Residents on both sides of the bay are participating in next weekend’s global push for serious government action on climate change, while city staff warn councillors that Hamilton is unprepared for extreme rainfalls like the one that clobbered Burlington last month.

For the first time in a decade, all of Hamilton’s perceived leading mayoralty candidates are accepting corporate and union donations to finance their campaigns.

This is a regular CATCH summary of votes at committee and council meetings. This report covers the month of July 2014.

Observers are not allowed at monthly meetings that have been going on for more than a decade between the city and a developers’ lobby group.

More than a third of Hamilton’s workforce is now commuting outside the city, slowly continuing a long-standing trend and adding to highway congestion. 

Ten years after they were unveiled, Hamilton is still not ready to implement mandatory provincial smart growth policies says mayoralty candidate Brian McHattie.

The glacial pace of change in Hamilton appears closely tied to city council’s extreme reluctance to add more city staff.

In response to pleas from developers, city council has agreed to delay increasing growth charges on new residential development and forego over $7 million that will now have to be made up through property taxes and water rates. 

This is a regular CATCH summary of votes at committee and council meetings. This report covers the month of June 2014. 

A Line 9 worksite occupation launched this morning is only the latest challenge to Enbridge’s plans to expand the flow in its Sarnia to Montreal pipeline and begin shipping diluted bitumen from the Alberta tar sands. 

Clean Air Hamilton (CAH) has again warned city councillors that serious action is required to address climate change and its consequences, and last week Ontario’s Environmental Commissioner telegraphed a similar message to Queen’s Park.

Statistics Canada says itinerant flights to and from Hamilton airport fell in 2013 for the seventh consecutive year. 

This is a regular CATCH summary of votes at committee and council meetings. This report covers the month of May 2014. 

A year after flash flooding imposed more than a billion dollars in damages, Toronto is convinced that the success and quality of life in cities now depends on how well prepared they are to deal with the extreme weather events associated with climate change. 

Building more roads to reduce traffic congestion doesn’t work. A comprehensive examination of all American cities shows that the amount of driving increases in lock-step with the expansion of the road system.

The lobbyist registry returns tomorrow to a council embarrassed by its February attempt to quietly bury it and subsequent treatment of the citizen volunteers who helped in the seven-year drafting process.

A city-funded study of the airport says cargo shipments from the airport are actually below 1998 levels and are less than one-fifth the weight reported to council last summer by the private managers of the facility.

This is a regular CATCH summary of votes at committee and council meetings. This report covers the month of April 2014. The first line of each entry identifies the issue, followed by a brief description. 

A local climate group says deceptive calculations are letting Hamilton and other Ontario municipalities falsely claim that their road construction projects reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help meet Canada’s responsibilities to fight climate change. 

An increase in growth fees that is going before councillors on June 4 is expected to face resistance from local developers despite nearly a dozen private meetings between staff and the Hamilton Halton Home Builders Association (HHHBA).