The Lynwood-Charlton Centre Imbroglio, Part One: What we've got here...

...is failure to communicate.

Well, failure to communicate well.

I've been listening to the January 17th, 2012 Planning Committee meeting. The bulk of the five hours and forty-one minutes has to do with the application for amending the 2001 radial separation bylaw as it pertains to using the 121 Augusta Street building to operate the current 52-56 Charlton Avenue facility out of.

I've looked at this issue recently here and here. In the first piece, I noted that there were a handful of contributing elements that made up the larger discussion. And that I worried that some would get lost, that conflation would rule the day, that the conversation so clearly required probably wouldn't happen...and we'd be no further ahead than before this issue came to the fore. 

But it's taken listening to the proceedings for me to really gain some clarity. To appreciate the viewpoints of the various participants, to understand all the better the general process at City Hall, and to place a value on what's probably needed more in Hamilton than even visionary leadership on Council: discourse and dialogue amongst residents. 

(But before I start taking a look at what this time spent has provided me –and I'll confess that due to the often cringe-inducing content, it's taken much, much longer than the actual play-time to get through– I'm going to go off on a brief tangent: Since I began attending Council meetings last year, I've been astounded at the abysmal level of exchanges. The amount of wasted time produced by Councillors. The bush-league 'political grandstanding' that seems to be habitual to so many around that horseshoe of theirs. The insecurity-based tendency to iterate the same point over and over and over again...until it's been ground into the dirt...and then pummelled some more. In summation: the paucity of genuine skill-sets pertaining to asking questions, in getting to the heart of a matter, in making the most of the time available. I find myself so gobsmacked that were I to make one single, solitary suggestion, I'd have the John Cleese management training video 'Meetings, Bloody Meetings' part of an ongoing Competencies & Proficiencies package afforded everyone on Council, because from what I've seen, remedial instruction is sorely indicated. But as I'm being candid regarding Council, I'll also point out that because we don't have ongoing opportunities for the public to improve their proficiency at discussing issues, they often fall down, too. We really need to raise the level of debate in Hamilton. So much is at stake. And we can surely do better.)

Up next: Let's take a good, hard look, shall we...?

M Adrian Brassington