City Manager’s Office presents preliminary 2022 operating budget

HAMILTON, ON - Continuing to advance equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives, developing and implementing a government relations strategy, enhancing the process for the Community Enrichment Fund, building a corporate framework and supporting policy for public engagement, and launching a new version of the City’s website are among key priorities for the City of Hamilton’s City Manager’s Office (CMO) department for 2022.

City Manager, Janette Smith, outlined these and other key priorities for City Council’s General Issues Committee today as part of her 2022 departmental operating budget presentation.

Overall, the CMO department budget outlined an increase of approximately 4.6%, or $594,100, from 2021.

The department is comprised of several sections: the City Manager’s Office, Communications and Strategic Initiatives, Government and Community Relations, the Office of the Chief Digital Officer, Human Resources and the Office of the City Auditor.

Key priorities for the City Manager’s Office in 2022 will include:

• Continuing COVID-19 emergency response and recovery planning
• Advancing an organizational EDI framework and training plan
• Launching a new version of the City’s website, Hamilton.ca
• Enhancing the process for Community Enrichment Fund applications
• Developing and implementing a corporate government relations strategy to ensure other levels of government are aware of the challenges, needs and opportunities to partner
• Sharing results of the 2021 employee ‘Our People Survey’ to all City staff and building action plans
• Building and implementing a public engagement policy and administrative framework

2021 City Manager’s Office highlights:

• Significant support for the pandemic response, including:
  • Overseeing the redeployment of City staff and new hires to aid in the response
  • Developing and implementing the policies and procedures around COVID-19 protocols and vaccine education/verification
  • Supporting information delivery with an unprecedented level of public communications
• Assisted in the development of a new Memorandum of Understanding for Hamilton’s LRT
• Keeping residents informed on Hamilton.ca, with an increase in web traffic of 33 per cent and 2.3 million views on the COVID-19 interactive map
• Conducting community consultations virtually on Engage Hamilton by featuring 36 projects and welcoming more than 55,000 site visitors 
• Increasing the total number of open datasets available to the public by 9 per cent or 257 sets
• Launching 24 audit investigations

Council is expected to consider approval for the final operating budget in late March.