Hamilton’s escarpment increasingly at risk

Re: “Building near escarpment edge too dangerous to be considered

Hamilton Community News

By Jacquie Reid

Colleen Jewell is not the only person that considers building near the escarpment edge too dangerous. It’s interesting the OMB would not allow the memo regarding the closure of a portion of the trail just below the chedoke browlands site due to unstable conditions to be submitted.

In Colwyn Beynon’s Dusty corners, he mentions the city was warned when they began to dig the foundation for the Nora Frances Henderson Hospital in 1954.Ignoring this information, they were surprised when they dug into an underground cave of water that filled the excavation to a depth of 30 feet.

This year, there have been three rockslides (Claremont Access, the escarpment along highway 403 and the Sherman Access).

A coincidence?

Anyone using the Sherman Cut only has to look up to see how close to the edge the new Juravinski Hospital appears to be situated. Pessimistically, it appears to be a disaster just waiting to happen. Hopefully, our current city engineers did their homework.

“The Escarpment is Falling, The Escarpment is Falling”….I Feel like Chicken Little…

 By Colleen Jewell

Spectator letter

In December 2011, the residents  opposing the proposed Chedoke Browland Development

went to the OMB for their last kick at the can.    One of the residents tried to get a memo

written by a “city staffer” admitted into evidence regarding the closure of a portion of the trail

(just below the Chedoke Browland site) due to unstable conditions of the escarpment.   After some opposition,

the OMB didn’t allow the memo to be submitted  because it was deemed “ new evidence”.

Bottom line,  it would have thrown a huge wrench  into Deanlee Management’s potential for profit.

It seems that the almighty dollar is very influential.    To the best of my knowledge, there hasn’t been

an OMB decision made as of yet on this project.

Fast forward a few months and look at what  Hamilton is facing now.

In the last few weeks, it’s been the Claremont access closed due to collapse of

a very large portion of retaining wall;  the Sherman access closed due to  instability;  and today  it’s the escarpment

along the 403 falling apart.    What can I say?   “The Escarpment is Falling….The Escarpment is Falling”.

Seriously, does it take someone getting killed by these occurrences before anyone stops and notices the pattern developing?

Doesn’t anyone get the seriousness or dangers of the erosion happening along the escarpment?

Doesn’t anyone care that construction so close to the escarpment will certainly cause more instability?

Look at the “Big Picture”.   Our environment/climate is changing.

This is having serious consequences on the Hamilton Escarpment.

No one wants “sprawl” ….but Hamilton has some serious issues that need to be addressed

in relation to our beautiful escarpment and it’s relationship to Downtown.

Stop before it’s too late ….or should we amalgamate and let the Mountain and  Downtown become one….

See the articles at the following links.

http://www.thespec.com/news/local/article/686173–sherman-access-east-closed-for-days

http://www.thespec.com/news/local/article/686714–is-the-mountain-falling-down

http://www.thespec.com/news/local/article/675583–mud-slide-closes-claremont-access

Costs pile up as OMB cases soar

Sep 18, 2011

Outside lawyers have been paid well over $600,000 in the last twenty months to represent the city in a rapidly growing number of cases at the Ontario Municipal Board. The unbudgeted spending ballooned last year after Art Zuidema, the city’s senior OMB solicitor, was transferred to the city manager’s office in June 2010, leaving the legal department seriously understaffed.

“This solicitor had carriage of a number of significant OMB files that were on-going at the time,” says a report going to Tuesday’s planning committee meeting. “We were not able to fill this position with a person of comparable skill and experience until March of 2011.”

The city was dealing with 61 OMB cases when Zuidema was transferred, and has added 39 new ones since then. Councillor alarm bells on the “significant spike” in legal spending appear to have gone off in January during an in camera discussion of the Flamborough quarry being sought by St Mary’s Cement.

In the public session afterwards, a motion by Lloyd Ferguson and Chad Collins instructed legal staff to report back on 2010 spending on outside lawyers as well as what was anticipated for this year. Those substantial numbers are provided in the report released Friday – $287,520.33 in 2010 plus $343,574.55 so far in 2011.

