Hamilton City Council West Ward Candidate Mark Flyger

I watched Dave Letele’s Reel of Sir Michael Jones today. Jones quoted Romans 8:28 in relation to Manu Vatuvai – the former Warriors star convicted of importing drugs - saying that God can use all things (I’m assuming this includes people who’ve been to jail), for good.

In Hamilton we have two situations: our city finances are a shambles and, we have someone convicted of fraud running for election.

Whether you’re a sinner or a saint, Hamilton’s debt is around $1b and projected to hit $2b in the next few years. Hamiltonians are struggling financially and Council’s successive rates hikes are unsustainable. There are incredibly complex financial decisions to be made now in order for us to be able to get ahead of the debt so that it doesn’t devour us.

Enter Hamilton City Council West Ward candidate Mark Flyger who served time for tax evasion in 2001. Flyger also has over 40 years accounting experience, including 24 years as Chief Financial Officer of Modern Transport Group, a local company managing budgets on par with Council’s, employing Hamilton workers, and contributing to our local economy under his fiscal watch.

How is it that Flyger came to be standing for the West Ward? He, along with other proud Hamiltonians, tried to raise funds and Council support to save Founders Theatre. Council demolished it anyway. That disappointment, along with a hope that Hamilton will be a place his family returns to live, lit the spark for his candidacy.

Flyger doesn’t need the job. He doesn’t need his family reliving what it was when he went to jail, but I have gotten to know him thanks to these elections, and hand-on-heart, I believe he’s running because he loves and cares about our city. He’s worried about us. He knows he has the financial skills to help and, vitriol aside, he’s trying to do that.

He’ll be the first to tell you, he’s not a polished public speaker — that’s not what the last four decades of his career were about so some grace may be needed on that front. However, what he has been perfecting, finance, miraculously, is exactly what we need.

The next Council will need to navigate complex government changes and he knows firsthand to be wary of such shifts. There is also, no other candidate better equipped to drill into the city’s financial detail, make sense of it quickly and find the most effective ways out of the mess.

He, and we, are not perfect but when we see an opportunity to use what went wrong for us for good shouldn’t we try to do that? Good on you Mark and no matter what, thank you for trying to save Founders and now our city.