By Pepper Parr
December 17, 2014
BURLINGTON, ON.
What’s the rush?
Has your city Council let the holiday schedule deprive you of an opportunity to review what they have done at their Standing Committees before they rubber stamp their deliberations at Council where bylaws get passed?
The Standing Committee of Development and Infrastructure met on Monday and got a solid briefing on what the Economic Development Corporation has planned. There was a public meeting on a sub-division application for Twelve Mile Trail.
Route 6 and 52 will stay as the are for now. Took close to an hour to make that decision.
There was a review of transit service for the Headon Road part of town – routes 6 and 52 during which Councillor Dennison managed to use more than half an hour trying to work out all the twists and turns the buses on that route should take.
There was a lot of huffing and puffing over what a municipal council can and can’t do with development applications.
The following day, Tuesday, the Corporate and Community Services committee met and accepted the staff recommendation to sell the lands along the edge of the lake between Market and St. Paul Street.
Mayor Golding mastered the art of the photo op during his first term of office. He is photogenic and that is apparently enough to get elected.
We heard, for the first time, what the Mayor’s thinking was on that momentous decision. It was kind of wishy washy.
The Standing Committee approved 56 pages of changes in rates and fees – those are dollars that you will pay for the use of facilities that your tax dollars paid to have built.
The chair of each standing Committee diligently explains that the Committee does not make final decisions – they make recommendations that go to Council where final decisions are made and by laws are passed.
The practice in Burlington has been for there to be a full week, usually more, for the public to make themselves aware of what has been recommended before it goes to Council.
The public then has some time to think about was has been recommended and appear at Council if they want to offer a different opinion.
In a democracy the elected would welcome – maybe even encourage the public to appear and make their views known so that the elected could make decisions informed by the public.
Some might suggest that the media is in place to inform the public. And it is – but there has been a strange twist. The Burlington Post usually has a reporter at the media table covering meetings.
Tina Depko –Denver covers city hall for the Post – she is a good reporter – she frequently does a better job as a reporter than I do.
She wasn’t at the media table on Tuesday. Why?
We learned at the end of the Standing Committee meeting that Ms Depko –Denver has been hired by the Mayor as his Manager of Communications.
We congratulate Ms Depko-Denver and hope she serves the Mayor well and that she chooses to take direction from the Junius quote atop the Globe and Mail editorial page: “The subject who is truly loyal to the chief magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures”.
Junius, a pseudonym, wrote letters between 1769 and 1762 to inform the public of their historical and constitutional rights and liberties as Englishmen.
The Depko-Denver appointment probably means that the Post will not carry much in the way of news coverage unless they pick up the meeting from the webcast.
The Gazette will publish several pieces on the two Standing Committee meetings and go into some depth on the atrocious decision to sell waterfront property.
City Hall will close down at the end of the day on Tuesday, the 23rd and we won’t see anyone other than the people who keep the building secure until after the New Year. The holiday schedule for city hall is CLOSED between Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2014, reopening on Monday, Jan. 5, 2015. Sweet!
Is there a good reason for not deferring the Council meeting until after the New Year? Well one reason is that would be a lot of time for people to become informed and perhaps “mad as hell” and decide they don’t want to be treated this way anymore.
We did get the municipal government we apparently wanted less than 60 days ago.
What have we done to ourselves?
so what did happen to the lake front park lands?? What did wishy-washy Mayor say about these lands??
Editor’s note: Patience ducky – all in due course.
We voted Pepper so we have the right to complain. It is a very sad state for Burlington . All I can say is to residents of Burlington Merry Christmas and a Happy new Year because there could be more ahead. God Bless us!
