March 22, 2004 Report
Scheduled to start at 9:30am. Actual start time was 9:43am. Adjourned at 10:28am.

Attendance:

• Mayor DiIanni (chair)
• Russ Powers
• Maria Pearson
• Sam Merulla
• Brian McHattie
• Bill Kelly
• Phil Bruckler
• Dave Braden
• Murray Ferguson
• Chad Collins
• Dave Mitchell
• Bernie Morelli (left 10:24) Just before item 3.4
• Margaret McCarthy
• Andrea Horwath
• Terry Whitehead (arrived 10:18 during item 3.3)
  
• Absent: Tom Jackson

Meeting consisted of four delegations speaking about the budget. First three had written presentations and have been asked by CATCH to submit them by email.

DiIanni : "What I'd like to do tomorrow is begin the discussion with issues that I've picked up from some of the councillors, that you absolutely want to discuss, and I thought we could start the debate discussing some of those issues that have risen to the top. And so whether they are issues around consultants, or issues around the EPET(?) program, or whatever, I think I've got five or six items on the list. I'll post that to you by email and if you're agreeable, we'll start there. And whatever you'd like to add to the list, please add, and we'll make sure that we cover that from a high level. And then of course we can get into the budget specifics as well."

McHattie: Wants to start with overview of Vision 2020 to start the process. DiIanni: "A bit of that overview and then we'll deal with the themes that have arisen, and then we'll get into the specifics." McHattie: "I'd like to see if we could have Linda Harvey there." DiIanni interupts: "I think all of the GMs are going to invite all staff. We'll make sure that Linda's here as well."

Changes to the Agenda: Additional presentation, item 3.4, by Adam Gaul representing the volunteer firefighters union.

Myrtle Greve, Co-Chair of Hamilton Cares.

3.1 Presentation by Myrtle Greve , Co-Chair of Hamilton Cares: "Thank you for the opportunity to present the views of Hamilton Cares on the City budget. Hamilton Cares pursues the interests of persons disadvantaged or made vulnerable by changes or omissions in provincial or municipal services.

The first point we wish to make is that we support the Mayor's proposal to ask the province for $19.5 million in sustainable funding. The effect of the downloading of social services from the province to the municipal government has put an unbearable strain on taxpayers and has resulted in the reduction and loss of numerous services for the poor and disabled in Hamilton.

The particular focus of our presentation is the threat to the City's subsidized homemaking program that currently provides services to 363 persons at an annual cost to the city of $329,000. The province contributes $1.5 million that is contingent on the contribution from the city. The city funding for the program is currently slated to be discontinued on June 30, 2004. It is our understanding that the Ministry of Health and the CCAC are negotiating with city staff to facilitate the termination process and to provide a transition strategy for the citizens who will be impacted.

It is our fear that a solution will not be found by June 30 and once again the vulnerable elderly and disabled clients will be forced into homelessess and unnecessary institutionalization for the sake of a few hours a month of vital homemaking help. I remind you that this program has been capped since February 2003 which has already compromised many eligible clients.

Provincial policies have eroded the home care system so severely that unless people whose circumstances require home care have the money to pay for private services it is impossible to maintain their independence.

We are here to ask you to continue to support this program until a solution can be found. The members of Hamilton Cares have extensive experience in the Long-Term Care sector, as professionals and caregivers, and are ready and willing to participate in an advisory capacity. We are also taxpayers and appreciate the strain that the downloading has put on the city. However, please do not allow these vulnerable citizens to have their last few hours of subsidized service withdrawn when we believe a way can be found to keep $1.5 million in our city to assist them plus many others who are currently without any such assistance. Thank you for the opportunity to address you today."

DiIanni : "I can tell you in speaking to some of our provincial members of parliament, they are interested in seeing this program continue until some stable funding can be found. So we'll do the best we can." Greve: "I'm concerned, Mr. Mayor, that before long these people will be getting their notice of the termination of their service and this puts a tremendous stress on people who are already disadvantaged and needing that homemaker on a weekly or a monthly basis. And they've already received notice, I believe, twice in the past, and then it has been reversed. To see that notice, absolutely terrifies them, sends them off to the doctor, and prematurely into long-term care."

DiIanni asks Jo-Anne Priel to respond (tape doesn't pick this up). DiIanni: "I take that to mean that nothing will go to anyone until council decides on the strategy. And I think maybe the Chair was going to make that point." Merulla (chair of Social and Public Health Services): "Exactly. And apparently there is some potentially good news coming out of the province as well, so we are just keeping our fingers crossed."

