LARRY'S CORNER- Hamilton's Former Mayor Speaks

Waste Management and the City Budget

By Larry Di Ianni
(posted April 7, 2009)

The month of April had two events occur, significant for the citizens in this city. For one, our budget for 2009 was finally put to rest. As well, the new waste collection rules, announced, some time ago, were introduced for the first time last week. Both will have important impact on our daily lives.

Over a year ago, Council signalled a two bag limit for garbage collection: one, a green garbage bag or waste bin, the other, for non-recyclable materials in a clear, transparent bag. Since most material can be recycled, the impact of this change is to reduce us for all practical purposes to a one bag per family limit. If these new rules are not followed, garbage will not be picked up. My family managed to meet the requirements this first week, and everything went well. But as I travelled around the neighbourhood on garbage day, I noticed many stickered bags left at curb side. I wonder how the program is being accepted.

First a step back. Beth Goodger is the Director of Waste Management. She is a bright professional who has been spearheading the City’s Waste Management Master Plan (WMMP) ever since I was a Councillor on the amalgamated city’s first Council. She and her group have been doing a great job of enforcing the plan and, as importantly, educating the community about the environmental impacts and benefits of the new procedure. As our landfill reaches saturation, and as we have no other alternatives but to ship waste out of the municipality, citizens have been responsibly moving towards greater diversion of waste by recycling paper, organics, glass and plastic. This move to reduce bag limits is a move towards enforced recycling. All of this is very good for our environment and our bottom line. As expensive as our WMMP is, the cost of a new landfill would be even higher to both the environment and our taxes.

What makes the WMMP successful is its reasonableness and patience. Contrary to some extremists and faulty thinkers like some impatient Environment Hamilton members and former Councillor Dave Braden, arguably the worst Councillor in the history of the city, who just wanted to ‘hammer’ Hamiltonians with a punitive, costly approach, the rest of Council was measured in its expectations, and in its support of the good staff delivering the program. The latest city reports illustrate a very healthy rate of diversion heading towards our stated goal. Just this week, Councillor McHattie, who is a strong advocate of ever more challenging targets, is trying to get plastic bags banned in the city. Staff is pushing back with very reasoned arguments and it seems the Councillor’s colleagues are not agreeing with Mr. McHattie either. Brian should learn from the Braden misadventures on environmental issues, or he too will be dismissed by colleagues and the community. I do believe that plastic bags are harmful, but the public and businesses seem to be doing away with them. I don’t think one needs to regulate a process that is regulating itself, especially when you are in the middle of complicated changes already.

As for this year’s budget, Council must be congratulated on bringing in a responsible budget. I happen to agree with Councillor Mitchell who thinks that a 0% hike in these tough times was achievable, but 1.7% is better than 10% and I too would have voted for this new number. Of course as one congratulates Council, one must really give credit to the McGuinty government and Sophia Aggelonitis and Minister Ted McMeekin who both advocated for the $16.5M social services gift to the city, reducing the budget increase by close to 6%. Had it not been for the province, Council really didn’t do much to pare down expenses and we would have been stuck with a much higher percentage increase. Even Andrea Horwath couldn’t muster a believable criticism against the government on how it treated Hamilton. As for Council’s role, in fact, if truth be told, and I’m surprised the media hasn’t picked up on this; Council included many one time reductions to the budget to reach 1.7%. These non-structural reductions mean that the budget pressures have not been solved and will be there next year for Council to deal with. Delaying tough decisions might make it harder for these expenditures to be made next year giving us a much higher tax increase. It is important to note that next year’s budget will be an election year budget as such, much more sensitive to elected officials. This is more than a bit of a problem for Council. For my part, I take pride in having opened the door to Provincial contributions; a door I knew would be hard to shut once pried open.

In all, I think the citizens of this community should be pleased that services are preserved and increases are less than they could have been. The only other negative unintended result of the budget approval was a silly debate which had some members of Council try to strip $20,000. 00 from the Mayor’s budget, (they didn’t); and an undeserved criticism by Fred of one of our staffers reducing her to public tears. I can only repeat what the Clerk told all of Council and the public in an e-mail: the staff member in question is a hard-working, dedicated professional who has saved Council embarrassment over the years on many occasions with her quick, accurate work and attention to detail. No one is more skilled than Mary Gallagher in a Clerk’s crew of highly skilled professionals. Too bad that some of her care and dedication didn’t rub off on every member of Council. To be fair, criticism of her was unintended, but no less hurtful, unfortunate and undeserved.

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