Photo of the Marsdens from Burlington Gazette
Taken at the Special Council Meeting of September 29, 2014
“Marsden made a fundamental point. The wait period between the Standing Committee and the Council meeting is the only opportunity the public has to be informed and aware of what their elected representatives are doing – “it is a safeguard that belongs to the public” said Marsden. ”. Pepper Parr – Burlington Gazette (September 30, 2014)
Pepper Parr made his own fundamental points in the Gazette article:
“Council pulled what could be seen as a fast one and held a Council meeting at which they passed matters that had been discussed and debated a mere two and a half hours earlier.”
“…conducting business this way is the thin edge of corrupt practice”
“Those who are comfortable bending the rules….. use opportunities like this to let something slip by out of the bright lights of public review.”
With this kind of review of the Mayor and Burlington City Councillors’ behaviour just prior to election, which is clearly contrary to the public interest and, therefore, out of line with Council responsibilities set out in the Municipal Act, one would expect the new status quo Burlington City Council (sworn in on December 1, 2014) to behave better. Or at least behave better until time erased the memory of the local media’s thoughts on what happened at the last Council meeting of their 2010 – 2014 term of office.
Not so, December 17, at 3:30 p.m. in Room 247 the City’s Audit Committee meets to review the results of an audit requested by Council in 2012. The audit evaluates the City’s performance against the Council accepted established framework of a “strong ethical culture – the foundation of good governance”. December 18, 2014 at 6:30 p.m Council is reviewing the report and will, if the past is anything to go on, fail to address the glaring questions this audit report brings to mind to those like Anne Marsden. Marsden is extremely well referenced at the national level for her ability to design such audits that get the job done and spent many years evaluating dozens of audit reports in terms of the job they were supposed to do to support good corporate governance.
Previous commitments that, like the Acting City Manager’s February 1, 2015 commitment, have to be honored prevent the Marsden’s delegating at either the December 17, 2014 Audit Committee or the December 18, 2014 Council meeting.
The Marsdens, therefore, through this e-mail are requesting their councillor Marianne Meed Ward puts forward a motion to the Clerk for inclusion in tomorrow’s Council meeting agenda that will see the Audit Report returned to the Audit Committee. We are hopeful that the motion will be seconded by Rick Craven who has just requested an education session for Council on the Procedural By-laws that govern the setting of Council meetings etc.
Approval of such a motion will allow those members of the public who wish to share their thoughts with the Audit Committee and Council on the “adequacy of the audit” to meet the 2012 request of Council and their position that a FAIR rating of the City’s performance in this audit is not an indicator that good governance is part of the City of Burlington’s status quo and that the Pepper Parr fundamental points made in Burlington Gazette article of September 30, 2014 were very close to the mark.
Anne and Dave Marsden
Health, Safety and Access Advocates
308-1425 Ghent Avenue
Burlington, Ontario
L7S 1X5
905-467-2860
I support, and second, the Marsden’s request to their Councilor Meed Ward to move, and request to Councillor Craven to second, this motion, that the Audit Report be returned to the Audit Committee.
I took some long time to read the lengthy report, and would like to have the opportunity to comment on certain things I am concerned about in that Report. I am completely opposed to rushing it through Council tomorrow, just one day after it was in front of Committee.
There has been almost no real business activity or political process in Burlington, since about the end of July.
Between summer recess, the election, the winding down of the previous Council term of office, the nothing 18 minute last meeting, the ceremonial first meeting of the new Council term, and now this very rushed schedule of 4 Committee and Council meetings this week, just before Christmas recess till January 5, the political process in Burlington has been at a standstill mostly for 4 months.
Like what are these Councillors thinking? That they have all been re-elected and so they can thumb their noses at the masses? Getting only a FAIR on the Audit, which evaluates the City’s performance against the Council accepted established framework of a “strong ethical culture – the foundation of good governance”, is nothing to be proud off or to shirk by blowing off any concerned citizens.
I suggest that the true evaluation presented SERIOUS risks, and the FAIR overall given was a gimme from the auditors.
I saw what I think are deficiencies in the city performance on several indicators measured. Without the Audit being returned to the Audit Committee all this possible debate will be buried.
Is that the will of the Council we just elected?