3.2 Presentation by Bob Wood, Executive Director of the Housing Help Centre: I'm Bob Wood from the Housing Help Centre.

The Centre was established in 1988 and opened in the spring of 1989 on the recommendation of the Food and Shelter Committee and with financial support from the province and the Region of Hamilton-Wentworth in an 80/20 ratio. The Centre is mandated to assist low-income individuals and families and people with special needs find and maintain affordable housing. It is also part of our mission to bring the issues facing people we serve to the broader public's attention.

In recent years we have taken on administrative responsibility for the Housing Emergency Loan Program (HELP), a rent bank program that assists tenants who are in danger of losing their housing. HELP provides around 200 interest free loans each year. This assistance prevents homelessness.

Why the City Budget Process Matters to Us

We have been following your budget deliberations because your decisions will impact those we serve - that roughly one-fifth of Hamilton's population who are considered to be living in poverty.

Budget Consultation

I attended the first meeting in January and was impressed with the ambitious public consultation plan laid out that day. At the time my sense was that a successful consultation would establish a sort of community consensus around how to address the significant budget challenges faced by the City and the impacts cuts and/or tax increases would have on residents and businesses.

As I read the Tax Supported Budget Update and the Mayor's Budget Plan presented on March 12th it is my view such a consensus has been achieved. You should be commended.

I recall a couple of other comments that the Mayor put forward at that January meeting. One was the idea that successful partnerships needed to be developed with the social service community to address the City's budget challenges. The Mayor also noted that solutions would take time.

Pooling

In that spirit I would like to comment on one aspect of the report i.e. the attempt to "rectify social cost inequities burdening the City's property taxes."

Assuming that the costs of social services and housing will remain a property taxpayer responsibility it is, of course, really a no-brainer that Hamilton should be part of any pooling arrangement.

While a no- brainer to us, other municipalities don't see it the same way. Given the McGuinty government's commitment to consultation, I would think there would need to be some level of support from the existing "pooled municipalities" for any change to the status quo.

Take Halton where Chair Joyce Savoline noted in her inaugural address that the "pooling system undermines the quality of life" in a community that most of us would consider to be quite affluent.

In my Friday newspaper Boni Fox Gray, a spokesperson from the Ministry of Finance, is quoted as saying that Hamilton would not be included in any new pooling arrangement. The Halton staff, in the midst of completing a report looking at alternatives to pooling which is going to committee in mid-April, are encouraged that "another pooling recipient won't be added," according to this article.

I believe this one is not going to be resolved in our favour if the problem is looked at from the perspective of municipal finance staff. We need another kind of analysis.

Urban Drift

We know that big cities draw people. The Golden Commission report estimated that one-half to three-quarters of the homeless population in any major city comes from outside that city.

Urban Drift, a phenomenon described in Our Homes Our Streets , the first report on Homelessness put out by the Social Planning and Research Council in 1999, talked of people leaving smaller municipalities to come to Hamilton to take advantage of services available here. Traditionally many have come because the housing is more affordable or today, perhaps, just less unaffordable. To the best of my knowledge we have no idea how many people are leaving other communities and coming here and what it cost s us. We should.

The service providers in the community can certainly affirm (anecdotally) that people come here from Burlington, Niagara and, I believe more and more often, from Toronto because they don't have the resources to find or maintain housing in their own towns.

The person and family who comes here - and hopefully has success in finding housing - encounter our service and housing systems and we pick up the costs of it.

So, while we must continue to push at the political level for a reformed pooling arrangement, I believe it is imperative that we find ways to quantify urban drift and understand what it costs us. The City can show leadership here.

At the same time it would be worthwhile if a cross regional group (Hamilton, Halton, Niagara) of municipal staff and service providers from the non-profit sector could be convened to see if there are any strategies that could be put in place which could help support people in their existing communities - to lessen the impacts of urban drift. This would need local political support to ensure its success.

In the longer term this group may be able to come up with some kind of idea of using municipal resources across municipalities that makes sense. We seem to be able to come up with creative cross jurisdictional ways to address environmental issues (e.g. Niagara Escarpment Commission) and planning matters (e.g. the Greenbelt Task Force).

Can't we do it in the area of housing and social services?

DiIanni: "Thank you. Appreciate it and let's hope that some of our local MPPs have a little more clout with the government than the Burlington MPP."

Ferguson asks Jo-Ann Priel if there's a way to track where people come from. Priel says they can't do that at this time, but indications are that there's not a large net gain for Hamilton from other cities.

