This year, the news media is even more contemplative, as editors and writers comment, rank and categorize the events over the past decade.

Instead of looking back at the first decade of the 21st century or ruminating at the goings-on of the past year, Hamilton Community News is offering what we would like to see happen in the coming year.

A competitive municipal election: Municipal government affects its residents in the most direct, in-your-face way. Yet citizens are contemptuously apathetic about exercising their vote. A measly 36 per cent of the population bothered to vote in the 2006 City of Hamilton election. One way to encourage a more democratic local government and more responsive councillors would be to have true competitive races.

Open and transparent school boards: Both Hamilton school boards are entrusted with teaching our future generations. Together they spend close to $1 billion in taxpayers’ money. They employ thousands of people and own millions of dollars in property. Yet they somehow escape public scrutiny. Hamilton Community News is the only media that regularly attends meetings to follow the increasingly opaque decision-making process. Public questions about where taxpayers’ money is spent and why it is spent are immediately absorbed by an unresponsive bureaucracy. Trustees, who are supposed to be the public’s watchdog are more like pussycats lapping up board staff initiatives with nary a sniff of concern.

A Hamilton Police Service we can trust: For some reason Hamilton residents have come to accept the Keystone Cops mentality of the Hamilton Police Service leadership. Over the years, the police have allowed criminals to go free; allowed internal sexual harassment cases to go unchallenged; and projected a general lazy attitude about discipline and accountability of its own officers. And all the while, the Hamilton Police Services Board sits like bumps on a log never uttering a word of criticism. Leadership has been in short supply at the service. The new police chief, Glenn De Caire has his work cut out for him.

A community without poverty: Hamilton is a world-class city when it comes to creating committees, talking about problems and holding networking sessions. But the community is distinctly Third World when it comes to implementing any grand schemes to actually solve a problem. Case in point is the city’s battle to reduce its 20 per cent poverty rate. This is a disgrace. The problem persists and during the economic downturn, the city’s most vulnerable suffered further debilitating blows to their income, job prospects and their dignity. Hamilton would truly be “the best place to raise a child” if its own children had a place to eat, sleep and play.

The HST actually worked: You know what happens when a politician asks residents to put aside their skepticism and says, “trust us?” It means trouble for the taxpayer. The HST looks like a classic case of the ordinary taxpayer getting it in the end, while businesses pop their champagne corks. Taxpayers are getting a tax cut –about $10 every two weeks –and $900 over two years. But if we are getting this money, how are businesses and corporations actually benefitting from all these tax cuts?

Death to the NHL dream: Hamilton doesn’t deserve a NHL franchise. Residents barely support the competitive junior hockey teams in Dundas, Hamilton, Stoney Creek and Glanbrook where a ‘great’ turnout is about 200 people. And the Hamilton Bulldogs are forever enticing so-called Hamilton sports fans to support them. Hamilton residents barely support their Tiger-Cats (the first playoff game in years was not a sellout). Hamilton a sports town? Bah! The city doesn’t deserve a NHL franchise.