Thread: Flamborough
View Single Post
  #31  
Old Posted Apr 26, 2008, 9:50 PM
coalminecanary coalminecanary is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 1,421
The problem is that the councillors who represent the furthest reaches of the city always seem to be the strongest supporters of the most backward thinking, and seem to favour decisions which hurt hamilton as a whole rather than help it.

I think most of us here agree that, since we are already amalgamated, we have to work together or else the city will fall further behind. We all have different feelings about whether amalgamation was a good idea or bad, but that being said, I think we all realize that we have to work with what we've got -- a mini-megacity.

In my opinion, the councillors who have the best ideas and who seem to be driven by passion for Hamilton as a whole rather than personal local agendas are McHattie and Bratina. I'm sure they do fight for their own ward issues as well, but I definitely get a sense from both of them that they are highly motivated by improvements to hamilton as a whole.

On the other extreme, we have Ferguson who, in my opinion, just does not understand reality sometimes, and seems to make decisions based purely on his own opinions regardless of the effect on hamilton as a whole.

In between, we have a lot of councillors who seem to be able to relate to their own wards but just cannot muster any vision for the city as a whole.

And to be fair, the initiation of this Flamborough argument was their own councillor urging them to request de-amalgamation and to withhold property taxes as punishment to the city because council was trying to force them to financially become, you know, part of the city.

So in this case especially, "they" are the ones fostering the us vs them mentality, and "they" are the reason we are discussing this mentality. I've seen many more disgusting threads than this one on here ;-)
__________________
no clever signoff.
Reply With Quote