“These numbers represent a significant spike from previous years,” acknowledges the report, but offers assurances that it won’t continue.

“We continue to believe that the spike in outside counsel expenditures experienced in 2010-2011 has been an aberration from our previous norm caused by a ‘perfect storm’ of staff turnover and corporately significant matters all coming before the Board at roughly the same time.”

It further explains that outside lawyers are used for “relatively few matters”, such as the aerotropolis, Setting Sail (north end secondary plan), McMaster’s West End Innovation District, development charge appeals, and the St Mary’s battle, but that these appeals “were all ‘heating up’ at the same time” and their complexity and significance required hiring experienced lawyers.

“Such assistance comes at considerable expense,” notes the report. “Typically, the hourly rate paid to outside counsel is between 2.5 and 3.5 times more than the comparable hourly cost of using in-house resources.”

New outsourcing has largely stopped, says the report, but costs will continue because several large cases already being handled by outside lawyers are continuing, including recently-filed appeals of the new development charges bylaw passed at the end of June.

Hearings haven’t yet begun on the appeals of the previous development charges bylaw adopted in June 2009. That is being handled for the city by Robert Doumani of Aird & Berlis. The St Mary’s case is assigned to Peter Pickfield of Garrod Pickfield, while the aerotropolis OMB battle is under the direction of Nancy Smith of the Turkstra Mazza firm.

The operating budget for legal services in 2010 was just over $2.2 million, but actual spending was more than a million dollars higher. The 2011 budget is set at $2.25 million for the 42-person city division.

Some spending on OMB cases is also drawn from the city’s capital budget. In 2011, for example, $415,000 is set aside for appeals of comprehensive zoning bylaws covering employment and commercial areas, and $400,000 has been allocated to appeals of the new rural and urban official plans.

“Additional funding is required to retain outside legal and planning staff for the duration of the hearings,” explains the capital budget sheet for the latter OMB file. “In addition there will be costs to hire additional expert witnesses in specialized fields (agrologist, hydrologist, etc) where city staff does not have the expertise, and for the administration of the hearings (photocopies, room rentals, etc).”

The first OMB pre-hearing on appeals of the city’s new urban official plan is set for September 27 to 29 in the Webster Room of the Hamilton Convention Centre starting at 10:30 in the morning. There are more than 70 appellants – hence the setting aside of three days just to arrange the process.

Undemocratic OMB has no place in a democratic state

By Andrew Knowles

The Ontario municipal board or the OMB, is the only institution in Canada which handles civil services that does not have officials publicly elected, have staff appointed by elected officials or have staff accountable to the public.

The job of the OMB is to make a final decision on development plans if two or more parties can’t compromise. This may sound great, but let’s look at what is really going on here.

The reputation of the OMB hasn’t been good. An intuition that is supposed to treat all parties equally is hardly doing that. The history of the OMB seems to always favour business men and multi-million dollar developers who have high stakes in transforming a community for mass profit at the expense of the community. It seems that no matter how hard the community fights, they are dismissed and powerless to stop violent changes to their community.

I will paraphrase what real community members are saying about the OMB. “The last OMB Chair I saw seemed to bully the community.” “The OMB chair threatened to kick the community out of the hearing if there was any “crazies” present.” These quotes are from Hamiltonians who have experienced the OMB first hand and are not crazy.  Of course this is not every case, but why should we stand for this? Why should an  undemocratic institution which is out of touch with communities across Ontario, decide whether a developer who is also out of touch with those communities, transform communities at the community’s expense?

The Chedoke Brow lands community knows this well. It’s time to take a stand for community dignity and rights.

The undemocratic OMB has no place in a democratic state. Let’s abolish it.

