An Open Letter to Hamilton City Council re: School Board Swing Space #HamOnt

Hello Mr. Mayor, Councillors,

I’m writing you to urge you not to approve a swing space for the School Board on Monday.

I find it very unfortunate that the project McMaster is proposing does not make any consideration for saving the current building at 100 Main Street West. The building is structurally sound, and could be feasibly renovated for modern uses for approximately $10 Million dollars or less. I believe council should be asking the Minister of Education to approve a partnership between Mac and the School Board, to sever the property and let McMaster build on the lot to the North, facing King, adapting the building into the development. We have $47 Million in tax dollars that are making this plan possible. In truth, council should be driving this development, and ensuring that the development is an entirely positive one.

You know as well as I do that there are other options. We don’t need to lose two buildings and 9 acres of green space, or to facilitate a plan that would see hundreds of cars and trucks in a residential neighbourhood. I feel that if Council approves the swing space on Monday, it simply gives a bailout to the School Board and the Ministry for their lack of creativity and diligence in this entire process.

I’ll be clear on one point: I want to see McMaster have a presence in our core, and I think their development would be a good addition to the downtown. But that shouldn’t mean we need to settle for less, or to destroy a building that could be feasibly incorporated.

My frustration is shared by many- this plan was developed without full public input, and negotiated behind closed doors. Trustees have been silent, merely responding to concerns with form letters that do not address any of the concerns the public is raising. This simply adds to the feeling that our institutions make decisions in advance of consulting with the public, and when the feedback they receive is counter to what has already been decided, the input is simply ignored. That more than anything is what feeds a public perception that institutions do not properly represent the public.

Please do the right thing and vote down the swing space. Put this ball back in the HWDSB’s court, where it belongs. Do not reward a bad process by enabling a bad plan.

Thank you,

Matt Jelly

http://vimeo.com/37194879

An Open Letter to the Trustees of the HWDSB by Dan Jelly #HamOnt

*The following is an analysis of the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board’s site selection scoring matrix for the proposed new Board HQ, done by my brother Dan Jelly, originally posted on his blog on February 22nd, 2012 at kingandjames.com.

On the morning of Monday, February 13th, after discovering that the 18 PDF documents detailing the site analyses had been removed from the HWDSB web site where they had previously been, I attempted to use Google to find them, assuming they had simply been moved.   Upon conducting a search, I discovered that while the posted documents were no longer available, Google had taken and cached a copy of a previous version.

What we now know:

• There are two versions of this analysis, the version that is published now, and a previous version cached on Google.
• An example of the previous version was (and can still be) found by conducting a Google Search for: “HWDSB site 11 West Harbour pdf” and clicking on “Quick View” under the first result.  This document was generated by Google from a PDF posted on the HWDSB web site.  A similar version for some of the other 18 sites have also been available at various times since their original publication, sometimes in ‘Quick View’ format, sometimes as a cached HTML version.
• The previous version used a Weighting Differenciation (sic) Factor of 2.0 instead of the current 3.0 and used a ranking of “B” for “Meetings(sic) topographical and geotechnical requirements” instead of the current “A”.   In seeing the “Quick View” version on Google, we know the analysis made it to this final, polished stage, complete with maps and photos, before the 2.0 was changed to a 3.0.

1. Using the parameters of the current and previous versions, the scores and rankings are below.
2. Notable differences:  In the previous version, Jackson Square outscored Crestwood, and City Hall ranked 5th instead of 8th.  Jerome finished 6th instead of 5th.

Results of Site Scoring Based on Previous Version of Analysis:

Note: My calculations were made based directly on the documents found on Google and on the 18 evaluations made available by the HWDSB.  No assumptions were made, all calculations can easily be explained and verified.

My questions:

• What rationale would there be for an change of weighting AFTER all the sites had been scored and the ranking determined?
• Who was responsible for these changes, and was the Board of Trustees made aware of the various versions and the rationale for them?
• Why were the 18 analyses removed from the website only hours after they had originally been published, only to reappear the following Monday?
• What other changes were made that we haven’t seen?
• Why should we trust any part of this process now that we have seen this accidental glimpse of how it has been conducted?
• Where is the analysis of the costs of restoring 100 Main West?  Surely that must have been determined before money was spent analysing its replacement.

I think these are all valid questions given the lack of transparency demonstrated by the school board to date, and I think the public deserves some answers.

Daniel Jelly
Ward 1 Resident

In the name of transparency, I am sharing my supporting documents, including all calculations:
HWDSB Site Evaluation – Excel Version
HWDSB Site Evaluation – PDF Version – View Only

Google Cached Link:
Link to Site 11 – West Harbour – ‘Quick View’ of PDF found on Google

PLS RT: To My Educators Part III #HamOnt

A followup to our discussion last week. #HamOnt

Hi Herman,

I hope you’re well. I just wanted to point something out, pertaining to the great discussion we had last week about the merits of the building at 100 Main Street West.

