COLEMAN: HSR is Hiring More Consultants, Which Begs the Question, Why?

The City of Hamilton does not know how many consultants it hires or how much it spends on consulting in any given year.

On January 30, City Council passed a motion instructing city staff to begin tracking this data and provide a report before the 2025 city budget process.

In response, during this meeting, city management told Council that they only use consultants when they need specialized knowledge that is not available in-house or expertise or to accelerate project completions.

This begs the question, why is the City’s public transit agency, the Hamilton Street Railway, hiring consultants to “develop a transit growth and implementation strategy.”

It is not to accelerate any project completion. If we are to take city management’s statement at face value, it means the HSR lacks the expertise to do the work.

How is that possible when the HSR has over 50 managers and project managers working in planning, innovation, and support services?

The HSR’s Transit Planning & Infrastructure section has 20 managers and project managers. The Customer Experience & Innovation section has 13 managers and staff. There are 15 managers and staff in the Transit Support Services section.

This is further evidence of serious inefficiencies at the HSR.

As HSR passengers have experienced in recent months, none of these managers are working during peak transit times, and there have been repeated instances where no HSR managers were on duty during weekday office hours to provide detour information.

Maybe the HSR needs a consultant to determine what HSR managers are doing with their time.

Actually, when you think of it, City Council is supposed to oversee spending.

It is time for the Council to do its job.

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Published: March 9, 2024
Last edited: March 9, 2024
Author: Joey Coleman
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