Meanwhile, over at facebook...

Over on Laura Babcock's page, former Hamilton mayor Larry Di Ianni had this to say about ward boundary reform:

 Here are the points I was trying to make above: 1. Council has had a debate and decided not to move on the ward boundary issue. Too brief a debate for most. But if the decision had been the reverse of what they decided, I don't believe people would have objected to the brevity. Those who want change say they 'just want a debate', but I believe they are not being frank. They want to see the ward boundaries change. 2. My second point is that there are historic reasons for having structured the boundaries as they were; those reasons have not disappeared. 3. My third point would be that council today is working well to address ALL issues without paying attention to which area they represent. So what are we fixing? Versus what the dangers may be in reawakening sleeping giants.

My responses:

1) Nonsense. The reverse would have a) brought down a shit-storm from some who might see this as a useless task, and b) would have necessitated a proscribed process, one that certainly could not have possessed anything close to 'brevity'. And frankly, given how Council has dealt with issues such as garbage, I highly doubt that it could have/would have accomplished any sort of such decision. As for those who say 'they just want a debate', I think this is a gross misinterpretation of what's been presented. The facebook group 'Hamiltonians For Ward Boundary Reform' has never said they just want a debate, and if you're referring to what I've been saying, including my most recent op-ed, then this too, is inaccurate. Frankly, your resistance to the notion of addressing ward boundaries is quite confounding. Or at least the way you're responding to the subject is. 

2) So there were 'historical' reasons for the boundaries to have been drawn this way. (I'm assuming you're primarily referring to the amalgamated portions.) Life goes on. We're a new city, with new needs. To be so utterly intractable because of 'historical reasons' fails as an argument, unless we get down to the specifics. And to do that, we'll need to actually have the ward boundary reform discussion. 

3 Oh, pulease. This isn't a subjective discussion, Larry. (And it doesn't deserve obfuscation by way of claiming that 'everyone is looking after the big picture, so what difference do wards-with-parity make?' As I've said, this issue isn't predicated on Wards 7 & 8 getting burned because they're being under-represented. It would be a much simpler discussion were that the case.) This is happening because the OMB (the Ontario government, in essence) has guidelines that need to be adhered to. Council can passively choose not to adhere to them (and do so for years, over multiple Councils), but we, the people have the right to trigger the process by which the particulars must be examined and rectified. As for the 'dangers'...and I'm assuming you're referring to 'amalgamation grudges', if we're a mature city, then we should be able to deal with these issues. Otherwise, we all end up resembling politicians, who never really seem to want to deal with contentious issues.