Will the survey be unbiased?

Questions are being raised about the fairness of an extraordinary mail-out survey on the city’s approach to predicted population growth. They are being raised by councillors both for and against the staff recommendation to turn thousands of acres of farmland into new residential subdivisions.

The unprecedented mail-out survey will go to all Hamilton households sometime next month and offer a choice between two growth options or the chance to propose something else. One selection is to freeze the urban boundary to protect Hamilton’s remaining prime agricultural lands as advocated by over fifty citizen delegations last month. The other choice is to endorse residential expansion onto 3300 hectares of farmland, an option recommended by staff and named by them as the “ambitious density scenario”.

At the heart of the concerns is the fact that the survey is being designed, distributed and tabulated by planning staff who have argued the boundary freeze option is impractical. The survey will be accompanied by links to information sources selected by staff to help residents understand the choice.

“We’re advertising an option that hasn’t been studied or put on the table by staff”, argued Chad Collins at the council meeting held to ratify the survey decision. “Why would we be proposing something that staff has advised against and we know is really not an option?”

Collins made clear that he opposes a boundary freeze and subsequently voted against council ratification of the survey motion. Brad Clark, the originator of the motion, agreed that it should be accompanied by detailed information about both options.

However he reminded his colleagues that the Ford provincial government “in a ham-fisted way” is demanding cities decide by early next year how to accommodate provincial growth forecasts that in Hamilton’s case would add 236,000 additional residents over the next thirty years.

“Ideally we would know what a no boundary expansion option would mean and we would also have the financial information on what growth actually costs prior to consulting the public,” he said. “In the normal world we would delay our decisions to allow that to occur and we would enable that consultation to occur.”

Clark contended the provincial timelines are intended to force a decision “prior to them going to the polls in the next election” scheduled for June 2022. “I find it unreasonable and unnecessary. They have created this challenge whereby we’re trying our very best to get fulsome information out to the public and hear from the public in the middle of a pandemic where people are completely distracted by the pandemic.”

Ward one councillor Maureen Wilson argued that the options need to be “unpacked very thoroughly so our taxpayers when they fill out this survey understand the inherent risk from the provincial direction.” She said imposing “growth forecasts that may or may not play out when they are that far out” mean the Ford government is downloading a huge financial risk onto municipal taxpayers.

“It necessarily puts the upfront expenditures to service that land that may or may not be required on the local tax bill,” Wilson noted. “It certainly increases the long term exposure of our taxpayers to the maintenance and replacement of that infrastructure. Development charges pay for some but not all and then it’s all shifted onto taxpayers thereafter.”

Tom Jackson worried that if the city fails to meet the provincial deadline then Hamilton’s growth plan “could easily then be taken out of our hands by the Ford government”, a prospect that Jackson opined “most of our community would loathe”. He argued that submitting to the obvious provincial desire for more sprawl would mean having “choice in our community”.

Collins agreed that “the province [could] essentially make their own plan for us and that may not be one we support or like”. Sam Merulla declared it’s an absolute certainty that “if we choose [to freeze the boundary] the province is just going to run amuk with it and do whatever they feel the growth [plan] should be.”

Staff expect to present the results of the survey to council in August, and then finalize the growth strategy at an October meeting. While the announced provincial deadline is July 2022, the city is required to submit a near final draft by as early as next January.