By Staff
September 15th, 2018
BURLINGTON, ON
Lisa Cooper
1299 Princeton Cres.
Home phone: 905-331-8469
Mobile phone: 289-259-9880
Fax: 905-331-8469
lisacooper1299@gmail.com
electlisacooper.com
Darcy Hutzel
289-400-3505
votehutzel@gmail.com
www.votehutzel.ca
Rory Nisan
905-464-7195
info@rorynisan.ca
rorynisan.ca
Peter Rusin
2317 Homer Dr. Burlington, ON L7P 4V4
905-599-6661
peter@peterrusin.com
Gareth Williams
289-635-8994
Malcolm Crescent
gareth@garethward3.ca
garethward3.ca
Mark Carr will moderate the ward 3 debate.
Mark Carr – moderator for the ECoB municipal election debates.
Mark Carr is the on air host for Cogeco TV program The Issue. He has been doing public television work for more than 20 years.
He has been involved in political life as campaign manager for four successful provincial and a federal elections.
He ran for public office and served as a city Councillor and Regional Councillor for ward 6 in Burlington. He served as Chair of the Burlington Planning and Development committee and Budget and Strategic Planning committees. He is the recipient of Ontario Public Service Award in 2010 and 2017 and Medal of Volunteerism, from Government of Canada.
He is the Executive Director for a not-for-profit agency. He has volunteered his time with Community Cares Halton (Police Services) Board of Directors, Oakville Dispute Mediators, Joseph Brant Hospital Foundation, a member of the Chamber of Commerce, Bereaved Families of Ontario and Board of Directors, Sustainable Development Committee.
Mark has moderated debates for several years iat both the federal, provincial and municipal levels.
Mark is an honours graduate in Communications and Conflict Management from the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel/University of Waterloo and is a long-time resident of Burlington.
ECoB – Engaged Citizens of Burlington was formed in December of 2017 when a number of residents became concerned about the rate of and scope of development that was taking place in the downtown core.
Citizen engagement was a key issue. Residents felt that Council was not listening to their concerns regarding their vision of what they would like their Burlington to look like.
ECoB set out to educate and inform residents. They held an event for anyone wanting to run in the October 2018 municipal election and built a to scale Lego based model of what the city would look like with developments that were approved and planned. The city administration said there wasn’t time to have this 3D model built – so ECoB did it.
They then set out to hold debates in each of the wards in the city, something that had not been done before as well as a debate for those running for the office of Mayor.
The organization is funded by donations from people who attend meetings.
Pure grass roots organization.
Concur with Kevin, this would be a very helpful article if the details on when and where the debate is being held were included. I had to go look it up on reddit, of all places.
Looking at the candidates, one has no website, so he immediately becomes a sort of non-factor for me. One’s website is so riddled with grammar and spelling mistakes that I simply can’t take them seriously.
Of the other three, only one in my eyes has their platform outlined in enough detail to even figure out what they stand for. I dunno, not super enthused with my options in this ward.
Editor’s note: There are advertisements on the web site setting out the date, time and location of each debate with a link to the candidates. Not sure just how much more you want us to do for you.
It would be helpful to have the details of the debate include in the article. There is a LOT of info on the Moderator but when and where is it actually taking place!?
And ECoB set up these Municipal debates to assist which mayoral candidate?
I thought that one of the stated goals of ECoB was to inform. This seems to have been forgotten and replaced by the mantra of “Listen, because we are ECoB”.
I am aware of only one ECoB hosted public meeting on the topic of development of which I attended last December. While the presentation used at the meeting was posted on the ECoB website, no decisions were ratified, such as via majority vote amongst the membership at the meeting or documented in the form of meeting minutes and posted on the ECoB website The best information we have of that meeting is described in Burlington Gazette article entitled “Newly formed citizens group draws 150 + people to a public meeting – they have a message for city council – We won’t be voting for you next time.” by Pepper Parr December 14th, 2017 of whom I can confirm did attend the same meeting.
Who is running ECoB?
While the composition of ECoB was previously described in the Burlington Gazette article entitled “ECoB – a group of people who want to create an umbrella organization that will support the numerous community groups in the city that don’t feel they are being heard at city hall.” by Pepper Parr December 13th, 2017, I don’t recall any mention of the organizational structure being presented or how these key members of the organization were ratified as part oft the December ECoB meeting. Perhaps I was late on arrival to hear these items discussed. Regardless, these are important items which should have been documented in the presentation which can be found on the ECoB website and in the meeting minutes which are nowhere to be found on the ECoB website.
Since that time, we have seen the departure of several key ECoB organization members and still no public meeting with which to ratify their replacements. This begs the question as to who really represents ECoB?
What is the relationship between the Province, the City of Burlington and that of the developer seeking to develop her/his property?
Were members of ECoB who attended the meeting hosted by the City Planning & Development last December provided with this information? The meeting was identified in the Burlington Gazette Article “ECoB and city hall meet – will citizens support this new group that wants a much more collaborative relationship with the city. Shades of Shape Burlington perhaps?” By Pepper Parr December 2, 2017. However, there appears to be no statement of understanding of what was discussed, what was settled and what remained open and thus yet to be resolved. This may have been presented at the public meeting last December, but it was not made clear as to what was discussed and again was not minuted so that the membership and the general public would be able to understand what had transpired.
It appears that there is an advantage to keeping the membership and the residents of Burlington in the dark.
The risk to the candidates, especially those with no prior Municipal Government experience, is that they may suffer entrapment by making commitments on development issues with which they may discover that they will be unable to keep, if elected. The risk to the general public is that once again their expectations do not match reality after voting for someone who appeared as would be able to fulfill.
The opinions described above are my own, as a citizen of Burlington living in Ward 5. They are from someone who read several drafts and contributed suggestions (some were adopted) for improvements of what has become the City ratified Official Plan (which unfortunately is still pending Regional and then Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (replaced the OMB as of 12th December 2017) approvals after all (mainly developer) appeals have been resolved. In the meantime, the City must continue to rely on the current Official Plan which has been proven to be not defensible upon developer appeal. ECoB sought to delay the Official Plan because they felt that anything stated in the plan was cast in stone not realizing that the Official Plan was meant to be a living document and one which could be amended as required through order of Council.
I am the second set of eyes to vet Paul Sharman’s campaign finances.
I have yet to see any candidate tackle the three elephants in the room associated with this election. Hint, they are bigger than the distraction associated with development intensification of which the City can do little about and they impact a larger proportion of the population of the City of Burlington.
Editor’s note: Mr Skinner has been a frequent contributor to the Gazette. The aims of the ECoB were set out at their first meeting early in December. The organization is currently focused on ensuring that the public gets an opportunity to hear what the candidates have to say to their constituents. Unfortunately, the candidate Mr. Skinner is supporting in ward 5 has chosen not to attend the debate