What Does Hamilton's Election Mean for the Ticats?

Well Bratina won, which pretty much confuses things. Bratina came out relatively early against the West Harbour and thus a plan for fixing up a brownfield in his own ward. After the East Mountain deal hit the skids, Bratina came out for West Harbour in dramatic fashion, removing his jacket to show a West Harbour Tshirt at a rally at Hess Village. Now it seems he wants Confederation Park, probably the worst site for HSR public transit back as a site for the Pan Am stadium. Since he's only one vote on council, that seems unlikely. Who knows what will happen with the CP Rail site with Bob as mayor. Besides the stadium issue, one would assume that Bratina will be relatively Ticat friendly.

The other result of interest was Jason Farr, radio guy, Cable 14 guy and Ticat announcer winning the Ward 2 race slightly ahead of local activist Matt Jelly. I've heard that Farr was involved with the Go East Mountain rally for the East Mountain site, which frankly perplexes me as to how he got elected as councillor for Ward 2. As a Ticat fan and Ward 2 resident who's interested in getting the brownfields in the ward cleaned up, someone running who was for the Cats moving far away from the downtown and building on a greenfield doesn't seem like a viable candidate. But Hamilton has a long, sad history of electing media types so perhaps that's the explanation. Besides the stadium, one would have to expect Farr to be very friendly to the Ticats, based on past behaviour and employment as opposed to a candidate like Matt Jelly. It will be interesting to see if he continues as the stadium announcer after council is sworn in, in December.

With regards to what's next for the stadium, who knows. Although if there was any flicker of hope for West Harbour, that's done now.