the Spec today is the piece by John Kernaghan stating:

"By July, sources say, Ticat officials were meeting with Paletta executives about a joint stadium/commercial development."

Is this the same Ti-Cat organization that cried fowl when the City of Hamilton was meeting with the Katz Group as part of pursuing other options in case the deal with the Cats didn't work out? I think so. Meetings in secret? Wow. Who would have guessed?

Remember fellow taxpayers, it was in August that Council voted to spend a ton of time and money to investigate the Longwood/Aberdeen site, which consumed months and many hundreds of thousands of dollars. All this while the Ti-Cats were continuing to meet with Paletta but didn't mention it to Council?

Kernaghan continues in his article,

"In the meantime, Aldershot emerged as the "lead option" in Toronto 2015 documents obtained by the Spectator through the Access to Information Act."

Are we to conclude that also in the July/August timeframe that HOSTCO knew of the Aldershot site and had determined that it was the lead option? Lead option for whom? How did they even hear of the Aldershot site? Did Council know that HOSTCO had already put Aldershot at the top of their list, even though our elected officials in Hamilton knew nothing of this and voted to invest more money trying to reach a compromise the the Ti-Cats?

Lloyd Ferguson should be even more pissed at Young and Mitchell than he is at CP (for the amount they want for their site) for once again playing us, and him in particular. He took a very public stand for a compromise and he claims he put the CP site on the table. I guess if you enjoy the feel of egg dripping down your face....

And in the face of this, we have people like HamiltonFan who continue to tell us BY is a great and trustworthy guy who is simply misunderstood by people like me and many others on RTH. Really? Like almost every single one of us have said from the beginning, this has always been about money. That's OK with me. But having suffered through the maudlin writings of one Bob Young about train tracks and railcars and the Ti-Cats as the essence of Hamilton's culture, I'm am so glad their Aldershot plans have been outed. Now the legion of Ti-Cat fans who need to drive to the game can still do so, either by the Skyway bridge or the 403.

Good luck to the taxpayers of Burlington who will have to put up money for the stadium, including infrastructure. There isn't $100 million of provincial and federal money available for a stadium. If there was, this thing would have been settled a long time ago. Think in terms of $55-$70 million max. Even with Paletta's contribution, the shortfall will still be $30-$50 million and likely much more when you start building access roads. Good luck Burlington. I, for one, am not feeling any pier pressure.

May I suggest we all get back to focusing our energies on our vision for building the kind of Hamilton we can all imagine? May I also suggest that we not spend another minute worrying about the Ti-Cats? They have played their last game using taxpayers as their football.

Comment edited by H+H on 2010-12-29 09:52:17