By Pepper Parr
June 25th, 2018
BURLINGTON, ON
The Gazette has been advised by Jim Young that he “neither signed, submitted nor withdrew the appeal” of a city council to approve the building of a 23 storey tower across the street from city hall. Exactly who did what when is not all that clear. More to come.
It is almost a comedy of errors.
A developer announces that they are applying for the right to build a 27 storey tower opposite city hall.
The public is aghast – well at least some of the public.
A newcomer to Burlington announces that she wants to form a committee to stop the proposed development. As a retiree the citizen heads for Florida for the winter and tries to run the committee from the sunny south – that doesn’t work out and for a short period of time there are two committees – one having just the one member.
An early ECoB meeting
Meetings take place. Another committee is formed.
Public meetings take place
A Staff report from the Planning department is released saying they could live with a 23 storey building.
City council on a 5-2 vote approves the project
More meetings are held.
Funds are raised
The group decides to call itself ECoB – Engaged Citizens of Burlington. It is driven by a small rump group that is determined to prevent the construction of such a tall building.
Some very smart people join ECoB and give the nascent organization some oomph.
Mayor Goldring making a point at his Reverse Town Hall meeting.
The Mayor holds what he calls a reverse town hall meeting and gets upstaged by ECoB who walk into the meeting room and come close to taking over the Mayor’s meeting.
ECoB is on a roll and focused on an attempt to appeal the decision city council made to approve the 23 storeys.
One of the strongest members of ECoB announces that she is going to run for the ward seat on city council. The ward incumbent had already announced that she was running for Mayor.
While this is happening the provincial government has changed the rules on how city hall development decisions are made.
The OMB – Ontario Municipal Board is replaced by LPAT – Local Planning Appeal Tribunal.
ECoB shows up at city hall with their appeal.
Not yet they are told by the Clerk’s Office.
There is some suspicion within the ECoB group that city hall might be playing with them and not being as forthright as they should be.
The Clerk’s department keeps ECoB informed.
The date to file the appeal forms arrives.
The appeal documents are filed with city hall.
Then to the surprise and utter amazement of several of the people heavily involved in ECoB, the President of the organization resigns and files his letter with city hall and withdraws the appeal. (Jim Young, the former ECoB president says he did not withdraw the appeal.)
People are stunned.
421 Brant – a development without a name is now a done deal.
Then, to the surprise of many, the resignation letter appears on the web site of a city Councillor who cheerfully takes the former president to task.
The City Clerk takes steps that removes the resignation letter from Councillors web site.
The now past President of ECoB sends a letter to media asking if they are interested in his side of the story.
Some are. Nothing is forthcoming and the former President goes to ground.
The developer is either given or about to be given a building permit and demolition of the single and two storey buildings along the east side of Brant Street north from James can begin.
Stephen Leacock,
Stephen Leacock, the celebrated Canadian humourist, could not have written a story as funny and at the same time as sad, as this.
Related news story
Wow, let’s get to the basics of all this and ask who of us are having any more than one or two children? Population explosion in our households of reproduction is not going anywhere due to the high life style that we live! If “the sky is the limit” on the plan to supporting the world homeless then everyone please be prepared to subsidize housing, food, clothing, education, medical, etc. In saying these very realistic statistics that are evidence of our present situations in Toronto, Montreal, where housing is presently in college and university dorms that are going to have to be evacuated for the entrance of the new school year, then where do we house the homeless? When one hears that we have, no choice, but to “grow bold” with density and intensification, then hey it is time to step up to the plate in masses and “be heard”, or oust those that don’t hear our cries. This is not discriminatory, it is real and the picture is very clear why these massive structures are being pushed forward without any ear to our concerns of thinking to shape our City the way it should be. We are all very vocal in the thought process of what we think is right for our City, but this is not the path that the Governments are determined to move forward with. The future certainly is not taken into any thought process!!!
The appplication to appeal 421 Brant St. Was not withdrawn by me. I neither approved, signed, nor submjtted the appeal application. That was why i resigned from ECoB. I do not know who withdrew the appeal. I have asked The Gazette to corect this error in their reporting.
Just spent four days in downtown Dallas shuttling between the Omni and the Fairmont. Lots of nice tall buildings and upscale hotels. I made it a point to use public transit from DFW and back and to shuttle myself around. Lots of $1 bikes available and lying around ( https://www.dallasnews.com/news/dallas-city-council/2018/01/18/dallasto-bike-share-companies-clean-mess-will). Very few people on the street. Dallas had a downtown problem in 2017 and still have in my experience (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks-LlY_xgB8) . Our downtown will either be a Chicago like success or will be like what I saw and have experienced firsthand in both cities. Tall buildings are not the solution to feet on the street but they do give you density and things that weren’t planned plan for.
I find it interesting that everyone has an opinion on what transpired with regard to the LPAT appeal that was withdrawn. At least two of the people commenting on this article were asked to be part of ECoB. They were both busy dealing with issues in their ward.
It is very easy to be a”Monday Night Quarterback” and not to be on the Front Line of what was happening, and taking their information from Facebook and Tweets as gospel.
As a grass roots organization many residents stepped up to help and they know who they are, interesting I don’t see them condemning a group of volunteers who managed to engage and inform citizens as to what was happening in their community.
Penny, sincere thank you to yourself and all other volunteers who give themselves selflessly to the community. Reading the comments from those who offer suggestions (or criticize), I wondered about their involvement or lack thereof. Keeping residents informed and engaged is very important in this age of political spin and ‘fake news’.