Last week you wrote; “There are two sets of architectural views on the Board of Education building. Matt Jelly and friends believe it is special. Mine is that is mostly a style fake, suitable for location on some 25 acre parcel. There’s nothing I can see in the design that reflects Canadian styles. A bit of Greek, a bit of Romanesque, a sort of rotunda effect on Bay Street. Even the statute may be a fake. If my memory serves me correctly, the fund raising drive among dutch canadians faltered and what was donated was the model for the sculpture, not the sculpture itself. I understand the real thing was never cast.”

This is not exactly accurate. The 5000-pound concrete statue was sculpted by Toronto-area sculptor Bert Schuh. Schuh’s sculpture of a mother and three children was intended to symbolize learning in its three forms: citizenship, learning and playing.

photo by Graham Crawford

Dutch Canadians made the centennial gift as a show of gratitude for Canada’s role in food drops over Holland during the second World War, which helped thousands of Hollanders survive until they were ultimately liberated by Canadian troops.

Mr. D.F Gassenbeek, chair of the Netherlands Hamilton Canadian Centennial Committee, also pointed out during the statue’s unveiling ceremony that Joe Singer, the architect of the Board of Education building at 100 Main Street West had been a navigator on those food drops during the war. This was met with raucous applause by the crowd at the ceremony.

As this October 27th, 1967 edition of the Hamilton Spectator points out, the Dutch centennial committee had originally “hoped to make a bronze cast of the statue, but they discovered this could only be done in the United States, and they wanted an all-Canadian project.”

The Hamilton Spectator, October 27, 1967

Unveiling ceremony on October 28th, 1967

I hope you find this information helpful. Again, not to be persistent, but I would still very much like to have coffee with you sometime. Maybe I’ll bring a phonebook and you and I can see if there’s someone in Canada who does bronze casting these days.

I urge every Hamiltonian, yourself included, to give this building another look, before we make another mistake which we cannot undo.

Your friend,

Matt Jelly

FROM RTH: Crestwood Plan: Bad Decision Based on a Flawed Process #HamOnt

It’s not too late for the Board to step back and reconsider a decision on which future Hamiltonians will look back with amazement and disgust.

By Ryan McGreal
Published February 14, 2012

Special Report: Education Centre

As the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board reluctantly reveals its planning documents, it is increasingly clear that the Board’s plan to sell the Board of Education building and move to a new facility on the site of Crestwood School is a bad decision formed under a flawed process.

So far, we have access to an evaluation matrix comparing 18 prospective sites against 12 weighted criteria and detailed evaluations of the 18 choices.

Several glaring issues are immediately obvious.

No Option to Stay

First, the list of alternative locations under consideration does not include the option to stay at 100 Main Street West. This makes it difficult to assess whether and how any of the alternate locations is better than the option to stay and renovate.

Also confounding the issue is the fact that the cost estimate of $16 million in capital expenditures and $28 million for cumulative operating costs is not broken down by facility but provided as a lump sum.

Accessibility

Second, the weighted scores for the various criteria are suspect. For example, Crestwood has a higher score for “accessibility” than Jackson Square, which seems dubious at best.

Both sites have excellent automobile access with abundant nearby parking, but Jackson Square also has excellent transit, walking and cycling access. Crestwood is a relatively short distance from the Limeridge Mall bus terminal, but is poorly accessibly by other modes.

More fundamentally, a central location is intrinsically closer and more accessible city-wide than a peripheral location.

It may be that Jackson Square‘s lower score is due to the “Terrible” rating it received for “Off site parking rates” and “Sufficient for parking needs” – categories that carry the second-highest and highest weighting ranks, respectively.

Given that downtown Hamilton has some of the most abundant and affordable all-day parking of any large Canadian city, including a large lot directly under Jackson Square, this assessment is difficult to take at face value.

Two Equal Candidates

Third, even if we set aside these questions about the weighting and scoring, Crestwood is not significantly better than the next highest option, Jackson Square. They have nearly identical scores: 86.69 and 86.49 respectively.

Given that the weighting must necessarily have an element of the arbitrary to it, the Board has a responsibility do better than naively pick the highest score when evaluating the results.

Jackson Square Removed

Even though Jackson Square is effectively tied with Crestwood, it was removed from further consideration without any explanation in the published documents.

The October 18, 2010 presentation to trustees lists the sites with overall scores over 80, but drops Jackson Square from its site review even though it scores higher than the other sites that were carried forward.

Community Feedback Ignored

According to Ward 1/2 Trustee Judith Bishop in a recent essay, “There were community consultations and the Board heard clearly that staying in the downtown core was seen as important.”

However, community feedback is not even one of the selection criteria, which leaves me wondering why the Board bothered.

Poor Transparency

Too much of this process was conducted away from the public. Even the reports on which Trustees made their decision were withheld for several months before the Board finally published them.

Similarly, the video recordings the Board was supposed to have made of the presentations and delegations related to the Education Centre process in 2007 appear to have gone missing.

Not Too Late

It’s not too late for the Board to step back and reconsider a decision on which future Hamiltonians will look back with amazement and disgust.

