Well, it’s official: Hamilton city council has decided to hire outside legal help to defend their self-serving position about the ward boundary issue.
That means that on top of the $260,000 for a consultant’s report about ward boundaries that council just tossed into the blue bin, we, the taxpayers, will foot the bill for council’s Ontario Municipal Board hearing.
READ MORE: Hamilton ward boundaries prompt OMB challenge
We don’t know the exact amount of the cost of the OMB hearing because council discussed that behind closed doors, but we do know from past experience that the legal costs of an OMB hearing are significant.
What adds salt to the wound to taxpayers, is that this didn’t need to happen.
Council could have — and should have — adopted one of the recommendations from the consultants to re-align our ward boundaries to better reflect the significant population shifts that have occurred in the past 20 years.
The federal and provincial governments and most other municipalities do this on a regular basis to create a more fair and balanced system, but Hamilton council chose to tweak the existing and unequal ward boundaries.
They will lose this battle at the OMB and Hamilton taxpayers will pay for their self-serving attitude.
I wonder if the cost of such unnecessary legal action was deducted from their pay cheques, would they be so eager to do this?
I think we all know the answer to that!
Bill Kelly is the host of Bill Kelly Show on AM 900 CHML and a commentator for Global News.