By Councillor Cameron Kroetsch

It’s been an eventful, often challenging, summer in Hamilton. I hear how the ongoing housing and homelessness crisis is acutely impacting Ward 2 residents, housed and unhoused.
Another challenge is the impact of toxic blue-green algae on our waterfront. Bayfront Park has been hit with the worst blue-green algae bloom in the park’s history and residents have been reaching out to the Ward 2 Team to share their experiences and ask that it be cleaned up. I understand the impact and experienced it myself. Unfortunately cleaning up the algae in the short term isn’t possible. When the algae bloom at Bayfront Park was raised with City staff at Council in August, they reported that while they’d like to use vacuums and other methods to break up the algae in the short term, as in previous years, they can’t do that without making things worse. Based on past experiences, they found the algae spread and grew when disturbed and when it was removed it returned, much worse, in about 72 hours. The City has been working with our water partners, including scientists, to ensure everyone is using best practices to keep things from getting worse. To aid that work, Councillor Maureen Wilson and I put forward a motion in August to ask the City to report back on what City staff can do to mitigate these climate change impacts in time for next summer. I look forward to hearing back from City staff and will support them, in any way I can, to improve things.  Our stormwater, and wastewater systems are unable to cope with the impacts of unprecedented global, national, and local weather events due to decades of underfunding and a lack of urgency on climate change. This Council is trying to change that, but it’s going to take time to undo the damage and get back on track.

In part, we need the Province to offer more support to cities to help them mitigate the impacts of climate change, build deeply affordable housing, and end homelessness. These topics, and others, were the focus of delegations from the City of Hamilton at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario’s Annual Conference in Ottawa in late August which I attended with the Mayor and Councillors Hwang, Nann, and Cassar to represent our City. I participated in delegations with the Ministries of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Health, and Education. While I can’t yet speak to the impact of our efforts, I’m hopeful that continuing to show up to the table to have these conversations with senior levels of government will demonstrate not only what our priorities are but what we’re already doing as a City to address these issues. I hope it will encourage the Province to partner with Hamilton to implement meaningful, impactful, and timely solutions.

I’ve also heard about how much fun North Enders have been having along our waterfront in their neighbourhood this summer with street parties, pop up events, concerts, dancing, roller skating, yard sales, festivals, and Friday art crawls. I’m grateful to know that, despite us facing some serious challenges in our city, we’re still making time to connect with one another and get outside.
This summer, I had a successful first meeting with North Enders to discuss both Eastwood Arena and the future Strachan Linear Park. Residents had great suggestions, which we compiled into surveys accessible through the Ward 2 website. The goal of the surveys is to report back on what we’ve heard so far, to get residents to weigh in with some feedback, and to hear new ideas from residents who may not have been able to participate in the engagement so far. To comment future use of Eastwood Arena please visit ward2hamilton.ca/EastwoodArena. To provide the Ward 2 Team with your suggestions and ideas for the future Strachan Linear Park visit ward2hamilton.ca/StrachanLinearPark. I really look forward to keeping the engagement going. The surveys are open for all of September, so spread the word and help us get as much participation as possible.

In the last Breezes, I said we’d be going through some transitions on the Ward 2 Team. Hasnain Khan went back to school to pursue an MBA. We hired a new member of the team, Phoenix Friesen (they/he), who will be working part time in addition to Joey McCullough (he/him) and Liesl Thomas (she/her), both full time in my office.

If you’d like to reach out to us for help, please email Ward2@hamilton.ca for the quickest response or call us at (905) 546-2197. If you would like to reach me directly, send me an email at Cameron.Kroetsch@hamilton.ca. If you have the chance to connect with Phoenix when you reach out, please be sure to give them a warm welcome!