Ted McMeekin

Two city-wide priorities, and how to achieve them

• “Code Red” health inequity: says 20% of Hamiltonians die about 20 years sooner than the rest by postal code and 41% of those below the poverty line are children under 14; wants Hamilton to be the best place to raise a child and to age in place.
• Budget reset: end the “super mayor” budget powers (let the budget default to council if the mayor hasn’t tabled one by mid-February), set the base tax at CPI + 1%, and review the city’s 72 core services — with heavy citizen input — to decide which to strengthen, streamline or eliminate.

Two changes to improve City services

• Fix the 3-1-1/phone-line hand-off: callers are sent straight to staff without the councillor’s office being told, so nothing happens and residents call the councillor.
• Change how council works: staff reports, five minutes of questions and a two-thirds vote for a second turn leave little time to learn; wants issue summits (housing, mental health, food sovereignty, gender violence) with academics, labour and people with lived experience.

Two changes to improve quality of life in Hamilton

• Basic income: says he moved a motion, unanimously approved by council, asking the federal government to create a basic income program.
• Authentic citizen engagement: points to the 40-person community council he created (meets every six weeks), which he says has distributed about $450,000 in non-tax funds to 32 groups after unanimous secret votes.

Two priorities for Ward 15

• Finish and protect roughly $350 million in committed Ward 15 capital projects (his figure; he says more than the previous 20 years combined), so the ward stops being the “flyover zone.”
• Public safety, which he says drives 54% of his calls (speeding, red-light cameras, break-ins, car thefts); cites the $60 million Police/Fire dispatch centre now under construction.

Three words for a four-year term (looking back from September 2030)

No three words given. Said he feels “joyful” about the work and hopes to be seen as choosing evidence-based decisions that are “right versus wrong,” not left versus right; cites 50,000 emails and 14,000 calls answered, 94.2% within 24 hours.