City not serving poorest neighbourhood
September 21, 2006

The downtown Beasley neighbourhood is denied city services enjoyed by many wealthier parts of Hamilton according to community activist Janet Hillen who spoke to planning committee on Tuesday. And what minimal public amenities that do exist are closed or inaccessible.

Hillen pointed to a fountain in Beasley Park that has been shut off for three years, and to problems faced by an immigrant group who couldn't use the one-room Beasley community centre because there was no funding to staff the building.

“There are no city-funded, adequately-staffed places where residents of all ages, backgrounds and degrees of wellness can come together through the day to socialize, enjoy educational or recreational activities, learn new skills, or participate in neighbourhood planning,” charged Hillen. “Unlike other neighbourhoods in Hamilton , Beasley has no city-funded gyms, soccer fields, baseball fields, swimming pools, skating rinks, tennis, volleyball or basketball courts [and] no city-funded leisure, social or recreational programs for adults or seniors in Beasley.”

The neighbourhood is bounded by Barton, James, King and Wellington and is one of the twenty poorest neighbourhoods in Canada with an unemployment rate estimated at 45 percent and a poverty rate two and a half times the city average.

Hillen called for a “real community centre for all the members of the community” suggesting that the planned replacement of Dr Davey School may offer an opportunity for this to happen.

“The city's decision to turn the water off in the fountain in Beasley park, like the absence of an adequate community centre,' she said, “symbolizes to me a lack of imagination and will, reluctance to engage in constructive, creative problem-solving and a sad absence of civic mindedness.”

Downtown councillor Bob Bratina agreed with Hillen's comments and recalled that the city did an extensive report on the neighbourhood's needs about ten years ago “and like many initiatives, it sat there.” He pointed to what he called “the deplorable situation” around the replacement of the neighourhood's elementary school. The original plan was to build a new school in Beasley Park, but that was abandoned because underground contamination was discovered and neither the city nor the school board were willing to pay for remediation.

“Whoever pays for it, that school needs to be built on that site [and] that would then leave the present Dr Davey school [to] be a first class Beasley community centre,” Bratina declared. “That would then be the beginning of … some tangible show by the city that we are concerned about the neighbourhood, the children in that neighbourhood, and the many diverse cultures who are all on their own.”

Bratina raised the same issue at a press conference in July in support of preserving the Lister Block where he criticized the city for failing to find money for the cleanup while it was spending millions subsidizing a proposed office tower to replace the heritage building.

“We as a city are overlooking this very important and in many ways distressed neighbourhood,” he told committee this week. “It should be the first priority of the city, but …we're not willing to spend the money.”

Mountain councillor Terry Whitehead described the underfunding of neighbourhoods as a “systemic issue” at city hall.

“We are a shadow of our former selves when it comes to community building,” he said. “The city needs to be doing a lot more than they are currently doing, not just in the distressed neighbourhoods, but right across this city to build stronger neighbourhoods.”