Basit: settled in and getting on with the business of running the city.

By Pepper Parr

May 27th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

He has been in place for a month; got through Standing Committee meetings, a Council meeting and a Special Council meeting as well as a couple of CLOSED sessions of Council

Hassaan Basit: both direct and innovative.

Hassaan Basit is settled in and getting on with the business of running the city.

For a peek at what he has in front of him for the next two months – June and July – Council breaks for the month of August, consider the following:

A budget is in the process of being prepared; it looks like it is going to be another Mayor’s Budget – no word yet on who the next Treasurer will be.

Basit has to get comfortable with where things are with the Bateman Community Centre and the Burlington Lands project that Tim Commisso created.

He has to get a clear sense as to what will be possible with the Alinea plans for 1200 King Road, a development that will change the city as we know it when it is complete.

Basit when he was with Conservation Halton.

The document to watch is the Strategic Plan; it was in the hands of Sheila Jones on the Staff side and Paul Sharman on Council.  Sharman and Jones didn’t “chat”, that wasn’t her style.  Who that task gets handed off to with Jones no longer on the city payroll is one of the bigger challenges Basit is going to have to manage.

He is working through the developing of relationships with not just the senior people, but literally every person he can meet.  He wants to know who they are and wants them to know who he is.  He is totally new to Burlington City Hall – now he runs the place.

He is very much a people person; has a very warm smile and the capacity to draw the best out of people.

He is innovative; will look at new ideas and while the public has no idea what he plans for the next 18 month you can bet a sizable sum that he has ideas of his own – that’s just the man he is.

As the Chief Administrative Officer/City Manager he is the only person Council hires.  His job is to run the administration and follow through on the Staff Directions City Council passes.

While running Conservation Halton he was serving as the lead person for a group of Conservation people who were working with the province. After the province took the Conservation through the first round of cuts, Basit is reported to have marched into then-environment minister Jeff Yurek’s office to demand an explanation, and ended up leading a working group made up of Conservation authorities, municipalities, developers and the province that tried to chart a less combative and more collaborative way forward.

To get a better understanding of how he approaches issues hear his comment made during an interview: “We’re not a stakeholder, as far as I’m concerned, of the province. We’re not someone you give a heads up to or put on a checklist of calls. No, you need to start with us. Bring us into that conversation. We’re an extension of the province. We need to be at the table with you because we are in the field along with municipalities.”

Is he moving fast enough?  Hassaan Bait doesn’t let himself get rushed into anything.  There is a deliberateness about him – but don’t translate that in his being plodder.  In an interview with The Narwhal he said: “Anything innovative needs to be nurtured along the way for it to continue to be leading edge. Otherwise, it’ll fall apart.”

Hassaan Basit at his first Council meeting.

There is 60 days of some serious work to get done.  Council will be off for August.  Expect to get a decent sense of who Hassaan Basit is and how he will serve as CAO.

He is not a James Ridge, nor is he anywhere near what Jeff Fielding was – he is his own man. He once said: “If you think that 36 [conservation authorities] doing something in the entire province is a recipe for inconsistency, I don’t see how over 444 municipalities doing that thing make things better. It doesn’t.”

You don’t hear language like that in the world of municipal politics very often.

Watching his interaction with Council during the week of meetings it seemed evident they were keen and looking forward to the years ahead. His comments on the minister’s authority to override Conservation permits was refreshing. “It’s been on the books for a long time and we question the need for it. Why not address the root causes rather than give yourself that judge-jury power? That’s troubling.”

It will be interesting, and refreshing, to see how he applies that kind of thinking to the work ahead of him.