Bermuda

Tuesday, January 9, 2013

Tuesday, January 9, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday, January 9, 2013

Consultant’s PR gaffes spur online ridicule

It almost looks like a toy. A city engagement campaign botched at the launch by an Ottawa-based PR firm will be reviewed “in due time,” according to one city councillor.

“The problem is that we apparently retained an agency that is a stranger of competence,” says Sam Merulla in an email Tuesday night. “And we will be reviewing this issue.”
Merulla doesn’t indicate when a review might begin, only saying staff needs “to assess the continuation of the present course expeditiously.”

It started Monday afternoon, when the city launched “Our Voice, Our Hamilton” to gauge Hamiltonians’ views about civic services. The city hired Ottawa-based public engagement firm Dialogue Partners Inc. in April 2012 to lead the $376,000 campaign, which includes a website and online survey and a Twitter account.

But at 9:30 Monday night, “Our Voice, Our Hamilton” made its first gaffe. Responding to a question posed on Twitter about the HSR – one of the very services it is charged with reviewing – the campaign responded “Thks for the comment – what is “HSR” just so we can accurately capture your comment 🙂 Thanks!”

Hamiltonians soon spotted other discrepancies about the firm’s knowledge of the city. The main photo on the campaign’s website was quickly revealed to be a bike trail in Ottawa, not Hamilton. Several posts on the campaign’s Pinterest page – a website that acts as an online bulletin board – included photos of the courthouse in Hamilton, Ohio, and promotional T-shirts from Hamilton, Wash. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

SOCIAL MEDIA

Friday April 27, 2002

April 27, 2002

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday April 27, 2002

Hamilton’s Randle Reef

There have been so many setbacks in cleaning up Randle Reef, the notorious dead zone in Hamilton Harbour, that it seemed as if a solution would take forever. So much for the litany of bad news associated with the toxic hot spot just west of Stelco’s Hilton Works. With key stakeholders now in agreement on a viable strategy for the cleanup, Hamilton is finally in position to correct one of the most pressing pollution problems in the harbour.

The stakeholders made a prudent choice in supporting a plan to cover the site and build a facility large enough to hold contaminated sediment from other areas in the bay. Capping Randle Reef was judged the most practical and cost-effective approach, and for good reason. The alternatives involved dredging the site, and other contaminated areas of the bay, and then trucking the waste away. It would be a messy, piecemeal, time-consuming and ultimately more expensive approach for the harbour as a whole.

The plan favoured by the stakeholders has the drawback of filling in more of the bay, which is never desirable. But there is a strong case that it’s an acceptable tradeoff in tackling not only the Randle Reef menace, but other contaminated areas in the bay which must be addressed. Under the preferred option, six to eight hectares of the harbour would be filled in. About 95,000 cubic metres of contaminated sediment at Randle Reef would be covered. The facility would be designed to accommodate another 200,000 cubic metres of contaminated sediment from elsewhere in the bay. (The Hamilton Spectator)