McHattie follows up on Wood's suggestion for a regional gathering of political, staff and service providers to try and reduce "urban drift". DiIanni asks Priel about connections with Halton, Niagara and Brant. Priel says some discussion in the past. McHattie: "The pooling is one thing, but are there any other reasons, any other advantages to us, having ..(tape problem). DiIanni: "The point I think that you're making councillor is that maybe we should try to instituionalize this a bit, as opposed to the, not ad-hoc, but the silo approach, where we take issues and connect with our coterminous municipalities according to those issues. And for example, you're doing that in your department. We know that we've been meeting with the mayors of the so-called 'west GTA-Hamilton' mayors on transportation issues. You've been to that session. . As a result of meeting over a year and a half, two years, to talk about common interests. And maybe we need to bump it up in a number of other areas as well. I can also tell you that I was invited by the mayors and the representatives of Guelph, Brantford, the City of Brant, and Cambridge to talk about some transportation landuse issues as they impact our communities. . Can we find a structure on either side, on all sides of our borders, that might address these issues as well. We'll look at that."

Kelly: "It behooves us to restate the obvious when we have this kind of discussion, because it comes up every year at budget time. . At the end of the day, we also have to realize, that the solution to this is going to be political. The conundrum we're in was caused by a political decision, and it's only going to be changed. We can have ad-hoc meetings. We can talk about the similar problems with surrounding municipalities. The deck is stacked against us right from day one, because of this political decision. And it bears repeating again, since we have people who are involved in these sorts of programs here this morning, that the inherent problem here is that this is the only jurisdiction in Canada that puts social services on property taxes. Urban drift wouldn't be so much of a problem if the province was paying the bill. It wouldn't much matter. We don't want to put walls up as some people - not here today, but I've heard in some circles in this community - we'll we've got to stop that. We'll there's a humane side to that too that says maybe we shouldn't stop that because they need housing and we have it. We should be able to supply it for them. But we shouldn't have to pay the bill. So we've encouraged the people that are here today, the people in the community, the media, that there's going have to be pressure put on the provincial government here in this province. Not even in Alberta, the seat of conservatism in this country, do they put social services on property taxes. It's not done anywhere else in the world, except in Ontario. And until we get that problem, and that portion of it fixed, we're really swimming upstream here. And we've got to apply political pressure. And I know you've been working with Minister Bountriganni diligently over the last little while. And I know that you've had some very positive feedback, as have others here who have worked with the new government too. But if nothing else, Mr. Mayor, this should steel our resolve that we're going to have to find a political solution to this. Now clearly when you bring up pooling, of course there are winners and losers in different municipalities. Of course some people don't want pooling. But pooling was imposed. Pooling was not a decision made by those communities that are involved in it, saying here's a solution. The province, again, mandated that. And they take it away, they can add to it, they can do whatever they want. So notwithstanding the comments of Ms. Savoline or anyone else in those jurisdictions. They didn't have a say when it was imposed, and they won't have a say if in fact it's expanded. And that's only one of a couple of different solutions, I know you've talked to the province about too. So hope springs eternal, I suppose Mr. Mayor, but ultimately we hope that one day they wake up with the revelation that they've got to be fair with everybody, and that ultimately will be the solution."

Merulla: "I too agree with what councillor Kelly has mentioned with respect to the provincial aspect, but I think it's also incumbent on the city, that although the province might be to blame, that we don't basically allow people to get further in the difficult situation. And we deal with the human deficit as well as the fiscal deficit. I think in the past, for whatever reason, we have focused in on certain aspects that have jeopardized and increased the human deficit, whether it be homecare and looking at lists of programs that are either mandated or non-mandated. And sometimes blindly eliminating programs not recognizing the impact down the line. I think homecare would be the epitome of something that we focused in on. We eliminated, although a number of us warned everyone around the table that this would have great impacts. We moved forward anyway and I think we have to take a step back. And although the province might be to blame, I think that it would just compound the problem for us to move forward without understanding how much we're increasing that human deficit."

Horwath: "I just want to chime in supporting what councillor Merulla had to say. I think that anybody who looks at what's happened in Ontario over the last eight or nine years will know that trickle-down economics don't work. So as we deal with our budgets, I know we focus on economic development - and that's important - but we can't focus on that at the detriment of everything else. There really is such a thing as sustainability, and it means three-legs to the stool, not just one. So we really have to be careful as we move forward in this budget session to correct some of the mistakes we've made in the past. That means things like our social services, because people are just going to end up on the streets, and that's going to deal with our local economy in terms of the downtown. It's going to be brutal, and so we really have to look at things more holistically. Things like trees, and things like roads, and things like social services, all need to be maintained at a decent level. Otherwise you end up with huge holes in either your social safety net, your ozone layer, or your economic development. So I think that as we go forward we really need to remember that those little budget lines that sometimes come forward as something that's easy to cut because we really don't see what the impact is, but when it comes to some of the impacts of those social service cuts, we see what happened when the province did it because it's on our streets. And it's on every major street, in fact, nationwide."

