CITY COUNCIL M I N U T E S Wednesday, June 10, 2009

City staff are recommending a higher subsidy for minor hockey teams to avoid imposing a steep fee increase for arena use. Most municipalities provide a fee break to support youth participation in hockey, although Hamilton’s subsidy is the one of the highest.

City staff say provincial deputy ministers were uninformed when they challenged land conversions to allow a big box commercial development at Fifty Road. They also maintain that the replacement of employment designations with retail ones on three other land parcels in the city can be defended against provincial rules.

Brad Clark says the Ontario Realty Corporation “misrepresented” city documents at a June 17 meeting on the Eramosa Karst lands. The provincial land management agency is also being criticized by a citizen’s group trying to have karst feeder lands permanently protected – an 80 acre parcel that the ORC wants the city to remove from a protected designation.

Cyclists are being urged to attend tomorrow night’s council meeting to support increased funding for bike lanes and multi-use paths. Last week, the public works committee refused to confirm funding for a proposed master plan for cycling infrastructure and also deferred making the staff coordinator’s job permanent.

This is a regular CATCH summary of votes at committee and council meetings. This report covers the month of May 2009. The vast majority of council decisions are unanimous and the votes are not recorded. Only decisions with recorded votes are reported here. The first line of each entry identifies the issue, followed by a brief and the location of the vote in the third line. Multiple votes on the same issue are reported together. Absentees are only listed where reported in the minutes and the councillors are members of that committee or decision-making body. Links are provided to source documents.