News:

City Vision is Failing

By Barbara Brown
The Hamilton Spectator
April 12, 2004

Environmentalist councillor Brian McHattie says Hamilton has done nothing concrete to build a vibrant, healthy and sustainable community.

Rookie politician McHattie, who helped create the city's Vision 2020 plan in 1993, says council has done nothing but pay lip service to the document.

"I think Vision 2020 is not being taken seriously ... Most politicians think Vision 2020 allows them to keep doing everything that they've been doing for the past 30 years, but maybe just do it in a more environmentally sensitive way.

"That's not what it's about at all. It's meant to be a sea change."

Vision 2020 is a blueprint for turning Hamilton into an environmentally and economically viable community.

In the early 1990s, the Ward 1 councillor was a citizen member of a sustainable development task force and became a joint author of its Vision 2020 report. It was the largest public consultation in Hamilton's history. More than 1,200 people contributed comments and suggestions on how to make this a better place to live.

But the city's 2003 report card on Vision 2020 indicators is not the kind to make a father proud. The report is chock full of interesting facts about Hamilton, but few are worth writing home about. In fact, in some areas we are continuing a downhill slide.

Loss of agricultural land is one of the indicators measured in the report. The Vision 2020 target is zero loss of farm land to urban boundary expansion. In 1993, when Vision 2020 was introduced, the former region of Hamilton-Wentworth had lost just 44 hectares of agricultural land due to official plan amendments. Since then, a further 888 hectares of farm land have been consumed by urban sprawl, including 210 hectares in 2001 and 331 hectares in 2002, the last year for which the indicator data was collected.

The graphic shows the number of hectares of Hamilton agricultural land lost annually, as a result of city official plan changes which expanded the urban boundary, since Vision 2020 was created in 1993.

"Urban sprawl and expansion of the urban boundary has been the status quo here for 30 years or longer," said McHattie.

Urban expansion in 2001 was driven by a major housing development on the Mountain south of Rymal Road, he said.

Vision 2020, the guideline used for the 1995 official plan, had a stated goal to increase residential density in the urban area and to stop further encroachments on local agricultural land.

McHattie, who was one of the citizens opposed to the expansion of the urban boundary, said staff recommended against the development, based on the official plan and Vision 2020. But council rejected the staff recommendation and approved the project anyway.

"We (citizen opponents) took it to the Ontario Municipal Board but we lost. It was a good challenge of Vision 2020 and whether people were serious about it or not."

He said the majority of politicians on the council of the day believed in "progress." In their minds, that meant building more and more houses.

"I disagree strongly," said McHattie.

He said a larger tax base never adequately compensates the municipality for the greater costs of installing new water and sewer lines and building new schools and community centres.

Another disappointing indicator is the trend of decreased ridership on the Hamilton Street Railway.

In 1993, the average number of rides per person in a year was 55. Vision 2020 set a goal of 100 rides per capita.

Instead, the use of public transit has steadily declined, falling to 47.3 rides per person in 2002.

"We are now poised to continue that decline with the fare increases proposed in the budget," he said.

Staff are recommending a 10-cent hike in the regular fare, followed by a further 15-cent increase in January of 2005.

At the same time, indicators show a significant increase in the number of automobiles owned by Hamilton residents.

The highest mark in the report card is for new residential permits issued in downtown Hamilton.

There were 214 in 2002, which was a 42 per cent increase over 2001.

The trend has continued to today with several major announcements of condominium projects in the downtown core in the past year.

"That's a really good news story, but again, it's not enough. We're putting a very small amount of money into that part of the city.

"I think it's about $2 million a year, if that much, going into the program for incentives to revitalize the downtown.

"To me, if you look at the economic picture in Hamilton, you want to put your money into a winner like this because, as a city, we've been losing big time for more than 20 years."

McHattie says more direction and money needs to be spent on redeveloping the downtown, where services and infrastructure already exist.

He thinks we should keep expanding the downtown incentive program, instead of the urban boundary.

"I think it's a choice.

"We can't really do both at the same time, so I think we should be putting our money into revitalizing the downtown."