TPR Hamilton | Hamilton's Civic Affairs News Site (https://thepublicrecord.ca/series/2018-city-of-hamilton-budget/)
During the 90 minutes of public delegations, Councillors had no questions for delegates, sitting silently and listening as delegate after delegate took Council to task for creating the HSR Transit Crisis.
In order to maintain the City’s credit rating, the $19.4-million will be administered as a loan from the reserves and repaid over 15 years at a 3.1% increase rate for a total cost of $24.3-million.
Hamilton City Councillors debated the 2018 public transit HSR capital budget. Much of the debate centred around the ongoing transit crisis, the use of the late 1980s custom build transit garage at 330 Wentworth Street North as a public works yard and office, and if it be more cost effective to return to using this garage for transit than building another transit garage.
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The traditional budget process sees staff present a higher budget increase than Council will approval, and then Councillors spending eight months scaling it back. The process involves much theatrics, and being an election year, we can expect to see even more posturing than usual.
Council voted to instruct City departments to submit 2018 budgets with an increase of only 1.5%.