Quote:
Originally Posted by brett.electrician
A employee of the city of Hamilton tells me X about how things work / have worked. While random guy Y on the internet tells me they are wrong. Who do you think im going to believe??
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One more thing you are missing from the city employee's story is the downloading of social services. One of the major reasons for amalgamation was in order to allow the rural areas to help the cities to fund the new expenses that the province downloaded to them. Social services (a provincial if not national concern) were being downloaded, and since most of these expenses are concentrated in dense areas (cities) the burden was going to be unfairly focused on cities. So they amalgamated surrounding regions to help offset that.
So the reality is that much of the "bailing out" that you are talking about was actually the rural AND urban areas "bailing out" the province. Not the rural areas bailing out the cities.
If you think that "old hamilton" actually wanted amalgamation and viewed it as some sort of magical answer to its money problems, you are quite mistaken. "Old city" dwellers appear to be against amalgamation as well in most cases.
If you are going to be so quick to shut out the ideas and logic here simply because of what a city employee told you, then I'm going to have to accuse you of not thinking for yourself.
I think that a simple thought experiment about the cost-per-resident of many services being much higher in rural areas is an important thing to consider, yet you've conveniently ignore many of these comments.
Rural streets get ploughed. Rural services are maintained. Rural areas might not get sidewalks, but the cost per resident to maintain the infrastructure is higher there. The services may be different but the costs are comparable.
Please don't shut your mind off simply because you feel like one or two people on the internet are being obtuse. Open your mind to the consideration of fact and logic instead :-)