Whitehead's Schtick Fail: Calls for Pedestrian Crosswalks at Upper James and Fennell, Mohawk, Stone Church – TPR Hamilton | Hamilton's Civic Affairs News Site

August 17, 2016
Ward 8 Hamilton City Councillor Terry Whitehead is turning into a parody of himself in the past few months.
On nearly every major issue, his schtick is that Ward 8 is getting screwed by the City prioritizing the downtown to the exclusion of his ward. Whitehead can only see improvements to the City through his myopic political self-interest.
Often, this results in him embarrassing himself by making claims which are not true while advancing his claims.
The latest episode came last Friday when he lamented that his ward was not receiving pedestrian crosswalks. Ward 8 Councillor Terry
Whitehead is concerned that Upper James is not getting pedestrian crosswalks and that the City is not following “empirical” data installing the crosswalks downtown.
Except that only two of the first five crosswalks is in the Lower City, and the locations he proposes for Upper James are already full signalized intersections.
You can view the full video of Whitehead’s comments at the top of this story.
“I would hope how these are being implemented is based on empirical data and high-risk”, Whitehead began his speech keeping to his schtick of implying staff are not making fact-based findings using empirical to mean a recommendation different than Whitehead’s opinion. “We’ve had several pedestrians hit in the number of years on Upper James, which is a high volume very wide street”, Whitehead continued. “I’m surprised that wasn’t one of the areas of priority, help me understand why Upper James didn’t the first cut”.
Staff explained they received over 200 suggestions for locations and they reviewed they for the best locations to being installing pedestrian crosswalk. The senior manager ended his response saying staff planned to meet with the Councillors to prioritize further installations by Ward.
“I don’t think anyone would dispute that it is one of the widest crosses for pedestrians in the City yet it didn’t make the initial list,” Whitehead chastised staff. “I want it based on empirical information not political information!”
“When I look at this list and Upper James not making the first cut on pilot program, again the Mountain the second [unclear word],” he says. “Help me understand why Upper James … how that could possibly not make the first cut?”
Staff politely asked Whitehead what intersections needed pedestrian crosswalks.
Whitehead: “Fennell Upper James, Mohawk Upper James will be a good start” then added “Stone Church”.
Staff: “These are areas that don’t have existing pedestrian crossways?”
W: “Pardon?”
S: “These are areas that don’t have existing crosswalks?”
W: “They do, but they don’t have it at this level”
Whitehead continued with a closing and the chair moved on with the agenda of the meeting.