“Admiral, damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!”
With those words, Hamilton Seniors Advisory Committee (SAC) member Barry Spinner summarized the spirit of SAC’s unanimous vote calling on Mayor Andrea Horwath and City Council to reverse the decision to disband all citizen advisory committees.
In March, City Council voted 9 to 6 to end all citizen advisory committees, citing Municipal Act transparency requirements as the reason for eliminating decades of direct citizen engagement at Hamilton City Hall.
Citizen advisory committees are being replaced with “community liaison groups” that will report to City bureaucrats, will not produce minutes, and will meet in private. The new CLG members will be decided by bureaucrats, and there will no longer be the traditional city-wide post-election recruitment process to seek new voices.
At the October 3 SAC meeting, member Alexander Huang moved a motion to formally demand City Council permit the committee to continue to exist and operate as an independent body.
Ward 6 Councillor Tom Jackson, who sits on SAC as a Council Liaison, stated he has opposed the disbandment of citizen committees, and will argue for SAC to continue when the minutes of this meeting are presented to Council in November.
At the October 29 Council ratification meeting, Jackson moved a notice of motion on the issue.
“I feel this Council has made a huge massive mistake in going in this direction especially at a time when the new change council talks about greater amounts of civic engagement,” Jackson stated. “I think it’s at least worth a shot at council for reconsideration and you know you’ll have my very strong support.”
The nine council members who voted to end citizen committees were Maureen Wilson (Ward 1), Cameron Kroetsch (Ward 2), Nrinder Nann (Ward 3), Tammy Hwang (Ward 4), John-Paul Danko (Ward 8), Mark Tadeson (Ward 11), Craig Cassar (Ward 12), Alex Wilson (Ward 13), and Ted McMeekin (Ward 15).
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v. 1.0.1
Published: November 2, 2025
Last updated: November 2, 2025
Author: Joey Coleman
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v. 1.0.0 original version
v. 1.0.1 fixed grammatical error in headline