A Letter To Hamilton City Hall

Dear Hamilton City Council

     Every week, it seems I am reading or hearing about what council is trying to do for the betterment of our community. And sadly, every week I am left with the same sour taste in my throat over some of the most ridiculous crap I've ever heard. The people of Hamilton elected you to help our city grow but what I've heard in the last few months is doing nothing but tearing our city apart.

     I was just made aware of a Spectator article concerning the change of venue for  Festival of Friends  and cannot for the life of me wonder why you would agree so fast to the decision. The article states that the festival is growing too big for the park. BULL####. There is plenty of room for the festival to grow at Gage Park. If everything was spread out a little more rather than trying to keep it all huddled around the bandshell, there would be no problems with space. The area by the King St. entrance closest to the delta for example had nothing there. More tents, rides or whatever could have been set up there with very little problems. There was a wide open field between the bandshell and the fountain that had virtually nothing there save for maybe 2 or 3 stalls. What should have been there was something like, oh I don't know, how about a dunk tank where people throw balls at a target and hopefully drop a councilor into a tank of Hamilton Harbour water.

     I used to go to Gage park for the festival every year since it began. I took my sons there and eventually my grandson. But if the festival ends up in Ancaster, I'm afraid that visits to the festival have ended for our family.

     There are a couple of other items that should be addressed, like the stupidity of an LRT in this city when the HSR is a load of crap, water mains that are forever in need of repairs, some of the worse streets in the province, exorbitant taxes which cause an endless number of store vacancies in the core. But that's all I'll say about those. There is one subject I can't ignore. The stadium/Ti-Cat fiasco.

     When Fred Eisenberger was mayor, he tried to push through the West Harbour area for a stadium. Shemp Howard could not have made a dumber move. There was virtually no access to highways and street congestion would have been a nightmare to say the least. Then there was the option of a stadium on the east mountain. Good move. Put a stadium way out in the boondocks where a lot of the fans can't get to it. Next came the area near Longwood Road. Problem with that is it would have had Hamilton taxpayers paying for it until Hamilton gets an NHL franchise (and we all know the likelihood of that happening). Now there is talk about the stadium being built in Burlington and the Ti-Cats playing there. Here's a little newsflash for you....

     If you people would get your heads out of the sand, especially a couple in particular I refuse to name because when I do I get nauseous, you will see that Confederation Park is the best possible site for a new stadium. It is close to the highway, it is close to hotels for overnight fans, it has great visibilty, local transit (as good as it is) isn't that far off and could be modified to accommodate games and it wouldn't cost nowhere near what the Longwood Road site would cost. I can't understand why a few think it's a bad site unless there are other plans in the works for something there like maybe a hotel or such thing.

      The more I think about it, the more I think that as tax payers who voted in the men and women on city council, we are as much to blame for our city degrading as it is. After all, if we hadn't voted in the same people as the last election (well except for Eisenberger) things might have been a little different.

          Signed......One Disgruntled Hamiltonian.