Raise the Hammer

Normally I just lurk on this site but I just had to add my $0.02 after reading "Balance"'s unbalanced screed.

"A house assessed at 200,000 in Dundas is a hell of a lot less house then one in the old City!!"

It totally depends on the area. Westdale and Kirkendall are a lot more expensive than the north east end.

"minority websites like RTH, CATCH, and HPD pop up, its only a few people (usually the same)"

All you have to do is look at the names of the people who run these websites to see this simply is not true.

"and are all anti-business (unless its a ma and pa shop), anti-growth and development."

The only way you could think that is to not actually read anything on this site. It's full of pro business, pro growth and pro development - just not the same kind of development Hamilton's been doing for the past 50 years. Of course for the people who get rich off that kind of development it's easier to say people who want change are "anti development" than to admit that maybe there's more than one way to build a city.

"READ Joel Kotkin and he tell you what a success San Fran and Portland really are."

O please. Joel Kotkin is a sprawl shill with a hate-on for actually working cities, bankrolled by a gaggle of libertarian think tanks.

"Then they claim that all roads built are for the sub-urbs which are older then the old City itself."

Nuh-uh. There's a big difference between old Ancaster and the Meadowlands. Or between King Street in Dundas and the shitstream along Governors Road. YOu don't get to pretend they're part of the same line of development. Old Dundas is quite nice, fairly dense, tree-lined, mixed houses and businesses. It's a good neighbourhood. The crap orbiting around the fringes strung along the highways is a different creature altogther.

"We live in a huge region folks not a self contained bubble, we need roads, airports, houses and big business. "

Peak Oil. Global warming. We can't just keep doing things the way we did them before. It's wrecking the planet.

"To think the Red Hill was built for residential development is assinine."

So where are all the businesses we were promised? As Jason keeps pointing out, tax assessment growth for 2008 is expected to be zero. That's the projection from planning and economic development, not some 'crackpot' blogger. If the highway is good for economic development, WHERE'S THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT?

"We now have a great system for goods movement loop around Hamilton."

I'm sure the truckers bypassing Hamilton really appreciate us paying to build them a highway. YOu do know Red HIll is the main reason why our budget is so crunched right? I didn't make that up, it's what the city is saying. They have no money, no capital budget for next year, and they're trying to figure out how to limit tax increases to 3%. You can bang on all you want about how you and the red hill/airport/warehouse shills are pro development and pro growth but the development is all residential or big box plazas serving the residential and there's no tax assessment growth.

Cmon, everyone knew red hill would be complete by the end of 2007, why weren't they building new factories and things up on the mountain so they'd be ready when it opens? Maybe because the 'jobs' argument was bullshit right from the start.

"This group and the Province lost at the OMB hearing just like Larry Dianni said. It would have been tossed out because they appealed an urban boundry expansion which was not what the City was doing, they were doing a special study area to consider a possible expansion if further study warranted."

Bullshit. Council voted to expand the urban boundary. That's the fact of the matter no matter how much you and Larry want to spin it different. They voted to expand the urban boundary and the OMB told them to take it back.

It wasnt the OMB who increased the study area to 4000 acres, it was the city. the provincial government took the city to the OMB because the city had NOT conducted studies to figure out how much land it needed. Now with the study area increased the city STILL hasn't done studies to figure out how much land it needs.

They're planning this totally bass ackwards.

Either you're badly misinformed or you're trying to DISinform with your comment. There seems to be a lot of that in the comments lately. Maybe the old boys club is starting to get scared...?