Bernie Morelli

Friday, January 24, 2014

Friday, January 24, 2014Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday, January 24, 2014

Could former mayor Morrow fill Ward 3 vacancy?

(By Andrew Dreschel) Hamilton councillors are considering appointing former mayor Bob Morrow to replace Ward 3 Councillor Bernie Morelli, who died last week.

Morrow, Hamilton’s longest serving mayor, declined to comment until more time has passed.

“I think I would rather remember Bernie at this time.”

Bob Morrow’s job in 2001

But Councillor Sam Merulla says he’s privately broached the subject with Morrow, who seems open to the idea as long as the decision is undivided and without squabbling.

According to Merulla, he and Councillor Tom Jackson are quietly trying to build unanimous support. Merulla has also raised the prospect with Morelli’s family.

“Based on my preliminary discussions with family members, they’re very happy about the idea and look forward to it coming to fruition.”

Under provincial legislation council must declare Morelli’s office vacant no later than Feb. 12 and then decide within 60 days to appoint a replacement or call a byelection.

In the case of a byelection, city election manager Tony Fallis says a nomination day for candidates to register must be set no more than 60 days after the race is called. Election day would then be 45 days after nomination day.

That means if council were to opt for a byelection at its Feb. 12 meeting, nomination day would be April 14 and election day May 29.

Given that a full municipal election is on Oct. 27, Councillor Terry Whitehead says councillors are leaning to appointing for the sake of candidates and Ward 3’s 40,000 residents.

Whitehead argues it wouldn’t be fair to saddle candidates with the cost of two elections — “which could be $20,000 each” — within five months. (Continued: Hamilton Spectator)

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November 16, 2006

This week has been pretty easy in terms of finding a subject to cartoon on. Given the municipal elections we had early on this week there’s been plenty of fodder to satirize. Today’s cartoon focuses on Brad Clark, a feisty ex-provincial cabinet minister who might very well turn City Hall upside down in the next 4 years before moving up to the Mayor’s chair. Anyway, we’re bound to read a lot of headlines involving this new addition to City Hall, enough to deem his presence worthy of an editorial cartoon. Gut instinct is a part of what drives a cartoonist to pick his subject matter. Consider that as the foundation of what goes into an editorial cartoon. Here’s what happens after I get an idea for a cartoon:

Forgive the blurriness of the above images, but you get the point. After the cartoon is done it needs to go through a range of format processes. My newspaper requires a colour cartoon formatted as an EPS image at a resolution of 300 dpi in a rectangular shape of 496 X 378 points, the colour mode being CMYK which allows me to separate the blacks from the colours for a crisper image. My website requires a 72 dpi low res JPEG version of what my newspaper gets in the RGB mode. It also gets a small thumbnail image for that related cartoon feature I have beneath each main cartoon. My syndicate wants a 300 dpi JPEG image in RGB at 7.5 inches across (but they won’t get a version of this one because of its local subject matter.) A high resolution version at 600 dpi in a JPEG format goes to my personal archive for possible future use.