Greg, please take time to look into the development proposed for the Appleby Village Mall in ward 5. Current plan is for two buildings in an extremely small space. As you stated buildings jammed into parking lots.
I have the utmost respect for any and all citizens who would step up in the way that all of the ECoB founders and members did and continue to do on behalf of the rest of us and on behalf of our city. As for the ECoB founder who quit to run for council, good for her! She has already done so much on behalf of citizens, long before she decided to take it further and run for public office. She saw a need and she has and is working to personally do what she can to make things better.
That a Councillor would “cheerfully take the President to task” on his public facebook page and that the City Manager would threaten to sue the group is appalling and illustrates exactly what many are saying about the disrespect shown to citizens by some on council and senior staff when citizens speak out.
When an article appeared in the Toronto Star last week documenting that a group of citizens in Markham were being sued for millions of dollars by developers for appealing a project to the OMB (which may have had a bearing on why the Burlington citizen appeal was dropped), perhaps what all this should illustrate is that there is something really wrong with the system. It seems citizens don’t have the power to fight it. It seems the only way we can turn this around and stop whatever it is that is happening inside our city is at the voting booth on October 22. I agree with Greg above that this is not at all funny.
Lynn, I agree with your observations. A culture has developed at City Hall–including the mayor, the councillors and the bureaucrats, that residents are there to serve City Hall and its agendas. This is clearly wrong. In my long experience in the public and private sectors, you can’t change culture without a wholesale change of people–that process can begin on October 22. Hopefully we can save what is left of what made Burlington such a great place to live.
So..right concept, noble ideals, but admittedly a horrible execution. Time to hit the re-set button.
Issue #1. We need a broader focus than just downtown redevelopment. The issue of intensification is a city wide concern.
Issue #2. We need a broader cross-section of people running ECoB, and preferably, people with some actual organizational skills and business savvy. All the theatrics and backroom machinations is contributing to a lack of confidence in the management of this organization. We also need people running it who aren’t focused on running for public office themselves. At a minimum, ECoB needs to greatly expand its Board to 12 to 16 members with representatives from across the City and from every ward, and actually morph into a ratepayers’ association.
Issue #3. All very nice and charitable that ECoB will be sponsoring candidate debates. However, if you want to impact the municipal agenda then you actually need to get out in front and endorse candidates who support a “lower and slower” approach to redevelopment, and you need to do it ….NOW!! That means mobilizing the existing membership base to support, financially and personally, those candidates who reflect ECoB ideals.
Issue #4. Instead of battling these re-zoning applications and development proposals one by one ECoB needs to develop a comprehensive strategy going forward on how to shift the dynamic. A place to start is Oakville’s approach to planning which front end loads community engagement and involvement. ECoB should also push for a Ratepayers’ Bill of Rights, the appointment of a Community Liaison Officer in Planning to exclusively support ratepayer challenges to re-zoning applications and intensification, and funding these initiatives accordingly.
In short, time to get real.
As you often, you’ve hit the nail on the head, Stephen.
Would you be one of the 12 on the board?
Well said Stephen!
On the not funny at all side: The down town core is set to be filled with sky-scrapers. 421 is happening and it will – as we have seen before – be used as the new “reasonable height”. The time to start controlling these things and set out a reasonable plan is years ago. With this appeal lapsing massive change to the down town is baked in the cake.
What we have left to discuss is how to re-infuse the down town with something of the “Burlington feel” and charm it is loosing wholesale.
Also we do not want this condo-mania spreading to every place in the city. We need a reasonable low-rise plan for Burlington. We have already seen what happens if left unchecked. Do we want Paradigms jammed in every imaginable place? That’s the future unless people can get organized behind candidates in every ward.
Greg:
Does this mean that you, as a mayoral candidate, have ‘thrown in the towel’ on stopping the overdevelopment of the downtown, considering it “baked in the cake”? This is good to know.
So, your plan going forward is to take the fight to the other areas of the City – abandon the downtown core as lost but still with some ability to salvage a hint, a nostalgic whiff of the “Burlington feel”. This is where your record of service and experience has taken you? Not a very compelling position from my standpoint. But I’m just one person.
Mike, I wish it was not so, but 421 effectively has a building permit. The building is coming. No process exists to prevent its construction. It’s going to loom 23 stores over Brant street and be visible everywhere. No candidate can do anything about it at this point. I consider this a gigantic mistake. It’s painful, but I can’t lie to people and give them false hope. Nothing anyone does at the Burlington level of government will stop that building.
If EcoB or any other body had put an appeal in on 421 then other groups could have got in on the process once it started. As of 2 hours before the deadline, the building had a pending appeal written by a professional land use planner. It contained solid objections, that were not frivolous. I or other people I know (who deligated against 421) would have signed it. Unfortunately, for whatever reason – the appeal was removed at a time that prevented anyone else from objecting and the appeal window closed.
The new council can do nothing until January. In the meantime, the staff are going to keep hamming out recommendations for high buildings. Any appeals between then and now will be argued between the staff in favour of high buildings and the developers in favour of high buildings.
So as I said a massive change is coming to the downtown. I’m not giving up the fight to prevent overdevelopment, but these things are going to get built. If we want a downtown with any charm or “Burlington Feel” we are going to have start a process to make it happen ourselves. The developers and staff are not going to do it for us.