Is Hamilton winning or losing?
City must solve big problems, panellists say
October 08, 2009
Meredith Macleod
The Hamilton Spectator
http://www.thespec.com/News/Business/article/649572
The breakfast panel discussion was getting set to wrap up when Doug Barber stood up to ask a very pointed question.
"I came here to find out if Hamilton is winning or losing," said the co-founder and former CEO of Gennum Corporation, who's also an engineering professor at McMaster University.
"I heard a lot of cheerleading and that people are playing well together as a team but I'm disappointed that I don't know how we're doing. We're either winning, losing or treading water, but I don't know."
Panellist Marvin Ryder, a marketing professor at McMaster's DeGroote School of Business, was the first to respond.
"I feel like we're losing," he said.
Ryder explained there are more than 15 measures to examine to get a full sense of a city. On some, progress is being made, but in other areas, the city is falling behind.
He said Hamilton has lost much of its wealth-generating capacity, mostly in manufacturing, and replaced it with wealth redistribution in public-sector institutions such as hospitals and schools.
In his address at an event called The Future of Economic Development in the Greater Hamilton Area yesterday morning, Ryder said seven of Hamilton's top 10 employers are in the public sector.
"To put it in perspective, if all of the different Walmarts proposed for Hamilton are built, there's a good chance Walmart will be the third largest private-sector employer here."
There are 40,000 more people leaving Hamilton every day for jobs than actually work here, he says, putting us in the category of a bedroom community.
None of that helps Hamilton's tax base, which is heavily dependent on homeowners, Ryder said. He said the community must find a way to bridge its past as a manufacturing centre with its future in a new economy.
Mayor Fred Eisenberger acknowledged the challenges but said the city is moving forward on key elements that will help it realize a new future. He highlighted transit plans, the Pan Am Games bid, the work to develop a waterfront development corporation and "robust" collaboration taking place across the city.
But he cautioned that the city's poverty burden, the heavy reliance on the residential tax base, the "sticky" problem of area tax rating and a "large and looming" infrastructure deficit present enormous challenges going forward.
"We can't always go to the provincial and federal governments. We had to have solutions of our own."
Eisenberger and Ryder were joined by panellists Mark Chamberlain, chair of the Jobs Prosperity Collaborative and president of commercialization firm Trivaris, and Spectator editor-in-chief David Estok.
The event was hosted by Global Public Affairs, a Toronto-based government and public relations firm.
Chamberlain said Hamilton has a strong foundation on which entrepreneurs can create jobs. But the community is still plagued by a restricted vision.
"The four most unimaginative words in the English language are 'We can't afford it.' It's become a rallying cry and a reason why we don't do things."
He criticized the approach that puts tax assessment ahead of creating good jobs.
"I look at a single-storey, big-box store and I think, 'This is a city that aims low.'"
Estok said Hamiltonians who are proud of the city's past too often frame that in a "prism of negativity and a sense of loss. A sense that we aren't as good as we once were; that we are somehow diminished."
He was surprised by the transformation of elements of his hometown, such as the waterfront and Ottawa Street, after returning from a 20-year absence to take on his role at the paper. But Estok was disappointed by what had been lost in the downtown, and the growing cycle of poverty.