Please make your voice heard:

tim.simmons@hwdsb.on.ca, robert.barlow@hwdsb.on.ca, studenttrustee@hwdsb.on.ca, judith.bishop@hwdsb.on.ca, ray.mulholland@hwdsb.on.ca, todd.white@hwdsb.on.ca, laura.peddle@hwdsb.on.ca, lillian.orban@hwdsb.on.ca, wes.hicks@hwdsb.on.ca, alex.johnstone@hwdsb.on.ca, jessica.brennan@hwdsb.on.ca, karen.turkstra@hwdsb.on.ca, dlcouncil@hamilton.ca, lbroten.mpp@liberal.ola.org, ahorwath-co@ndp.on.ca, presdnt@mcmaster.ca

NOTE: This post was republished from www.raisethehammer.org, and was written by RTH editor Ryan McGreal.

A letter to Herman Turkstra, one of my educators. #HamOnt

This is a response to former Hamilton councillor and lawyer Herman Turkstra, who shared some very thoughtful views and insights today about the merits of the Board of Education campaign. Herman is a man I have great respect for.

Hi Herman,

I really do appreciate your input, coming from someone who has a deep context in the community I’m still attempting to understand as a young person. You’ve made a lot of points about past development, and traffic planning issues that I agree with wholeheartedly. I hope someday I will be one elected politician who can push for two-way, two-lane streets rather than urban highways.

What I will say is that you’re correct on a big point- this issue is multi-faceted. I didn’t suggest in the video that this was a heritage building, or that it should be restored based on those merits. I simply feel that it’s a waste of materials to tear down any building which can be feasibly renovated and adapted for ongoing use. I think we do need a fuller sense of the actual costs of maintaining that building. The board may understand those costs better than I do, but they just need to tell me, the information has not been divulged to me, and as far as I can tell, the option was not fully researched or seriously considered. I have been literally stonewalled in my attempts to better understand that.

You bring up valid points about the merit of the style of architecture- a respected friend of mine who is now a semi-retired architect tells me he can’t stand it. Others who I respect just as much tell me they love it- as you point out, you know that opinions are split on that.

Someone asked me the other day whether the building is worthy of heritage preservation, whether this is a significant piece of architecture. I responded “Let’s say there’s no meaning to the building at all and put that aside- that’s subjective and everyone has an opinion one way or the other. Is it a sustainable practice to pay for the construction of public buildings and only use them for 45 years? Will the new Board of Ed that has been proposed for Crestwood be torn down in 45 years? If so, is the construction worth it? If so, should the Board of Education be in the business of owning office space? Doesn’t their track record of property maintenance suggest that the Board should lease rather than own buildings?”

Again, as you point out, it’s not one issue, there are several issues in play here. I agree that keeping the Board downtown is as important if not more important than saving architecture. The implications of moving the seat of governance for the school board further away from the neighbourhoods who need to access it most are frustrating.

I appreciate your point- if the building is torn down, let’s get a commitment that what takes it’s place is a building that does more for the city than it’s predecessor ever has or ever will. What I can offer to that is my learned cynicism as a young Hamiltonian (I was born in 1982- well after what anyone would consider Hamilton’s ‘glory days’). I simply haven’t lived through a period where buildings were torn down and replaced with something superior.

York Street was replaced by a wider road, a halfway house, a highschool/jail, one or two social service organizations, a swiss chalet and a quizno’s. My father, who operated a service station on York street throughout the 1960′s, still tells me again and again how much he misses York Street. How much potential he felt it had. He feels disappointed, and that disappointment has carried on to me. I feel I try my best to represent him.

If I felt in my heart that the only way McMaster could participate in developing downtown was to develop on this particular property, and tearing down the building was the only way to facilitate that, I’d just get out of the way and choose another battle as you suggest.

I simply can’t understand the absolute need to develop this project at Main and Bay. I simply can’t understand the need to tear the building down when a viable plot of land is available directly to the North. I simply can’t understand how this kind of project can happen without a better approach to community consultation. I don’t understand how the City, the School Board and McMaster, despite the health campus project’s multiple potential benefits, feel it is proper to conduct business behind closed doors. I understand why public bodies need to go in camera, for valid legal concerns. But significant decisions were made out of public view. That’s a fundamental concern, regardless of the project.

My biggest question is how these three partners can’t deliver a project of this magnitude without it being an entirely positive development as it should be. As the plan currently stands, barring a last-minute change, there are numerous negative aspects of this plan that I pointed out in the video. I just don’t know why we always need to subtract in order to add, or why current assets always need to be sacrificed in order to make progress.

I feel like I’ve written you a short novel here- but I have a lot of respect for you and I do want to make sure you can see where I’m coming from. If you’d ever like to discuss it further I would love to have coffee. I have a copy of “You Can Fight City Hall” by Vince Agro on my desk, a book you had a part in advising. I know you to be someone who can very likely help me understand this city better, because I have no plans to call any other place my home.

Thank you- have a great weekend.

Your friend and student,

Matt Jelly

PHOTO ALBUM: 100 Main Street West Interiors. #HamOnt

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