On April 25th, Clr Hwang & I co-hosted a meeting with City Staff in the Crown Point neighbourhood to discuss enhancements for Ottawa Street and the Municipal Car Park used for the Ottawa Street Farmer’s Market.

Staff reviewed the implementation options for the short-term, mid-term, and long-term proposed plans to improve safety and enable a more complete commercial corridor for community life. 

Residents in attendance were able to see the plans up close and provide their direct feedback through an interactive activity where post-it notes could be placed on the segment of Ottawa St they wanted to provide input on.

Staff have compiled the feedback already received at the meeting, and want to hear from those residents that were not able to attend. 

You can still provide your feedback for input on each road section until May 15, 2024. Head over to nrinder.ca/betterneighbourhoods to review the staff presentation and plans for each section of Ottawa St. Then, email us your feedback by email at ward3@hamilton.ca with the subject being “Ottawa St Enhancement feedback”.

Huge thank you again to City Staff and to Crown & Press for hosting!

As Ward 3 residents, you have communicated your priorities and concerns, and I have been proud to work with you to deliver results.

Together, we have delivered on 50 Achievements over the past 4 years. This is not an exhaustive list of everything we have accomplished.

It is my hope this list provides you with the depth and breadth of my commitment to addressing what I have heard.

In 2018 and throughout the term the issue residents wanted action on the most was making our streets safer by reducing speeding and cut-through traffic. So, I tackled it head on and comprehensively.

Here’s what I did:

Roads

Made significant progress towards improving roadway safety across our neighbourhoods: 

• Immediate and long-term safety enhancements to Main and King streets including two way conversion, and an audit of all existing two way streets in the lower city. 

• Initiated the first-ever comprehensive, technical and resident-informed review of all neighbourhood and collector roads across Ward 3. The Ward 3 Complete Streets Project had over 768 inputs from our neighbours to inform 128 new roadway safety design recommendations which I allocated $450K to begin implementation this Fall.

• Reduced the speed to align with a 30 km/hr school zone on Wentworth at Cathy Wever Elementary School.

• Expanded a road safety audit at every location of a collision that resulted in either the tragic death or serious injury of neighbours to identify what changes are needed to better protect pedestrians and cyclists. 

• Put forward the Council direction which removed heavy trucks out of our neighbourhoods for a final Hamilton Truck Routes Master Plan that takes a ring road approach instead. 

• Removed rush hour parking restrictions on Main Street E. supporting local businesses. 

• Reclassified Ottawa St from major arterial to collector in order to better suit the vibrant community and commercial corridor already there.

• Installed 7 pedestrian activated crosswalks to better enable children, students and all users to cross the street to get to school, library, community centres, and parks more safely.

• Made temporary bump outs on Barton between Barnesdale and Lottridge permanent with direct input from local businesses and residents.

Sidewalks:

• Championed the community call for Sidewalk Snow Removal along transit-routes at Council and won - service starts Nov 2022. 

• Replaced 750m of sidewalks and repaired over 500 tiles identified by residents through an annual participatory sidewalk audit.

Cycling:

Increased connectivity and more protected cycle track are what Ward 3 have told me they want:

• New protected Cycle Lane on Victoria Ave that connects directly with Cannon Cycle Track.

• Supported the new Adaptive Bike Hub in Gage Park operated by Hamilton Bike Share and Everyone Rides Initiative.

• Designated Sanford Ave as North-South cycling connector from Maplewood to Barton. Redesign and infrastructure will be informed by the LRT final design.

• Secured more stable funding for Hamilton Bike Share.

Throughout this term, I supported and invested in a number of community-led initiatives to enhance public spaces across Ward 3.

 Here’s what I did:

• Created a destination, outdoor basketball court named the ‘Rally Court” at Woodlands Park with fundraising by the Arkells, Foxcroft Foundation, Nick Nurse Foundation, and Superfan Nav. This included new glass backboards, rims, court resurfacing, benches and lighting.

• Refreshed Powell Park with new basketball board, rims, murals, refurbished playground structure, support to the community garden and place-making pavement games.

• Invested in a new Spray Pay at Woodlands Park being designed with community input to be installed for Summer 2023. 

• Upgrades and new play structures at Dofasco, Keith and Hayward Parks designed with community input installed in Spring and Summer 2022.

• New early years focused, natural play zone at Bernie Morelli Recreation Centre. 

• Invested in a community-led transformation project for the Stirton Tot Lot, taking it from a derelict space to one with purpose and beauty informed by Indigenous knowledge. 

• Supported placemaking initiatives in Woodlands Park and Gage Park. 

• Invested in 3 Depave Projects on Barton Street with Green Venture and the Barton Village BIA.

• Brightside Park designed with community input. This new 10-acre park going in on the former Dominion Glass site, in honour of the immigrant and working class legacy in Ward 3. 