Henry Watson, President of the Hamilton Professional Firefighters Association.

3.3. Presentation by Henry Watson , President of the Hamilton Professional Firefighters Association. Concerns expressed over several years about the level of fire protection in Hamilton, and there have been significant cuts in the last 10-12 years with respect to the number of staff and vehicles that are available to provide that level of service. Concerned with proposal to eliminate 10 full time employees (currently vacant). Will lead to reliance on overtime. Issue of sick and injured firefighters. Circular issue - less firefighters, rely on overtime, more firefighters injured. Committee of council looked at this - very positive committee - Powers, Kelly and Collins . Proposal to form a NFPA 1710 committee. Recognized as industry standard across North America. Supported by both firefighters organization and chiefs. Imperative to establish the committee to compare Hamilton service against industry standard. Not just wrt to staffing. Wants reestablishment of council committee. "We thought that was a tremendous committee". Work not done yet, so should be reestablished. . Premature to eliminate the 10 positions. Suggest leave them vacant while the committee is set up and examines what is the appropriate level of firefighters.

Braden: Question to Watson: "Looking ahead, what we see from a number of emergency service departments is increasing rates that are far beyond what cost of living is. And that may be just a fact. Is your group able to give us some ideas on how we can significantly reduce that projected increase? In other words, if our ability to pay for increases goes up by 2-3% per year and the cost of firefighting goes up 6% a year, is there anything you can do to help us so we can bring it down to 3%? We're looking at the next 5-10 years, long term." Watson: "It would be premature for me to make any comment on that until the committees have had the opportunity. The NFPA committee would establish how the fire department stacks up against the industry standard. I believe the committee did generate savings to the department through a review of overtime budget, review of the vacancies, and how we are managing that amount of money. We looked at different scheduling to decrease the cost to the fire department, . So we are prepared to work with council and the representatives from the fire department to see if we can assist you in that. But we also have to bear in mind that we have a level of fire protection that the citizens of Hamilton have come to expect, and we certainly want to provide to them." Braden: "Can you explain to me, real slowly, about the new contract in which somebody gave us some 'in-lieu' raise." Watson: "During the course of negotiations there was a proposal from the corporation to have fire fighters paid for lieu days rahter than having a day off. Obviously when you are at minimum staffing, and you have additional staff off, there's more and more opportunity for overtime. The department asked that firefighters be paid. Right now firefighters are in receipt of twelve statutory holidays off per year. Historically they've all been in alternate days off. . The corporation asked that some of those days be paid. Rather than having the day off, you receive a day's pay in lieu of the day off. And I believe the argument from the employer is that would alleviate and reduce costs generated by overtime. So what was established was that a minimum of four days of the twelve were to be paid to each and every individual in the firefighters association. So you then have 8 days off and 4 days paid. It was also left to the employee's discretion if they wanted to be in receipt of pay greater than the four days. So there are individuals out there who are taking less days off and taking that money. And hopefully that's going to generate savings to the department through a reduction in overtime."

Ferguson: Ask Powers for overview of accomplishments of previous committee. Powers: "Creation of a wellness committee." "Asked for an evaluation to compare municipalities and our staff , and identified 9 municipalities that were comparable." Looked at those and found that the overtime, and the absenteeism are in keeping with those muncipalities. "So our numbers were clearly not out of whack from there." Reviewed elements of the overtime and came up with reliable numbers that are in the budget. Watson is correct that vacancies inadvertently prompts escalating costs. Supports continued work on this. Kelly agrees with Powers and that the work isn't finished yet for that committee. Agreeable to continue work of that committee. May want to establish a committee that looks at similar issues in other departments. Praises Watson's cooperativeness.

Problems with tape in this area. McHattie back and forth with acting fire chief all speak. Motion to reestablish the committee.

Merulla: "Back in 2001 or 2002 I put forward a motion to establish a Human Resources Committee, but it never actually developed. ." DiIanni: "We're really straying from the intent of this meeting, but we'll pick that up."

3.4 Presentation by Adam Gaul from the Volunteer Firefighters Union. No materials prepared. "I just found out about the meeting in the middle of my vacation last week". Asks that their association is part of the new committee. . "Our very existence saves the City about $10 million a year." Main point is that he wants funding continued for a 'vehicle extrication team' that competes nationally and internationally. Currently ranked top in Canada. Representing the city. Cost is about $5000 to $10,000.

DiIanni: Ask acting chief for a response. Acting Chief Kay : Looking at everything because of budget pressures. DiIanni tells Gaul that "it's one of the things that we'll have to consider". Also motion that the volunteer association included in the new committee.

Adjournment at 10:28 am.