Trail school road show highlights board’s waste

Re: On the move (May 6th)

It was interesting to read about the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board spending a million dollars to move the rickety Mohawk Trail school to their new head office on the Mountain.
It’s surprising the board has no logistics plan to move this relic, before they spent money on getting it ready to move. The fastest, most direct route is along Mohawk Road, which will require all overhead wires to be removed. The board, in its infinite wisdom will try to use back streets, to avoid moving wires. Since taxpayers own Horizon Utilities, how much is the board paying our utility to move the wires along the route? Is there anyone in the board who can think outside the box to find a way to move this old one-room school with the least amount of disruption?
In the end, what will be gained for this million-dollar expenditure? This money could be used for school maintenance, which the board doesn’t do regularly, as evidenced by the sad state of repairs of our schools.
It has become patently obvious that our school system is broken and many elementary schools are closing to the detriment of their neighborhoods.
Once this big move is done, it will be interesting to see what the final bill is, as I suspect it will be more than the $1 million they budgeted.

Mark-Alan Whittle
Hamilton Mountain

LETTER: Use a gym for board meetings

The idea of the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board asking the city for use of council chambers as an interim meeting location gets me steamed. They are trying to leverage free city hall use to force their new head office through.
We should tell them to rent the convention centre or any other room to hold a meeting.
If they want pomp and circumstance on my tab, forget it, they can all work from home. Or use a portable at one of their schools or make the rounds using gymnasiums after hours.

Mark-Alan Whittle
Hamilton Mountain