• Invested in Concrete Canvas Fest to help sponsor the mentorship stream & a 2nd Woodlands Park Live Graffiti Wall.

Over this term, I have worked in collaboration with tenants, non-profit affordable housing providers, and community groups to accomplish the following: 

• Led the establishment of a Vacant Homes Tax designed to ensure empty homes are lived in. The framework includes a projected annual revenue of $3.3M/year. These revenues would be available to fund additional affordable housing.

• Partnered with the Hamilton Regional Indian Centre to repurpose the former King George School site into a friendship hub and integrated housing supports.

• Championed new bylaws to stop renovictions, preserve affordable housing and protect tenants, currently being developed by City staff. 

• Ended the era of public funds going to renovations resulting in evicting tenants and transformed the City's incentive grant program to ensure it never happens again. 

• Catalyzed the Hamilton Is Home coalition, bringing together the non-profit social housing sector to work collaboratively towards a bold target of building 3000 new affordable housing units in 3 years. 

• Supported the conversion of vacant commercial units into 15 new residential units in First Place under the Rapid Housing Initiative to be rented out in 2022.

• Supported the development of 183 brand new affordable housing units with supports in Ward 3 to be occupied by December 2022.

• Moved to have staff develop a comprehensive human rights and health focused action plan to house encamped neighbours that is informed by lived experience and addresses health needs.

• Moved for the City to develop an improved Winter Services Plan for people experiencing homelessness that provides respite, care, and connection to housing supports.

• Supported the Senior Advisory Committee’s recommendation to call on the Province to amend the Ontario Building Code to include cooling units to be mandatory in all new builds and retrofit housing.

Ward 3 is the only Councillor Office with a Climate Action Coordinator - a role specifically designed to support residents in resolving local environmental impacts. 

Here’s what we have accomplished: 

• Froze Hamilton’s Urban Boundary to enable better, more sustainable neighbourhoods, while preserving farm and sensitive lands.

• Addressed 75+ resident cases, ranging from air and water quality concerns to chronic odour and noise pollution in the ward. 

• Worked with industrial neighbours, City staff, Ministry of Environment, and Environment Canada to research, amplify, and advocate on behalf of residents towards climate justice focused policy change. 

• Moved to integrate Health & Environmental requirements to Demolition Permits with unanimous support. 

• Voted to identify a better way to finance stormwater management to be more equitable, while also covering the increasing costs associated with being climate ready and resilient as a City.

• Engaged hundreds of residents through a Community Odour Impacts study project.

• And co-hosted an Air Quality and Odour Pollution workshop for residents with MPP Sandy Shaw.

• Initiated a free-tree program for our neighbours backyards to help strengthen our urban tree canopy. Over 226 trees planted in Ward 3 as part of the pilot program that informed a new city-wide program.

The pandemic exposed deep inequities many Ward 3 residents face, including a lack of comprehensive health access, a raging toxic drug crisis, and unaffordable housing. Addressing these disparities head on is critical to a just recovery. 

Through the Ward 3 office, I supported the following health equity initiatives over this term: 

• Shared 173 Public Health and COVID-19 related posts on social media.

• Co-sponsored 13 walk-in clinics in Ward 3 with Refuge Newcomer Health, Urban Core, HCCI, DJNO, Compass Community Health, HPL and Centre de Santé Communautaire to increase vaccine access. 

• Delivered vaccine clinic flyers and information to 2500+ homes/apartments in neighbourhoods with the lowest vaccination rates in the ward.

• Advocated against the province’s Pharmacy vaccine rollout that left Ward 3 with limited access and encouraged local pharmacies to work with Hamilton Public Health to address the gap.  

• Installed 7 new drinking water fountains with the combined features of bottle filling, drinking fountain, pet-friendly lower bowl, and art wraps Woodlands Park, Keith Park, Dofasco Park, Hayward Park, Century Street Parkette, Lucy Day Park, North Central Community Park.

• Delivered 2400 seeds to over 300 households during the pandemic in partnership with Environment Hamilton to support food resilience for neighbours living in Ward 3. 

• Advanced a living wage rate for more city employees which supports workers with one of the key social determinants of health - income.

The Ward 3 Office Team and I have been proud to serve Ward 3 residents during this term. I have had the privilege of attracting talented staff members to the Ward 3 Office Team throughout the term. Staff have been paid no less than a living wage and have been provided invaluable work experience and leadership opportunities to leverage in their careers.

Together, we have:

• Resolved over 4,250 resident case files.

• Provided excellent service and response with a honed system that enabled the team to  track and monitor progress on files.

• Responded to over 100 resident issues a month that required our direct support to resolve, with hundreds more that are general information inquiries or meeting requests.

• Hosted 70 virtual sessions with over 58,000 views as a way to connect and share information with residents during the pandemic. 

• Hosted 12 office pop-ups across the ward to enable more residents to get direct support from my office.