(I would like to correct an error in my letter. At the time I wrote this letter, I had misunderstood an article I was referring to when I spoke about the OMB being undemocratic. I said that the OMB staff was not appointed by elected officials. The OMB senior management staff is appointed by elected officials. With this being said, the appointment process is done in a secretive manner and their is no public overview of this process. I would also like to point out that the Senate is another institution like the OMB (another error in my letter). Both a waste of tax payer’s money and an insult to democracy.)

Wednesday, February 1

I hope Hamilton is here forever. But if, for any reason (climate change, asteroid collision, the leachate from Adam Sandler movies), humankind must move to a new home in the stars, let there be at least one thing left of our city.

One thing remaining to greet the aliens when they happen upon our ghost planet, many eons hence, from which they can deduce what kind of creatures we were who once inhabited this particular niche of the Earth.

Our Cross of Lorraine.

You may not be aware of it. It doesn’t shine through the night sky from the escarpment anymore. But it did.

To a young Erica Read, who grew up on the Mountain, the lit cross was the beacon that pulled her safely home after car trips with the family. She’d see it from the 403 — “a little girl half asleep in the family station wagon, a woody, no less” — and feel the comforting, protective nearness of the familiar.

She didn’t know then what she knows now, what she shares with the Grade 5/6 class she teaches at Holbrook School. The Cross of Lorraine is a symbol of our once desperate fight against tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis may seem a distant cause. But Hamilton’s record of care, sacrifice and asylum for the very weakest, embodied in the vast Sanatorium lands on the Mountain brow, is one of the noblest chapters in this city’s history. And, perhaps, it prefigures our ongoing evolution from steel city to health care/social services city.

Thousands came to the Sanatorium. Many never left. Tubercular patients from the Far North, places such as Cape Dorset, were brought here for care and gave us their great Inuit tradition of soapstone carvings.

The Cross of Lorraine went up in 1953 at the end of Sanatorium Road. It’s at the edge of the now hotly debated brow condominium development lands.

“The land holds special meaning for my class, as we attend school at Holbrook,” says Erica. “The school is named after (Sanatorium head) Dr. J. Howard Holbrook, a wonderful doctor who ushered in many innovative practices to make the lives of patients more bearable. Two portraits of him grace our building, and the Grade 1 students are convinced his eyes follow them through the halls.”

I visited Erica’s class last week, and we met again at the cross. It’s beautiful in a melancholy way, rising high into the air, its sturdy heraldic double bars still equal to the symbolic weight they carry, but rusted, obscured by foliage and the neon dried in its veins. It’s like a great proud bell but with no tongue to sound its knell.

On this day, Erica’s students were the lights of the cross. They’ve been there several times, thanks to Erica, and it means things to them.

They long to see it shine again.

Several of the students — Kevin Macleod, Michael Ding and Mohan Kennedy — note how it overlooks McMaster Hospital, how patients there would see it through their windows if it were lit. They’re very perceptive.

“They’d look out and know something’s over them. It’s a beacon, from Hamilton to the world,” says Mohan.

“It’s a landmark, something special just to Hamilton,” says Miranda Dalgetty.

“If it was ever torn down, we’d lose part of our history,” says Kyle Mesaglia.

Our cross tells the world that once we cared enough to take in the oft-shunned, at the cost of putting ourselves at risk of infection. Is that a metaphor for what Hamilton is today? Are we still the kind of people who can light up the Cross of Lorraine?

Share your memories of the cross and the Sanatorium. If you know when the light went out, tell me. Should we urge city hall to light it up again? Be heard. Thanks, Holbrook Grade 5/6, for sharing your passion, and our history.

jmahoney@thespec.com

Mountain News

re: Start a fund to save the Cross of Lorraine (Community Columnist, Dec. 22)

Starting a fund to save the cross is the easy way out. The sanatorium had a large piece of property and over the years large parcels were sold off to developers. Even now, the brow lands are in the news. Did all the money received go to pay salaries of the hospital or what?
They should have put the money aside for the maintenance of the hospital property. Things are out of sync when a government funded organization has a CEO who is paid more than the prime minister of Canada.
Angelo Scime
Hamilton Mountain