After more than a decade, the secret meetings between the city and the Hamilton Halton Home Builders Association are being replaced by gatherings that will be open to the public. The “HHHBA / City of Hamilton Liaison Committee” has met multiple times a year since 2002, but the new general manager of economic development and planning announced this week that this arrangement is being restructured.
“I just wanted to advise [planning] committee of some changes we’ve made to the structure of our liaison group with the Hamilton Halton Home Builders Association,” Jason Thorne told the first planning committee meeting of the new council term. “We had in the past been meeting on an approximately monthly basis with the group. Going forward in consultation with the home builders group, … we’re going to have twice per year a public forum with the development industry where we would have our staff present on some key issues that are of interest to the development community, and presentations from the development industry as well in a forum that’s open to any member of the public to attend.”
Thorne said the first forum will likely be in February and that city staff will be “meeting shortly with the home builders to devise an agenda for that.” Appointed to the general manager position just last summer, Thorne also announced other changes including converting the east-west orientation of the planning division into three sections – urban, suburban and rural teams that will all report to director of planning Steve Robichaud.
The existence of the liaison committee came to light nearly four years ago when a participating councillor publicly urged more of her colleagues to attend its unpublicized meetings. Senior staff revealed that the chair and vice chair of the planning committee were traditionally part of the liaison group, and encouraged others to attend. There was an enthusiastic response to this request from several councillors until Brad Clark denounced the secretive gatherings as “a cosy relationship” that was illegal if they included councillors.
“You’re going to have the little get together and then come forward with a plan – the public will expect to hear that conversation, how it came about, who said what to who, how did the decision get made,” Clark contended. “That’s why it’s supposed to be a public process all the time.”
A year later, Clark and Brian McHattie revealed another tradition – a twice-annual private dinner hosted by the HHHBA for the chairs of the planning and public works committees – and announced they would not participate.
When CATCH made a freedom of information application for the minutes and agendas of the liaison committee, a senior member of the city clerk’s department assured us no such committee existed because if it did the minutes would be taken by the clerk’s department. However a search was conducted and documents from some of the meetings dating back to 2002 were uncovered.
Two meetings after the public exposure, councillors’ names stopped appearing among attendees and the Conservation Authority ended participation by its staff, but the meetings continued. A subsequent freedom of information request was met with a policy change that provided the minutes and agendas directly from the planning department.
These documents provided little detail about what took place but subjects appeared to be primarily determined by the developer’s lobby group. A formal request by CATCH to attend the meetings was refused, and subsequently reported in a story in September that the lobbyist registry would not apply to activities through the liaison committee.
The HHHBA describes itself as “the voice of the local construction industry” representing “250 active members working in all areas related to new home construction, including builders, land developers, trades, suppliers, renovators and others.” The website states the HHHBA advocates “for our members and the building industry as a whole” and claims to also represent the interests of new home buyers.