The Area Rating Game

I wonder if any council members are suffering from deja vu today. Yesterday, they voted to delay any decision-making on the controversial area-rating issue until after next year's election. Read the full article here.

Council dealt with this exact issue last year -- but there seems to be a bit of confusion about what they actually voted on. Many councillors thought they voted to make a decision about area rating this council term and implement it in 2011. The next day's Spectator story and Andrew Dreschel's column seemed to be under that impression as well.

The thing is, the Mayor totally disagrees. His citizen jury shelves this issue until after next year's election, meaning council will be able to duck the heat on this hot-button issue come campaign season.

Yesterday, several councillors implied (or in the case of the ever-outspoken Sam Merulla, outright suggested) that the Mayor's playing politics on this one.

What do you guys think? Is area rating worth a year-long citizen jury process? Or is the timeline just too convenient?

Comments

[craig duvall]

Of course it's time convenient, the children at city hall have to have something to make election promises for their campaign, only to have them re-neg again, c'mon, they're no different than any other elected officials

[Markalanwhittle]

Welcome to the always controversial issue of area rating and the extreme lengths some councillors will go to put off making the hard decisions they were elected to make.

Being retired enables me to spend hours and hours mining the city of Hamiltons web site and the various documents and reports posted there to try and get a handle on what the heck is going on down there.

Foisting the area rating decision onto a bunch of randomly selected citizens is nothing more than a self-serving decision on the part of the Mayor and councillors who voted yes on the motion.

If Council needs our help on this issue we are doomed. Therefore I will be blasting this out on Facebook and twitter so hundreds, if not thousands of Hamiltonians can be made aware of councils lates act of cowardice.

That's Hamilton, get used to it or fight back with everything in the bag. Personally, i've had enough.

[craig duvall]

Amen to Markalanwhittle, could not have said it better myself

[Michelle Hruschka]

Council voted to deal with this issue during this current council's mandate.

How can this citizens jury idea expect to actually represent the make up of all the voices in the city?

Anyways for the people who are fed up, please check out the Hamilton Civic League.

http://www.hamiltoncivicleague.org/

This is a way for you to part of bringing back democracy to the people. We are having an event on December 16 2009 at 7:00 pm at the Artword Artbar, 15 Colborne St, Hamilton

Come join us for holiday cheer and to add your voice to the issues that are passioniate about.

"Be the change you want to see in the world" Mahatma Gandhi

[Mike Russell]

This decision is typical of this council. Why make a decision when you can put it off and hope that the whole issue will go away.

Well, I've got news for you members of council, the people of this city have had it with your antics. It's time to get a backbone and make the tough decisions, otherwise you are going to be looking for other employment.

In order to tackle this area rating issue, the first thing that has to be done is the redistribution of seats on council. The suburbs have a disproportionate number of members of council. I live in a ward with 50 thousand people while Flamborough has 2 members of council for 25 thousand. There's nothing democratic about that.

Once redisribution has occurred then area rating can be dealt with in a fair and equitable manner.