While I don't yet have the long-promised answers to all the questions that weren't gotten to at 'An Evening With Ward 2 Councillor Jason Farr', the councillor has posted links to the 'rough notes' for his responses that night:
Endeavouring to increase the relationship of engagement between residents, their communities and their city through town halls, and in doing so, to gradually change the landscape of local governance...creating a better Hamilton for all.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
The Spec Letter #2
CHML's Scott Thompson has an op-ed piece in today's Spec. Entitled 'Does Canada need to be Occupied?', it raises some interesting questions.
Here's what I sent off to Mr. Thompson:
The Spec Letter #1
The main editorial in today's Spec by Robert Howard, 'Is Hamilton a hard place to do business?' prompted me to write a letter to him:
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Followup to Councillor Farr's Evening, Part One
In ancipation of the answers forthcoming from Ward 2 Councillor Jason Farr, here is the list of questions compiled from the six neighbourhood associations.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Meanwhile, over at the F.U.N...
Earlier this autumn, I made contact with one of the most extraordinary people I've had the pleasure of meeting since taking this 'town halls' notion out of my head and pushing it out into the real world.
Her name is Janice Brown, and she looks after Communications at the Federation of Urban Neighbourhoods. But she's also on the Durand Neighbourhood Association's Board of Directors.
From the start of our correspondence, through our coffee face-to-face, the lead-up to our inaugural town hall and post-event, Janice was helpful and encouraging. I'm so glad synchronicity was at play throughout. And I'm glad there are Janice Browns out there helping to steward the needs of our community and neighbourhood associations.
Here's a guest article I contributed to their newsletter. (A special shout-out to my brother, who gave some editorial input when I was faffing about.)
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Friday, November 11, 2011
The Morning After The Night Before: Post-inaugural Town Hall Blues
Preface/disclaimer: The opinions and viewpoints that follow are mine and mine alone. Were you to speak to anyone connected to 'An Evening With Ward 2 Councillor Jason Farr', or more importantly, those at the event who proffered opinions, the consensus would be something quite different. In the words of THH stalwart -and RTH contributor- Mike Borrelli, '107 people went out for coffee during Intermission. 102 came back. That is astounding.' More importantly, none of my 'disappointments' have anything to do with what any of the volunteers contributed. They rocked, and I am especially grateful for the time and efforts they provided.
To have a 'vision' –and I'm referring to an ambition or a goal, though the other meaning of the word surely has some connection here– is to be possessed of some singular expectations. And while these expectations might seem quite reasonable to the person having them, when these expectations don't get met, they may not get classified as 'failures' to others. I can't take issue with this. But then the Town Halls Hamilton endeavour has been my vision from the start, so I'm allowed to be disgruntled about how things turned out last night.
As the Robert Burns quote goes, "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley."
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