It may be next spring before council decides whether to establish a lobbyist registry despite a 2007 endorsement in principle. 

Attracting new industries is a central focus of Hamilton’s economic growth strategy, but the amounts of vacant and underutilized older industrial land available for this purpose are wildly divergent depending on who does the calculation, even within the city bureaucracy. 

This is a regular CATCH summary of votes at committee and council meetings. This report covers the month of January 2013. 

Years of city council’s focus on economic development appear to be bearing little fruit. 

Opponents of the shipment of tar sands through Hamilton are taking their campaign back to a likely unsympathetic audience in Westover on Monday night as new information surfaces of Canadian government lobbying in Maine for the export diluted bitumen (dilbit) to foreign markets. 

HSR ridership went down last year, as Hamilton continued to buck a strong national trend of increased use of transit. 

There are strong hints from HSR staff that a bus fare hike is under consideration after a two-year freeze. 

After paying out over $5 million in grants last year for installation of backwater valves in private homes, the city is tightening up its subsidy program to curb reported abuse by contractors. 

This is a regular CATCH summary of votes at committee and council meetings. This report covers the month of December 2012.

Two starkly different visions of Hamilton’s future clashed last week at the Ontario Municipal Board hearings into the controversial airport-area urban boundary expansion sought by the city. 

Protests are planned this week as new evidence emerges that Enbridge Inc plans to export diluted bitumen through Ontario from Alberta’s tar sands to markets in the US and China. 

After four days last week, the Ontario Municipal Board hearings on the aerotropolis urban boundary expansion have reached at least the halfway mark. 

Projections for growth at Hamilton’s airport are “highly questionable” and can’t provide a reasonable basis for the aerotropolis plans says a witness at the Ontario Municipal Board hearings opening next week.

The consultant defending the city’s aerotropolis plans at the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) has reduced the amount of land that he believes is defensible. 

We are deeply saddened at the passing of Joan Roberts, a founding member of CATCH who has been active through our entire nine-year history. 

Council has deemed a previously approved small increase in development charges too threatening to Hamilton’s economic development prospects, so the foregone growth fees will instead have to be paid by taxpayers or added to water bills.