Last night, in what was probably the most dramatic and complex ending to a council meeting in years, city council again voted down the Designated Truck Route by a vote of 7 -6.
Councillor Brian Hamilton was the deciding vote. Councillor Hamilton you may remember flipped his vote last year and voted for the the DTR which brought the process to the bylaw stage. Since getting to the bylaw stage – the DTR has gone no where. Last night, Councillor Hamilton acknowledged he made a mistake voting for the DTR in the first place – and announced that last night he was flipping his vote to being against the bylaw.
I’ve poked fun at the Councillor in the past on the show – he’s actually said some really funny things at council. Although it was all in fun, last night Councilor Hamilton showed a huge amount of courage to apologize to the city and to his colleagues because he felt he made a mistake approving the DTR in the first place. He was genuine and sincere in explaining that he made the wrong choice initially to put council in this position – and should be commended for that. It truly took a lot of courage.
The problem now is that council is stuck – and so is the DTR. There were no signs of any councilors changing their vote last night so the bylaw is stuck in process. Administration has no direction from council so now we wait. On July 20, Councilor Hamilton is expected to put forward a notice to rescind the bylaw – but that motion requires 9 votes to pass. There doesn’t seem to be a path showing that 2 councilors will change their vote for that to happen so we’re really stuck.
The best thing council can do now is rescind the bylaw and start over in the next term of councilors – where there will probably be some new faces at the table. Unless one councilor can be convinced to approve the next reincarnation of the bylaw this process will go round and round for a long time. It’s an incredibly rare position to be in and an incredibly polarizing issue at the same time in council chambers. Things are tense. And we’re just getting started.
We talked with Mayor Bill Mauro about the process and what’s next for the DTR and he provided some great clarity on the issue. We also unpacked what’s next for the services review for council and it seems they have a lot of homework to do.
All that and more in today’s talk with Mayor Bill Mauro.
In case you missed it – have a look.