To the surprise of no one, with the exception of Hamilton city councillors, the Ontario Municipal Board has rejected council’s gerrymandered ward boundary proposal and ordered council to adopt one of the proposals from the consultant’s report.
This issue never should have been before the OMB; council could have and should have implemented one of the recommendations from Watson and Associates, the independent consultants who were hired by city council to design a plan to re-draw ward boundaries to better represent the population shifts that have occurred.
Instead, council tossed the report into the blue box and, in a move that can best be described as self-serving, drew their own version of ward boundaries.
Thankfully, some citizens challenged council’s actions and it was off to the OMB.
So, Hamilton’s new ward boundary map will be based on fairness and objectivity, but it comes at a cost.
This entire process, including the consultant’s report and the costly OMB hearing, has cost Hamilton taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars and it’s seen some councillors engage in the kind of fear-mongering that perpetuates the “us versus them” attitude that plagues our city.
This contentious issue required vision and leadership from our council; given the way they dealt with it, I guess that was too much to ask.
Bill Kelly is the host of Bill Kelly Show on AM 900 CHML.