Ontario’s minister of the environment and climate change had some blunt advice when he spoke at the climate resilient cities conference in Hamilton.

This is a regular CATCH summary of votes at committee and council meetings. This report covers the month of March 2016.

Recommendations of the city’s draft Transportation Master Plan (TMP) unveiled last week include over $700 million for new road construction plus more pressure on the Ontario government to expand existing provincial highways and build new ones.

In the wake of more record-smashing global temperatures, the mayors of Burlington and Hamilton got an opportunity to speak last week at a McMaster-organized conference on climate change.

It has been presented as the number one economic objective of the city for well over a decade but the airport employment growth district (AEGD, aka the aerotropolis) still shows no sign of activity.

Hamilton councillors are once again being forced to consider banning donations from their main financial backers.

This is a regular CATCH summary of votes at committee and council meetings. This report covers the month of February 2016.

Does the ward seven by-election outcome demonstrate a need to change the city’s voting system now that there is an opportunity to do so?

Hamilton tenants are organizing in the face of a perfect storm of steeply rising rents, significant eviction pressures and the likelihood that city council is going to continue to impose tax rates that are far higher than those paid by homeowners.

February temperatures smashed previous records by an unprecedented amount and exceeded historical averages across the northern hemisphere by nearly two and a half centigrade degrees in what some scientists are calling an emergency.

A public meeting and feature film screening on March 22 focuses Hamiltonians’ attention on the struggle for clean water.

The city budget being approved this week leaves a massive backlog of road and bridge repairs that will worsen by over $100 million this year alone and now totals twenty times that amount.

As it heads to a National Energy Board hearing, there’s growing opposition to Enbridge plans to construct 35 kilometres of oil pipeline across Hamilton.

The HSR ranks dead last among large Ontario cities in ridership growth, and may have actually lost passengers again last year.

The accumulated spending deficit on roads and other city assets is “approaching $3.5 billion” according to the staff report accompanying the 2016 capital budget.

This is a regular CATCH summary of votes at committee and council meetings. This report covers the month of December 2015.

HSR director David Dixon led off his comments to council last week with a blunt message that appears to have been lost on all except one councillor.

With only a handful of participants, Hamilton’s lobbyist registry faces a test of its relevance this month that may decide whether the eight-year process to establish it was worthwhile.

Despite steep fare increases last year that will be duplicated again this year, HSR still hasn’t found enough funds to purchase buses to overcome its system deficiencies.

In the few weeks since the Paris climate accord, there have been three pipeline occupations and there are promises of more civil disobedience as citizens, including Hamilton organizations, turn up the heat on the National Energy Board (NEB) and the fossil fuel sector it oversees.