By Staff
January 21st, 2018
BURLINGTON, ON
It will be a pivotal meeting and it will run for a long time, it might even need an additional day for everyone to be heard.
The delegations will be repetitive which doesn’t work for this city council. They would rather hear something said just the once; they don’t appreciate just how deep the feelings are about what is being done to their city.
Some will make up their minds on how they will vote in the October election based on how they see the current council reacting. Sitting and listening to people in stone cold silence is not going to cut it this time. Should someone offer the results of a survey many will be watching how the Councillor from ward 4 will respond.
Will the chair of the meeting once again tell the people who pay the taxes that they cannot applaud when they hear something they support and yet have to accept the applause that is given when the Mayor hands out a proclamation or certificate of appreciation.
A citizen has said that: “In my view the City’s communication on the whole OP has been woeful. They are in part the masters of their own misfortune on this issue. They have been completely outplayed by the ECOB group and the no tall buildings crowd. I think part of the issue is that a lot of this is pretty complex stuff with a lot of moving parts. It’s not as simple as do you want tall buildings in the downtown or not. That’s no excuse however for not being able to explain complex concepts to the citizens of Burlington over the last year or so.”
Indeed ECoB – Engaged Citizens of Burlington have kept the focus on the downtown core; others have picked it up and the message has swelled.
Blair Smith said: Quite simply, the Official Plan is too important to Burlington’s future to be rushed to approval. There are still too many pieces that are incomplete or in conceptual form for “The Plan” to be finalized. Regardless of where one stands on the many issues that the new OP raises, I think that it is fair for the people to speak at the polls in October. Although legally it is within the mandate of the current Council to approve a new Official Plan, it would be ethically and morally wrong to do so.
“In 2014 the people of Burlington did not give the current Council a clear mandate to determine the City’s landscape for the next 50 to 100 years. In fact, given a 34% voter turnout in 2014, the people barely gave Council a mandate to exist. I hope that Council will do the “right thing” and defer approval of the Official Plan and establish a clear and unambiguous referendum around the OP as part of the election in October 2018. Then the people can truly speak and be heard.”
Democracy in action is certainly vibrant.
