Echoes of amalgamation!

So on a nice sunny day eleven years on.......as the Corporate Services Department presented their initial budget figures for 2012 to the City of Hamilton General Issues Committee (a cut by the way of minus point one per cent) rearing out of the mists of time echoes of a distant debate. What to do with Municipal Service Centres. Hamilton has six from the rejuvenated City Hall on Main Street West to the former city halls of the five amalgamated communities of Dundas, Ancaster, Flamborough, Stoney Creek and Glanbrook. Raising the issue of seeming duplication of services was not a councillor representing an inner city or former City of Hamilton ward but the suburban Brad Clark who represents Ward 9 mostly existing of upper Stoney Creek While most former City of Hamilton Councillors had given up this particular argument after several attempts to eliminate these service centres, as Ward 5's Chad Collins explained, after butting their heads endlessly against brick walls Clark an avowed enemy of duplication wondered out loud would a motion to give every ward in the city a service centre fly? He feels its grossly unfair that large areas of the city do not have these service centres which he believes could easily be eliminated as city run operations and rather rented out for valuable income from others looking for solid facilities. His basic stance was this; if we all can't have one why are we continuing to perpetuate this duplication when on many days of the week work is not being done at these centres which he described as drop in centres where folks can share a cup of tea. Whoops. This elicited heated comments from Councillors Brenda Johnson and Marie Pearson representing Glanbrook and lower Stoney Creek who praised the work being done. Indeed Pearson in a passionate defense listed the RCMP and the Hamilton Public Library as two significant occupants of the former Stoney Creek City Hall and that whenever she visits,there are all kinds of people seeking the services of the City of Hamilton. As Councillor Collins told me afterwards a number of services were rationalized after amalgamation for that was the whole idea, save money wherever possible, but the matter of Town Halls was too sensitive an issue during the early years of amalgamation to push over the finish line. One wonders with the defection of Clark whether or not a move to shutdown these regional service centres might gain strength if not during this budget period but next year's?
On another issue several councillors discussed the last election and certain irregularities that took place. Corporate Services through the City Clerks department handles municipal elections. Ward 3's Bernie Morelli expanding on comments from Tom Jackson in Ward 6 talked about the names of dead people being found on the voters list, of entire Seniors homes being left off, and of certain locations being non-accessible to all voters.   When told that all polling places in the city had been personally visited by City Staff to make sure they were accessible and that the city was held hostage by lists provided to them by MPAC (Municipal Property Assessment Corporation) Morelli said, "respectfully I have heard this response before" and he went on, "I want this fixed or relatively better" before the next election. A report will come back with recommendations to see what might be done including the inception of a citizen's committee to work with the Clerk's Department. I would like to confirm Ward 8's Terry Whitehead will be with us this week on "For the Record, Council Edition" Thursday at 5pm with many repeats of our interview following.