By Staff
July 16, 2014
BURLINGTON, ON.
Burlington got the McMaster University DeGroote campus but it doesn’t seem to make all that much of a difference to the city – stuck out in a field the way it is.
The campus was supposed to be located in downtown Burlington but like many things planned for the downtown core – that one got away.
Halton regional council voted Wednesday of last week to throw its support behind Wilfrid Laurier University’s efforts to establish a full service campus, adjacent to the Mattamy National Cycling Centre (Milton velodrome).
Velodrome construction: site has room for a full scale campus if the province goes along with Wilfred Laurier University setting up a satellite campus. seems to be a better deal than Burlington got with McMaster.
The campus would provide a range of undergraduate, liberal arts, science and professional programs and a full range of student services for approx. 2,500 students.
Milton has pledged to donate 150 acres of land to Laurier for a new campus including 100 acres of protected land and 50 acres within the proposed 400-acre Milton Education Village (west of Tremaine Road, between Derry Rd. and Britannia Rd.)
Burlington has never managed to exercise the clout it should have at the Regional level. Chair Gary Carr is reported to have said to one candidate for municipal office that Burlington doesn’t seem to fully appreciate the role it can play and gets out-muscled by both Oakville and Milton. The leadership needed by Burlington at the Region just never seems to materialize.
Burlington Council members often go to the Region with different agendas and objectives – frequently not as a team with a consistent objective. We saw that with the Beachway issue.
John Taylor who is experiencing a full-scale snit over the advocacy for safe bike lanes on New Street when the re-surfacing of that road takes place in the near future, argues that the Burlington city council does not pull together all that often. Others argue that because it is a small council – 7 people – it develops a sense of collegiality but at the same time allows each council member to go their own way.
The council members tend to get very territorial as well and fail to recognize that while they are elected to represent a specific ward they are also in place to look after the interests of the city as a whole.
At one city council workshop Councillor Craven spoke in favour of rules that would keep council members out of the turf of another council member. Councillor Meed Ward gave did her best to set him straight on just what the role of a council member is.
Councillor Taylor found himself stepping in for a ward 1 resident in the Beachway who had no water for nine months (don’t ask why – it gets complicated in the Beachway). Councillor Craven was livid.
As much as Mayor Goldring would like to believe that he heads up – doesn’t lead – a collective that is working towards the same goal – it isn’t so.
Milton had no problem agreeing on the donation of a large piece of property in a prime location – 2500 students. Imagine something like that happening to Burlington?
Marianne Meed Ward and John Taylor have consistently proved that their commitment and service to the citizens of Burlington are border-less and boundless.
The rest of the current Council appear to be acting solely within their self-designed mandates, created solely to satisfy their own egos whilst offering some minimal semblance of serving their voters–and they need to be voted out of office this October.
Thanks Pepper for the article. Just a few details for your readers. The Laurier University application is for part of the Milton Education Village a 450 acre property with a number of partners including Sheridan College who plan on building a future facility there. The 2500 students you mentioned is only the first phase of the Laurier submission. The Laurier plan is for 15,000 students attendance when the facilities are built out in the next 20-30 years when Milton is in the 350,000+ resident range.
Check https://www.milton.ca/en/townhall/miltoneducationvillage.asp for details which also includes full bus service connections to local and regional residents and present and future GO train station. Thanks again to regional councillors for their unanimous support as part of Laurier’s submission to the Province for funding with an announcement hopefully later this fall.
Does not surprise me. Burlington is so far behind the rest of the GTA in its ability to evolve it is embarrassing, like when Goldring announced shovel ready IKEA in 2013; the guy announces a major commercial relocation and development project with no knowledge of how these things work; he should have been fired on the spot.
Our council members have no outside world experience to bring to the city. They are quite dumb actually. And when you are dumb, you typically cant do much, or, if you do, you do things that make no sense, like the Degroote school in the middle of nowhere; a place where students have to drive instead of being able to take the bus or the go train.
The culture at city hall is inbred, dumb, stagnant, and screaming for term limits and fresh capable blood to take on the assignment and work effectively within a regional franework philosophy and not focus on comparatively irrelevant bike lane type issues to improve this city.
City Council is voted in by the residents. When people start to vote for the right person to do the job rather than “the nice guy” things might begin to change. Leadership starts at the top.