By Pepper Parr
August 17th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
OPINION
There are always things to be learned.
A crisis tends to point out the weak spots in the way we handle people and the problems they face.
The 311 service the Region has and the Service Burlington approach the city has were tested during the floods and they were found to be wanting.
Hassaan Basit – City Chief Administrative Officer
Burlington’s CAO and the member of the leadership team he had to work with made changes on the fly and for they most part they worked.
The Region and the City didn’t get caught up over jurisdictional issues – they were like relay racers – able to pass the baton back and forth, never dropping it – some close calls.
Now that both the Region and the city are through, for the most part, the data collection phase and beginning to look at the data and now determine what needs to be changed.
Communications is a critical must. City CAO Hassaan Basit was correct when he said the Region was the lead on this. The problem was that the need for information was at the municipal, street by street level – that is sort of out of range for the a Region.
There is a provincial Legislative Committee that is looking into the role Regional governments should play in serving the public.
Regional government – serving the four municipalities.
Planning is no longer a Regional responsibility – Burlington, despite the views of many, is doing a decent job. There are areas where improvements can be made and in the fullness of time they will get made.
Other changes will probably be made and we may not have a Regional government. Until then the city needs to improve the way it serves the public during when there is a crisis. That is not an attempt to fault the city – they did not see this flood coming – they do however know that there will be more floods.
A previous municipal administration usually took the view that when there was a mistake made it should be seen as a learning opportunity – when a mistake is made it has to be owned and changes made.
Better minds than mine can turn their attention to the way the Region and the City communicated with people who were experiencing very serious personal difficulties – their homes were flooded.
Unfortunately there were members of council who purposely and deliberately withheld information. Their pettiness got in the way of serving the constituents.
Right now the focus is on figuring out the why some of the flooding took place and where the changes have to be made. One of the parts of the four part series we published last week gave the public an insight as to how city staff were going to get to the point where the changes needed were fully understood and how the work needed was to be funded.
Hassaan Basit
There are many that will not agree with me – time will tell. Basit made a very good point when he said “we may not be able to fix everything” and while he didn’t say directly that this is not the last flood the city is going to see – he knows that there is more where the last one came from.
Now is the time to use the human resources we have at city hall to address the way we handle the communications problems.
Basit said that he had people at Service Burlington who were assigned to give “white glove” service where it was desperately needed. A lovely phrase and he certainly had the right idea.
My daughter, who turns 43 today had a phrase that would fit in nicely here – “Not too shabby Dad.”
Happy Birthday kid.
Salt with Pepper is the musings, reflections and opinions of the publisher of the Burlington Gazette, an online newspaper that was formed in 2010 and is a member of the National Newsmedia Council.
It’s not just a learning opportunity, and it is more than just a communications issue. It goes to the heart of how the city and region deal with disaster management…or not.
What strikes me about the flooding this year is that the causes appear to be more varied than in 2014. Some of my neighbours experienced overland flooding, while others had rain pouring through the ceiling, and some had back-flow issues, and others had it come through their backdoor. Different causes likely necessitates a multi-varied approach in dealing with the problem. Unfortunately, the City’s philosophy, like so many policy issues, is to latch onto one concept, beat the drum incessantly about it, promote it as a panacea, and hope that the problem will just magically disappear.
There are multiple things the City and Region can and should be doing. Storm drains on many streets are too small and poorly situated. It’s time to make permeable pavement mandatory on renovations and new home construction. We need a more aggressive approach to tree planting and reforestation. We need to open up release catch basins. We need to promote use of backflow preventers which may not solve every residents’ flooding issues but are a whole lot cheaper than a backflow valve install. And we need to tell residents with swimming pools that it isn’t a bathtub, and you don’t need to fill it to the brim.
What struck me about the interaction between the Mayor, the Councillors and public servants in another Gazette article is that we are a month after the flood, and the questions being asked are inordinately procedural, mundane and lacking in specificity. I guess if you live in a world characterized by abstracts and the theoretical a predisposition to action isn’t in your DNA.
Totally agree.
They also used procedural means to ensure most victims had no opportunity to delegate.
I would have liked to here what the delegate who didn’t show had to say.
Unlike what we are hearing from council and staff, these comments are aligned with how businesses approach problems and then solutions. In defence of the community actors, they simply lack the background, which may also explain why they do not ask questions of delegators.
Stephen. The best analysis I’ve read so far, organizations on the whole have a tendency to wander off into the weeds and get lost. By doing a Facebook search on ‘Burlington Flood’ you can see how we little people deal with, or not, the flood problems in real-time, an example of which is in the video below of locals clearing storm drains.
https://youtu.be/V9h3Yi1Wkik?si=EarDqeAGPt_ow2_v
How very true Stephen. From my experience/direct observation, groups that are not familiar with ‘governing’, such as the new 2018 City Council (in the main), tend to confuse discussion with action and find themselves in a sort of decision paralysis. Normally, it would be the role of the City Manager to shepherd them out of ‘the doldrums’ but, in my opinion, Tim Commisso was cut from the same cloth and was most comfortable with formulating long-term visions and strategic plans. Hopefully, this will change with Mr. Basit. Time will tell.
1. Giving the Planning and Municipal Acts’ public notice of the Aug 7th Special Meeting Purpose through the city website calendar 35 days late and
2. Denying delegates at Aug. 7th Stat Public meetings 3 separate Planners committed maximum 10 minutes delegation time in their posted public notices Public Notice
dstroys the Mayor’s, Admin and Clerk’s credibility, not the Planning Department’s. Their reputation stays intact. The Mayor’s statement at 4:31 + on the video of August 7th meeting “showing the public has been heard” is ludicrous. Hopefully Jim Thomson is preparing another complaint for the City Ombudsman that should be as successful as the last one. He did after all get Councillor x 3 acknowledgement that he was right. No fix in Q2 or as yet, as promised, but acknowledged as dead right!