Adieu Hassaan Basit

By Pepper Parr

July 21^st, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

At the last City Council meeting until mid-August, by which time current Chief Administrative Officer Hasssaan Basit will have begun his new job with the province he spoke about what he believes he has achieved in the 16 months her served.

Thank you. I wasn’t going to make my traditional statement, and I was asking the person who sits to my right, my lawyer, the city’s lawyer, and he said, “there’s no protocol. You do what you want.”  So I appreciate the kind note and the kind words, Mayor. And I think I will keep it very brief. I spoke to all of you last week.

Hassaan Basit at his last council meeting.

It’s been an absolute pleasure to be here,  to work with those of you I’ve known for many years, such as yourself Mayor, and get to work closely with others that I’ve known.  You know, I’ve worked in Burlington for the past 21 years and and the last 16  months, however long it’s been, it’s been an honour to work right here at City Hall. We have made a lot of progress. We have made a lot of changes. We’ve collaborated on achieving almost all of them. It has not just been down to me.

I’m very proud of leaving you with a very talented group of public servants who work at the City of Burlington, not just at the executive leadership team. I have the unique opportunity, you know, to hire many of them, most of them actually.   I looked for people who had leadership capabilities, who could make decisions, who could unlock problems, we could identify circular processes and put a stop to them, inspire people to serve our community. And that’s the team I have around me, and that’s the team that the city has. It’s been only a few months since the last pieces of that team came together, and so you know, they’re going to continue to serve you well.

The staff who work at the City of Burlington are second to none. They really are.   They know what business they’re in, and that’s to serve the community, they require the space and the resources and the leadership and the tools to be able to do that, as long as council and the leadership team continues to support them, the sky’s the limit in terms of what we can do for the residents of this city.

And lastly, to everybody on council, I appreciated all our interactions, one on one, some private, some public, always really good, great ideas. And lastly, to you, Mayor, as you said, I’ve worked with you for many, many years in many capacities, for both of us, actually.

It’s been a real pleasure to work shoulder and shoulder over the past little while.  I’m not going far. It’s a great opportunity to go do something at a larger scale in an area that is near and dear to my heart, The  Burlington perspective will be front of mind, you know, as as I go and take that responsibility on.

To my senior team, thank you so much for putting up with everything over the past year and a bit.

To the staff at the City of Burlington, I will miss them the most. So with that, thank you so much.